Edit or not to edit?

After my three shoots and i had got the photographs that i originally set out to find, i began to think about how the images would look, if they should be in colour, B&W or bleached out completely. I started to think about the meaning behind the images and the importance of them being aesthetically pleasing. I even tried whitening the images to near incomplete unsightlyness. I wanted to find a way to show that the space in the middle is the important punctum of the photograph, i didnt want the viewer to miss out on the entire point of my photographs, so i tried this:

 I put the image in photoshop put a layer of white underneath the image and then changed the opacity to fade away the photograph.

After looking at the result of this photograph and thinking about the theme within this project, the idea of space within different enviroments and its being shaped by different barriers no matter which landscape we look at, i began to realise that i had photographed the mundane, i had  photographed spaces that weren’t inherently special, but were unique and individual to the project and there by they were important and becasue of this ‘fact’ , they should be left completly untouched. Perhaps with only the lightest of touches in photoshop involving a crop tool and curves. The tempatation to glamourise them was very strong intitally but i think that it would have been untrue to the project to do so.

I also began to think about how they would be displayed at the exhibition in The Print Space in London on 6th-17th June 2011. I thought about alot of different methods, small, large, miniscule or even in a minimalistic sculpture of some kind. However the two very simple ideas stuck and they are what i am currently deciding on putting together.

Themes:  

• Prints – traditional but clear and concise with a static status which isn’t always acheived with video
• Video- modern, but with the added bonus of being able to entice the spectator with auditory effects as well

Third Shoot in Bosham…

For this third and possibly final shoot, i photographed a rural framed space. I looked at how nature can create spaces around our urban enviroment and how our presence can effect the naturalistic effect of certain areas within Bosham.

Here are some photographs from this shoot:

This shoot was particularly difficult, as i had to find areas that had been naturally created in a sense, which had framed areas in them, which fit with my design of photographing the location. I found it harder than the urban and industrial themes to photograph, purely for this reason. However with a little perserverance i managed to capture several shots which in my opinion really reiterate our use of space within in any location and the effects that that space has on us personally. So for example how we interact with our enviroments and how that makes us feel emotionally.

Here are the street or place names that i visited in Bosham:

• Green Lane
• Willow Brook ( a house name in a kind of cul-de-sac close)
• Southfield Ind Park
• Hatt House – Delling Lane

My favourite images are the first, fourth, fith and sixth images. I like the openness of the space and in particular i believe that they are good examples of the framing that i have had in mind for this project.

Next i will be looking at the editing process of these photographs and choosing my final twelve photographs for the exhibition in june…

Second Shoot in Sutton Surrey…

For this second shoot i wanted to investigate the use of space within an urban residential area. I wanted to capture an idea of how our own enviromental living space effected other spaces around us. Here are some unedited photographs that i captured whilst looking for examples of this:

These are some of the examples of areas of space, which are used by us on a daily basis, which exist for a purpose but are nontheless just space. I am interested in the job that the barriers within the frame have and then what reflection thsi has on the space that its defending, protecting or perhaps is just restricting?

The street names or places that i visited in Sutton Surrey, are as follows:

• Bridge Road
• Worcester Road
• Conway Drive
• Mulgrave Road

My favourite photographs are the second, third and fourth image. These are only a few examples of the photographs that i shot in this location, so bearing this in mind, i will after my third shoot look at editing my images and choosing the final possible 12 images which may or may not be displayed in Theprintspace London in June.

Next I will be shooting in Bosham and looking for photographs which are more rural based, so that are naturally framed by spaces of nature, fields, plants and trees. I will however also look at how the urban and the rural interact but only in very small way, so as not to distract the viewer from the idea that this series of images from Bosham are rural themed photographs…

Picking Locations and first shoot…

So for the location, i got a train map of the train stations in the south of england and then i crossed off all of the stations i had visited. Then i chose at random three stations which i had never been to, here is a photograph to illustrate this:

i choose three locations, which were:

1. Haywards Heath
2. Sutton Surrey
3. Bosham

I then continued to plan my shoot, with the first being in Haywards Heath. Once i arrived in Haywards Heath, i wrote down all of the names of roads and places which i took photographs at, so that later on i would be able to identify where the image came from and then it would also give the space photograph an exact location, rather than making the viewer feel that it could be located anywhere.

Here are the street names or places in which i visited in Haywards Heath:

• Victoria park
• Bridge Road
• Syndney Road

Here are a few examples of unedited photographs that i created during this first shoot:

I directed my energies in Haywards Heath to the large industrial estate in Bridge Road, photographing their particular use of space. Capturing how certain spaces have been created over a period of time and by the layering of buildings that surround them as well as by road markings and sign posts and offices which all act as a border to restrict that space and keep it under control. My favorite of these images is the first, fourth and fifth image, i believe that they depict the general use of space within an industrial estate the most.

