Reflective Journal for Figure and the Photograph.

 

      Throughout this section of my course I was given examples and to research various topics and to research various topics that included how to resize photographs. some of the topics that was covered included was self portrait (written as a blog Keith J Driscoll's Student days in Photography: Self Portrait (kjdstudent.blogspot.com)), Studio staged, (written as a blog Keith J Driscoll's Student days in Photography: Studio Staged. (kjdstudent.blogspot.com)), Portrait of a Stranger (Written as a blog Keith J Driscoll's Student days in Photography: Portrait of a stranger. (kjdstudent.blogspot.com)), Flaneur (Written as blog Keith J Driscoll's Student days in Photography: Flaneur (kjdstudent.blogspot.com)),  Street view/ stock (written as a blog Keith J Driscoll's Student days in Photography: Street view /stock (kjdstudent.blogspot.com))  and still life, self portrait (written as a blog Keith J Driscoll's Student days in Photography: Still Life, Self Portrait. (kjdstudent.blogspot.com)). We also had to give a presentation of 5 minutes to a given topic based upon 4 themes with a topic of our own choosing that was not our own work.

     Looking retrospective at this half term I found that I was nervous at the presentation. I am going through a rough patch at this half term and things did not help as I had a decorator working upstairs at the time of giving this presentation and had to keep one ear out for him. This caused me to rush though the presentation faster than I normally would have done as I could not concentrate on the task at hand as I would have liked. The next time I do a presentation I would hopefully not be going through such a bad time and would be able to give my attention fully to the task. I think the moral of this story is that you can not give 100% to tasks when there is too much other things going on in your life.

     The Photographic tasks were a different matter entirely. This was given to us as something we can complete during the week. This gave me time to readjust my thoughts to a timetable that I could adjust to time when there was not a lot going on and to change the date on what I was going to do if I did not felt too down to do anything at all. I could also do research at other times when I felt up to the task. 

     I have learnt that there are various ways that you can interpret a photograph and seeing the concept of photography in different ways. This was including using other people's photograph in a new frame, to stage a photograph so it will give a context and to understand that everyday things I personally take for granted may be interesting to other people. I have used some of these ideas directly into my practice and hopefully will continue to use in the future. Overall, I thought I did as best I could do under the circumstances and hopefully have not so much damaging events happening around me when I proceed to the next term of work.    

Still Life, Self Portrait.

       For this assignment we were given some examples of representation in still life from the likes of Fischli and Weiss, Torbjorn Rodlan and Matt Collishaw. We was also set a task to look up 17th Century still life paintings (which there was numerous articles about this subject on the internet. One such example is given here:- The Hidden Secrets Lurking in Dutch Still Life Paintings - Artsy ).

      To try to get a still life representation of myself, I decided to use some of my cheap cameras that I purchased from E-bay. When I have some spare time I like to go out and around with these cameras I paid less than £3 + postage to see what kind of photographs I come up with these early digital cameras. I find this enjoyable as you have to work on these cameras to come up with a decent result and tend to learn more. The equipment I used was 3 triggers and two speedlites with a red and a green filter. I also used one of my mini studios and placed a black background inside of it so I would have some negative space on the photographs. I also took the photographs on ISO 100 setting with a time variable of 1/200th of a second with the exposure between -3 and -5 stops. The flashes were placed either side of my mini studios as the sides are white and would be useful as a diffuser. Two of the results are given below.

Keith's cheap camera heaven.

      Overall I quite like doing this task. It gave me a chance to use my triggers (as I must admit I have not used them much at all) and the filters gave me a chance to test out something that I have been meaning to do for a long while but, never attempted until now. After a few more attempts I may try to do this method on portraits of people's faces (when I get a 3rd speedlite as one of my slaves stopped working when setting up the equipment).

Street view /stock

Street view /stock.

                          Hey! You Cat!
 

pexels erik karits

Tired of being in the same street and seeing the same shops all day and everyday? Why not get your owner to pay for an all expensive paid holiday around the world.

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Discover the sights of seeing new things from the top of houses you never could imagine.

