Staged street photography task! (Mockumentary work)

Another task we were asked to complete was a Staged street task. This was linking back to our other task which was to do mainly with just street, not planned and spare of the moment photography. This is slightly different as its all about thinking and planning your ideas and what you could do.
Here are a few of my own photos...

Doing this task is linked to Jeff Wall, his work is all staged; he is a photographer as an artist. His photos are contrived and cultivated. But when taking a photo is to capture and show a moment.

From his work's, Jeff wall said: "When creating the destroyed room, i worked in reference to the design of commercial windows displays of clothing and furniture"

Again Jeff Wall said "The 'mimic' in Mimicis a tragic figure, in part, to me, because, as I mentioned, mime sis is the gem of art, here turned into a weapon of war. These little gestures of hate are precursors of worst things to come"

Hearing what Jeff Wall says himself; gives an understanding of why he did certain thing but I like observing and thinking of my own perception of his photographs as they give out questions like mainly "What's going on?"

These are two examples of his work; as you can see they are both very different but staged. His work is very different and slightly strange, but that's what makes it so interesting.

Film Poster!

In a lesson, Friday afternoon, we played around with characters and photography to create a film poster. It also was mainly practise for Photo Shop.
So once we got into groups and took the photos, we started to play around with the photos we took and other peoples to create a realistic but film like poster.
At first I found this difficult to create due to little knowledge of actually using Photo shop.
But once getting into using it again, and all the techniques and details I was familiarising myself to it more easily.

Here is an initial start of my film poster; the 'story' is meant to be along the lines of pirates etc.

As you can see at the moment it is very basic and simple with a lot more work needed.

Each section needed special details of which I am still getting the hang of doing throughout the process of everything else.

Below are a few screenshots of what the process was like and how I did it and so on. It mainly just shows what as going on while I was creating the poster.

As you can see, both of these screenshots are slightly different but are a tool used for the same section of the poster. The first one shows a step to changing the colour and brightness/contrast of the image to change the effect of the 'sailor' to make sure he doesn't stand out to much and looks effective and realistic. And the next one shows the rubber tool of which helps blur and smudge the edges quicker. To get the right intensity, you would need to fiddle round with the controls like opacity, brush size and so on.

As you can see, these screenshots are of mainly myself working around how I was going set it out and what I was going to name the poster. For me this was a good learning stage of more tools of photo shop and working my way through it helped me gain more skills in those things.
One of the screenshots shows me fading the orange face/ monster, this was to show the ship more in the background and to help add a effect to the orange monster and poster altogether. Looking back at the shots shows me how I worked through it and gives me a recap of how I did it and what I could do to improve in the future.

During our film poster task we also looked at Mimmo Rotella, and his work which was mainly torn advertising posters, that then links towards our task of simply creating our own poster.

Above are two of Rotella's work and two of mine; as you can see Mimmo would tear through many previous posters and layers on a advertising board to create his torn effect. He would do this not knowing how it would end up; it was unplanned.

Doing these tasks on photo shop have really helped me photo shop with certain elements on it; layering, adjusting, selecting, cropping, fading etc. To use photo shop more for different tasks helps continue to give me more of an in site on how to use it.

Timeline Task!

In lesson we focused on different photographers and each of there works.
We started off with the oldest photo through to newer modern photos and photographers these days.
As a task in the lesson and for at home, we were told to create a timeline from the oldest to the newest photographers and a few examples of their work.

As you can see my photographs have all turned out in black and white. Unfortunately this was a mistake through photoshop which I probably could have solved but it turns out that i liked it all in that colour because it shows the concept of oldness and how much photography has evolved.

When i first started to create this i need to have planned before to help myself get started quicker. But after thought i started to arrange photos together with the photographers name. And I chose the photos of which i thought showed there work and style well.

It looks very plain and busy but it shows what a timeline would include but just with a different layout. I find the black and white colour scheme very simple of which works well the initial idea of history of photography when i was all black and white.

I realised that my timeline has not got much information about each of the photographers and their work, so I created another timeline which i very similar to my previous one but it just includes more text and colours.

This shows information about the artist or photographer and what they are mainly known for.

Street Task!

For this task, we were asked to take photo's ourselves and to try and link our work with the photographer we chose.
Personally, to start with I found this difficult as Matt Stuart's photographs were based on looking at the details and seeing beyond the obvious. So as I walked around town, it was hard to realise potential photographs.

So below are photos of which I took trying to link it Matt Stuart but in another context.
Certain Matt Stuart photos are all face to face and everyday people on the street. So my photos are the opposite and represent there different characters and cultures, but from below; basically either there backs, or feet and legs.

Doing this task among others helped me realise different things about different photographers. For example Martin Parr and his typical British humour; 'queen', Bruce Gilden with his aggressive street but spontaneous photos, Henri Cartier-Bresson being important in documentary photography, and Frank Eggleston being a pioneer, using colour and looking the the 'unusual'. It is interesting to find out about how different photographers work and just simply understanding their style and purposes. Doing this task above helped with individual motivation and confidence; this was important as it showed our response to the task.

Composition Lesson!

Last week we had a lesson on composition: what it is, photos of which helped show it and so on.

So I have put together a small simple video of which is a mind map that shows the ideas which best describe what composition is.

From discussing about composition and what it is, we explored photographers of which I chose Matt Stuart.
He is a contemporary photography, and for himself it has not been an easy ride to pick which hobby or career he was heading towards.
His father was the reason for introducing him to photography; giving him books for example of Cartier-Bresson, he had previously thought about playing the trumpet and skateboarding. But as you can see, neither really turned out well.
This link will give an insight of Matt Stuart and his work. From this site, it gives you information about himself and small facts, and all of his photographs in sections.
http://www.mattstuart.com/