Next when i travel to Sutton Surrey, i will be looking at the urban (residential) use of space…

Brief designs for framing photographs…

Here i have done a series of sketches, looking at the main focal points of each image, deciding on how the foreground and and background should interact with each other.

Please note that there are no images within these designs, simply the logistics of the focussing involved when photographing the locations.

Here are a few ideas:

 

The basic idea behind these was looking at the idea of forground and background space within framing a subject, and how the two spaces interact and which way would provide the most unusual point of view with a definite sense of focus.

My favourite design, which i will be using in my framing on location, will be the second photograph.

key:

• Blue – out of focus
• yellow – in focus

i like this design, as i can frame the image with two points either side of the frame which are out of focus, i can use something in the landscape like a lampost or house to then frame the space within the compostion and using my framing technique for the photographs convey this in the over all prints. It also takes the pressure of the foreground to look interesting and lets the background do all the hard work.

Originally i did think about another way to photograph my locations, and this was through a another systematic process, which i deemed unfortunatly in the end not possible. I wanted to travel to a train station which i hadnt been to before, then get off and travel directly from the train station north 0.9 miles (as this is statiscally the average walk, taken from statistics last year) and then using a tripod with the camera at a 90 degree angle to the floor, so basically parallel to take one image at pricisely 1pm. then to travel to the east, west and south of the trainstation and repeat the process with only 1 hour between each shoot, so 2pm, 3pm, 4pm. The reason behind the time was to get a natural movement within the shadows shown within the photographic composistion.  However, i deemed highly unlikely to be done accurately as 0.9 miles is quite an exact distance and to reach north exactly 0.9mils from the train stations would at times meant travelling over houses or other various urban landmarks, which would have made the reality of the research tainted.

So instead, i am now planning to follow the idea behind this and reach three seperate train stations around the south of england each location with a good distance from the next and to walk around and photograph the spaces which i see which relate to one of three themes, urban, rural and industrial. These are very loose themes and are to be morely interpretated by the viewer, but i felt that it was nessersary to have them for myself more than anything, so that there were variations within the photographs produced and also to show that the idea of how space is created and maintained can be apart of many different types of landscapes.

Deciding how to shoot and where…

When approaching this shoot i have alot of variations to consider, where, when, how and what with, and most importantly in my opinion why?

I have decided on where i am going to do the photoshoots, or more accurately i have decided how i am going to decide on to do the photoshoots. I will get a train map of areas around sussex, then i shall systematically cross off every train station i have ever been to (physically stood on) , even if only for a brief period of time. I will choose one as close to the west as possible and one in the north and one in the east, ( i will not so the south, as i live in the south and have visited most train stations there). The reason i want to pick the area like this is for several reasons:

• I want to do a photoshoot somewhere in sussex that i haven’t been before, so that i can be as objective as possible
• I want to shoot north, east and west, so that i surround the area and get a variety of different images which have been edited by myself as much as possible
• I will try to shoot at  a similar time of day as well, so for example somewhere between 10-3pm, when is the most light.
• Each area will have the same time restrictions, trying to capture the shots within 1-2hours, so that the radius of the photoshoots area around the train station is always going to be of similar distance as the other locations, seeing as i will be using no mode of transport from the trainstation except for my own two feet.

I think that its important that all of these variations are considered, as i want the photographs to be objective, but i also want a little control over the lighting conditions and composition of the pieces.

Technical details:

I will be shooting in RAW using my Canon 350D. I thought alot about using medium format film or a medium format digital camera; along side a 5 x 4 large format film camera too, however i believe that although these technical methods of shooting would perhaps inhance the detail within my images, it would hinder the process in which they were taken. For example i would need tripods, i would be restricted in how the frame of each image was edited, due to the size and shape of the film as well as the inability to move the camera comfortably. I did think about using my camera to do test shoots and then later re-visited the scene and re-shoot it with a large format camera, however the whole idea of re-shooting for me then changed the point of trying to be objective in my photography in the first place. So in the end i agreed that perhaps it would be more reasonable to simply use a 35mm digital camera (Canon 350D) and have the ease which could potentially lead to a more exploratorive study using photography.

Next i will draw up some plans of how i want to frame the images…

Looking briefly at Physcogeography…

I found an interesting website on this theme – www.physcgeography.co.uk – it talks about several different authors of books and their opinions on what physcogeography is and how it can influence peoples lives.

My understanding of this is, the ability to become lost or to wonder an area which is unfamiliar to yourself, could potentially give you more of the vitals that you need than a place already visited. I like the idea that being lost, could somehow help you find something you have been subconciously looking for. I believe that it is also about how we interpret our surroundings, whether we walk through a park or cycle.

I found this theme very interesting, the idea that just how we travel makes us see the world differently. ITs had an impact on how i want to take my photographs, i wanted to use a very systematic approach, regimented and exact, but now i am thinking that puhaps a little freedom within a systemed approach could be a good idea.