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Go and discover new alleyways and meet other cats who are also have the same exploring instinct as you.

pexels anfisa eremina

pexels elina sazonova

Discover new stairwells that you can sit around for hours and hours.

georg regauer unsplash


Find unexplored places you can settle down and sleep without being disturbed.

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Find rubbish sites that has a ton of empty boxes and bits of things to play around with.

pexels-maria-orlova-4946765

All of this can be you for the amazing price of $7 million dollars from "rip off merchants who target people who has more more money than sense LTD." and the cat in the photos could be you. Get your owner to get a catalogue today. 

Brought to you from the bureau of getting new ways of getting you to part with your cash in a frivolous and expensive way.

The photos I used for this spoof advertisement came from 2 royalty free websites which was Pexels and Unsplash. These photos can be used for any reason as long as you include the name of the website and the name of the photographer. The links to the 2 sites are:-

1+ Million Royalty Free Images · Pexels  and Beautiful Free Images & Pictures | Unsplash 

We also had to look up and research such artists as Mishka Henna, Thomas Ruff and Richard prince to get some inspiration on the application of stock photographs. 

Flaneur

Flaneur

     

     For this task we was shown works and links from such artists as Richard Long and Mark Power. Also include in the links that we had to look up was an essay from 1924 from Andre Breton. The link for this essay is down Below:-

Manifesto of Surrealism (ua.edu)

     As this task was about unfamiliar surroundings I realised that there was an area of woodland nearby that I have never investigated. Making my way down there I was greeted by a storage container that was not there a week ago (I think it is the same container that was elsewhere in the park and was just moved to it's current location). I thought that this will be a good starting point into a journey into the unknown.

     I then proceeded to walk into the trees and start to take photos of what was in this woodland that I have never been in before.

     It was not long however that I found out why I have not been in this part of the woods before. When I tried to cross a ditch, I fell into the ditch and got completely muddy and my jeans split beyond repair. Normally I would head back to home to get changed at this point but seeing I was on a mission I decided to carry on taking photographs and change after I have finished. The ditch I fell in is down below:-

     Carrying on with my muddy adventures I came across an area where some tree guards have been discarded a long time ago. I thought that this may make a good picture and included it within my photoshoot.

     As I carried on with my adventure into the unknown I came across an area where there was some new shoots (of something) that was starting to grow. The photograph of this is down below:-

     At different parts of the woods, there were a couple of small sections where the trees turned into conifer trees. As they were taller than the rest of the trees I decided to take a photo directly upwards to show how the tree canopy looks from below:-

     Eventually I came across an area where there has been a previous building there. The building is now a ruin and seems to fit the location where it is situated.

      Around this area I also found a path that I didn't know existed. This made the going a lot easier as I was walking around through the trees without a directional path. I used this path to eventually get out of this part of the woodland.

     Before I reached into places in the park I have already been, I found the location I have seen on a map that I have been looking for years but have not managed to find it until now. The maps showed a water feature clearly marked around this location. As I followed the newly discovered path it went past this feature and I was able to photograph it before I hit to known territory again. The photograph of this water feature is below:-

      Overall this was the kind of thing I tended to do anyway. When I have some spare time I sometimes look at a map and see if there is any interesting places I have not been before and take public transport to get there to take some photos. However, because of lockdown, I had to choose somewhere within walking distance. This is why I choose this location to shoot. I didn't like falling into a muddy ditch and my trousers being ripped beyond all repair but I did enjoy taking photos in a new location.

 

Portrait of a stranger.

Portrait of a stranger.

     For this week's tasks we was shown photographs and links for videos of photographic artists of Thomas Ruff, Iven Penn, Mark Hobbs and Tom Woods to study and to take inspiration from. This gave me a chance to use my Christmas presents properly for the first time and was quite eager to go out.

     The venue I choose to do this task is our local park (as we are still in lockdown) as this was the place nearby that I would see people going along with their daily exercise. I used my recently acquired walkabout lens as I did not know what focal length I would need so this lens would be sufficient for anything from a wide angle to long telephoto. This would cover most things (except a shallow depth of field). 

                       

     The first photograph was of 2 people walking their dogs in the park. I took this photograph at the maximum focal length that the lens was capable of. This gave me the ability to keep a long distance away without disturbing the individuals involved in their everyday business. I find it is a good method to use when you want to take photos of people whilst, they are unaware of you taking photographs of them.

