Professional Practice.
For this, I had to take a selfie and a self portrait and discuss the difference, I then had to discuss a photographer who influenced the picture.
Both of these images can be seen as a way of self definition, a picture of who you are and what you look like. A selfie is a way to show how you, as a person would represent yourself, the way you edit the image, where you would post the image to and who you would allow to know the version of yourself that you had invented. Selfie's may not be true to the individual.
Along side this, self portraits, date back to before social media. The only similarity they hold is usually how they're used to redefine someones identity.
Before social media, portraits were only available to middle and high class societies. Usually portraits are shot on a camera, with artificial lighting. These are seen as the only differences between a selfie and a self portrait now.
However, when shooting the selfie and self portrait, I found the self to be almost natural instinct, the selfie was shot with natural lighting and the camera on my phone was automatically adjusted. Whereas on my camera, I had to change the settings manually, make sure the angle was right, make sure I was in focus and make sure it represented a self portrait properly. I felt more at ease when taking the selfie, it was easy and took seconds to do, however trying to take the self portrait took me at least 15 minutes, with constant changes being made to the camera itself.
A photographer who influenced my self portrait was Vivian Majer, who was a street photographer in the 20th century. I liked this way of shooting as it only showed a section of my face, which allowed me to hide behind the camera as I did not feel as confident infront of the camera as I did infront of my iPhone.
One photographer I took inspiration from was Freda Leinwand. Leinwand documented the women's rights movement between 1970 - 1980. She captured moments from protests around the world, as well as women working non traditional jobs. I wanted to take inspiration from her as I find her admirable for documenting the whole movement.
For my human nature images, I chose these two from a range of photos from a protest I went to. I thought these fit the theme of human nature because the first thing I thought of was when being given this task was protests. I also think these two images take inspiration from Freda Leinwands work as they were both white busy images with a main focal point of one or two people.
These are mindmaps for the types of things I wanted to shoot for the architecture. In the end, I went for a mix of both modern and old buildings.
Lisette Model.
Lisette Model was a street photographer in the 1940s, who seemed to focus on women and social realism, when shooting her images. She used a 35mm camera, which results in lower quality images when printed. She also shoots in black and white, which I believe adds power to images.
I would replicate her work by shooting from a downward angle, as most of the images I saw were taken of feet.
Phil Penman.
Phil Penman, is a street photographer who captures cinematic images. His work focuses on seeing the city through his eyes. He only shoots in black and white, which correlates with his powerful images, such as 9/11. He tends to use a deep depth of field in his work, but also a small depth of field in certain images.
I would replicate this by shooting London from all sides, good and bad, with a deep depth of field, whilst also putting the images in black and white.
This is my classic image for architecture. I feel like this is a classical image, as the buildings are very old and most classic images are in black and white.
This is my contemporary image for architecture. I thought this fit the contemporary theme because of how the blue reflects off the balcony. As well as this, the building is a modern new build.
Both of these images I believe take inspiration from Phil Penman's work as they capture London from all sides.
Emmanuel Cole.
I chose to research Cole, as he is a street photographer in London.
I believe he takes contemporary images of the way London functions, and the life we have built around it. My favourite image of his is the one shown above. I like the way the man is the main focal point yet the background is still busy.
Giacomo Mason.
I researched Giacomo Mason, as I believe his work represents the classic side of London street photography.
I want to incorporate some elements of his work into my own, like the red phone boxes or the tube as I believe that fits into the theme of built environment.
In the image on the left, I chose that as my classical photo. This is because of the way the statue is crafted onto the wall. I thought this fitted into my theme as it is quite an old building with delicately crafted art into the bricks. In the image on the right, I chose that at my contemporary image because it's staged in the tube. I thought it fit well into the theme of built environment as the tubes are something that are rather new, and we have built them to make our commute easier.
ENVIRONMENT
For my environment theme, I knew I was going to Peckham so I wanted to showcase Peckham as a living environment, I wanted to showcase the good and the bad of Peckham through three images.
One photographer I researched was Jérôme Favre and his Peckhamites archive. I liked how he took portraits of regular people who lived in Peckham and went about their daily business. His shoots are not scheduled and he catches people on the street randomly.
For my shoot, I knew I wouldn't be able to get any portraits so I decided to photograph the surrounding area.
The graffiti in these images I think tells the story how people expect Peckham to be, where as the middle two tells the story of how Peckham actually is.
These are the things I wanted to capture in the nature part of the project. I wanted to push myself and try and get pictures of spiders as they are a fear of mine. on top of that I wanted to get some pictures of flowers, because when I think of nature that's the first though I have.
One photographer I researched was Thomas Shahan. He took pictures of spiders up close and he focuses on the cute side of spiders. I wanted to capture this in my work by getting as close to a spider as I possibly could and taking a quick snap of it.
Another photographer I researched was Karl Blossfeldt. I took inspiration from his photo "but does it float?" As I like how he captured all the veins the leaf has.
These were my two images I took, I found I couldn't get as close to the spider with the lens as I originally wanted because I didn't have the right lens, however I think the image of the flower came out really well.
I had a few ideas in mind for diary, but I went with cleaning, and at first I didn't know what I would be doing and how to show that theme off, but then I thought of something I do a lot, which is cleaning the kitchen.
I took inspiration from Nigel Shafran's washing up series, as I like how his kitchen changed a long with his everyday life. When I was looking at the series, I felt like I was getting an insight into his personal life, which is what I wanted to portray with my images as well.
These were the images I took, I felt as if it represented how much I cleaned the kitchen, as I took a shot every time I did over the span of a week. I feel like the last one portrays how much I actually hate cleaning the kitchen as well which gives the viewer a little bit of personal insight just like Nigel Shafran.
This was my final put together image.
ANALYSIS.
What went well?
I think the first few shoots went well, I feel as if I captured what I needed to during them and all the shoots went smoothly.
What would you do differently next time?
I would manage my time better next time. Towards the end of the term, I felt myself slipping in regards to taking a few images every week. Next time I will stay on top of that.
