On this page, I shall be presenting all the photographs taken throughout this project. This being a variety of images based on the research side of this project to taking pictures on location. With my project being based on a number of abandoned, dead and shrunken villages, it gives lots of different areas to explore, with the villages being in separate places and all in their own situation; with some dead and others shrunken or abandoned, the variety will be a fascinating aspect when looking at the final series of photographs.
With the photographs on this page taken on my phone and camera, the variety of pictures represent the amount of locations and different environment visited throughout this project.
One way I was able to constantly show my tutor my work was through the social media website “Tumblr”. https://www.tumblr.com/blog/wsanders4.
On the blog I created on Tumblr, I was able to upload throughout the week, then receive feedback at various time and the meeting I had with Keith, giving me advice about possible changes I could make, as well as positives and negatives about my work.
After seeing these photographs of my Tumblr, it was time to get them printed to examine how big they could be blown up for my exhibition.
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/wsanders4
Photographs on location and examples of lighting.
Here, I have three photographs of the types of skies that I wanted to see whilst completing my project. Taking inspiration from Simon Marsden, the moody outlook of the sky is presented in all of these photographs, I wanted to avoid getting any sunlight in. On only one visit on location I had sunshine, but luckily for me, it was Aunsby, a location where I was unable to find the hamlet and therefore take photographs. The photographs of the churches are ones that I felt were good however I didn’t have other content to put with them so decided against including them into my final series.
When clicking through the selection of photographs in these contact sheets, you can really see the variety of images taken and experimented around with. After visiting Gainsthorpe, Goltho and North Rauceby for a second time with my tutors comments, I was able to go back and correct the images we felt weren’t strong enough yet.
For my project I want my main A1 photographs to be supported by images of signs about the past of the location. Within the process of selecting the best photographs for my series, including four locations, meaning I will have four A4 documents by the side of my work, these all showing the photographs of various road signs or history medieval document. The idea links to putting words with my photographs, the researched work of John Kippin relating back to my series with a twist. When going over this with Keith, he agreed with the idea of adding supporting work, as “it gives the audience some background on the photographs they’re viewing.” During the editing process for my A1 final pictures, my tutor took the time to show me how much better the support photographs can look when being lifted up in photoshop.
Take the last content page for example, on this page the viewer can see the difference between this and the previous environments, this being because of the lighting and the sky, a factor that has become incredibly important over the creation of this series. The sky was one of many things that I had to ensure was perfect when completing this project, ensuring camera shutter and aperture was spot on and to make sure the images were crisply focused, so when blown up the pictures don’t look blurry.
From all of my photographs, I wanted to go into more detail about a particular few, this is something that I have done furthur down this page. Note; all photographs were shot it RAW before being transferred over to JPEG to ensure I had enough space to include all in blog. Throughout, blog has constantly rejected the RAW files presented so I’ve had to transfer them into JPEGS.
Support Photographs
The selection of images below show the various different signs that I felt were appropriate to photograph that would relate to my final work. All from the different places that I visited, all that would work when it comes to supporting my photographs.
Edited Support Photographs.
This photograph is one taken from a tutorial I had with my tutor. In this tutorial we reviewed my workings, as well as Keith going over how to bring to life an image, what I just explained As you can see in the photograph above, the room left on the right hand side of the image, this was orginally left for my own personal writing to contribute to the piece, however, after experimenting around with the look of it, I decided against putting my own content in as I felt it could ruin the outlook. I think that the words I want to say can be put into my context panel, something that features in my styles and approaches page, where I plan out how I want my final project to be presented when exhibited.
When it came to editing my support photographs, I wanted to lift up the photographs taken on my phone through PhotoShop. In order to do this I went onto Edit – Transform. By playing around with “Perspective” and “Warp” on the transform command, I was able to get the selection of photographs below. When comaparing these to the original pictures, you can see the changes and how much smarter they look, something that will be noticeable when it comes to presenting these images at the exhibtion. The four photographs are the ones that shall be put up with my final series, all with boarders are straight, I believe that these pictures will improve the overall outlook of my final project when presented at the end of May. The photograph above shows what I was doing in PhotoShop to edit these photographs, this pictures works when looking at the original and comparing it to the final, the before and after shot.
Final Support Images.
Here we have the final four support photographs, ready to be printed for the exhibition later this month. They look smart and are easy to read which enables the audience to be able to learn about the place they’re looking at pictures off. Even though Osgodby is slightly different to the rest, I worked with the content that I could get and find. I believe that the diversity behind the signs works as the diversity behind the pictures actually comes from the wild photograph of the overgrown Osgodby.
Photographs Considered.
At this point, I want to add some photographs that I considered using for my final series, photographs that I felt were strong however there were others I had taken that fit into the series in a better way. By experimenting around with different approaches and techniques of taking photographs, it left me with a large choice and here are a few of the images I considered for my final sequence. As you can see I have included a panorama in this selection, the reason behind this being for just how different it is, taken on my iPhone, this photograph adds diversity but it also looks really good and although I didn’t pick it as final photograph, I believe it is an image of strong quality, good composition with a lovely sky in the style of my researched practitioners.
Editorial Stages.
In this editorial stage, once the final six photographs had been chosen, in my final meeting with Kieth, he suggested editing the coloring in the photographs in order to match. The process below shows how the editing took place and the final result. I am very pleased that I did change the colours to match throughout, as I believe they now are as strong as the composition in the images.
Another piece of editing that took place was the taking out of various objects in the background of images, an example being in the background of the shot from North Rauceby. In the early stages of this project, during a meeting with Keith where I had my prints, we lay the image down and looked into the background of the image and saw a crane, this was something that was removed, this being purely from seeing it once it would bug me seeing it every time I look at my pictures. Now fully edited and ready to be printed for the exhibition, the process underneath shows the patient and time consuming procedure it is to edit these images to ensure they’re perfect.
FINAL SERIES.
This is my edited six final photographs that I shall be exhibiting with my four support images. I have spoken about my final series in my reflective journal. It isn’t until after the exhibition when my overall conclusion will be completed. A quick summary of my final series, I am overall very pleased with the variety and quality of my final six photographs. Taking influence from practitioners such as Simon Marsden, John Kippin and Thomas Struth aswell as my tutor, I believe I have produced a sequence of work that does “explore the dead villages in the area of Lincolnshire”. I’m happy that I’ve got two groups of photographs from the same locations, this was something I was worried about as I didn’t feel the single picture would represent the settlement fully on its own. The series, I believe tells a story; the story that these places that were once living communities, have all ended up in the same way. All starting off in different situation however ending in the same list of abandoned Lincolnshire settlements through one reason or another. I go into more detail about this final series and the journey towards it in my overall conclusion after my exhibition.