                        

     The other two photographs I used on this blog was using the lens at it's shortest focal length. A good way of taking photographs of strangers I found was to point the camera upwards towards the trees and have the subject on the bottom of the photograph. Not only does the subject thinks that you are just taking some photographs of trees but I found out it is a good method of incorporating the surroundings in context with the subject. This gives a pleasing result to the overall photograph once you get used to it.

     Another method I did find useful was to take a photograph of people walking after the have passed you. Generally people don't mind having their backs taken (as you are not taking a picture of their faces) and generally don't lead to any confrontation. I did find out that this lens I could use directly in sunlight without much flare so I was lucky to take a photograph with the direction towards the sun.

     Overall I like this task. This task went hand in hand with the type of photographs I take anyway so I was already familiar in what I wanted to achieve (even though I was not familiar with the equipment I was using). I was lucky to have a day when the sun came out without having most of the snow melted and took full advantage of this day to try my Christmas presents.
 

  

Studio Staged.

      For this short assignment we were given a lecture and was shown and given links from various artists to give us some inspiration into completing this task. This included the likes of Christopher Nunn, Alix Marie and Tom Hunter. After doing a bit of research into these artists, it gave me some inspiration into trying to take some photos around the house to use as a studio. As some of these photos were of an documentary type, I decided to go in that direction (even though the first photo was in the true sense staged).

      The first photo is of our cat Daisy. It was taken strait after the lecture we had. She likes to take comfort in articles of clothing that we have been wearing and in this case she decided to settle down on my dressing gown. I took this photo by  calling her name and as soon as she looked up I shot this picture. I must admit that I am quite lucky with our cat as she is now used to me taking photographs of her and now she is used to me pointing a camera in her face and at the most part just carries on with her life as normal (apart from this photograph). The other two that I have included in this photoshoot are of my son and daughter doing their normal activity during this time of lockdown.

      The first photo is of my son. At the time he was doing some live commentary onstream of people playing some video games. I tried just to use the light that he uses when he vlogs to give the photograph some character. It was a capture of a moment of time and encapsulates the event that he was hosting.

      The last photograph is of my daughter looking into her phone on her bed. She is the messiest of us all and does not like a cover on her eiderdown or her mattress (as I put on new dressing on numerous occasions only for her to rip them all off again). Again, I just caught her in her doing the things she does normally as I thought I would make a nice picture.

      Overall I quite liked doing this task. The interpretation of what makes a studio is very broad so I could just take what was going on around me. This gave me the flexibility to capture what was going on around me and gave me a huge range on what I could do. 
  
 

Self Portrait

      Unfortunately this assignment came at a bad time for me as we were going through a personal family tragedy and I am not in the best frame of mind to really concentrate on matters at hand. However, to complete this assignment, I still tried something that would show some of the emotions that I am feeling at the moment and try something small.

      As I am in a bereaved state of mind, I thought I come up with something simple to create. A couple of years ago I was given a present of some attachment lenses for my phone. I used these apparatus a couple of times before my last phone packed up and have hardly used them since. I thought I give these lenses a try out as they just screw onto a bracket which in turn clips onto the edge of my phone. This is the first time I have used the front camera on my phone with these attachments.

      What I did find out is that, unlike the rear camera on my phone, I could not zoom in or out with the front camera and the result was so much vignetting that it took almost a circular image. Rather than give up on this project I decided to try to use this to my advantage.

      The first picture I used is to try to recreate the pain I was feeling in pictorial form. I used the radial extension to create the shimmering effect around my nose and mouth and tried to capture the inward screaming that I am feeling within my head. I tried to capture this feeling in a moment in time.

      The second photo I took was to try to show my emotion from my eye into pictorial form. I used the same radial attachment to come up with this effect.

      The last photo in this series I used the 5 point kaleidoscope attachment and moved the phone around to get the desired effect. This is an attempt to encapsulate the disjointed feelings that are running through my mind. 

      Overall, due the mixed emotions that I am in the process of going through, I really cannot say critically whether or not this is a personal refection of my mood. I hope it is and I hope that it shows it in pictorial representation and my time was not wasted.