Its been a hectic few months. Now I am studying just photography (HURRAH) my last practical module this year was comprised of 7 photography briefs - which doesn't sound a lot, but as always, the work involved was pretty intense - coupled with the fact that there seemed to be a massive amount of written work to contend with as well.
Because I did all 7 of the briefs, which resulted in the production of a huge amount of images, this blog is part 1 only.
Photo Essay
The brief in short, was to write a short article, about something that interested me, and illustrate it with photographs.
I have always been interested in photographing wildlife, particularly macro work, so my initial idea was to do a feature on bugs of some sort - soon dawned on me that it was totally the wrong time of year, particularly as for several weeks, it just didn't seem to stop raining - not an awful lot of bugs around !
So - plan B. Several years ago, I became aware that there was concern that British Garden bird numbers were falling. Wanting to do my bit, I set up feeders and a bird table, and have maintained them since, though to be honest, it had become pretty much a routine part of the garden, and not something I had paid a massive amount of attention too for some time. However, noticing that our bird box was once again inhabited by a pair of blue tits, the idea of doing a feature on garden birds and the declining numbers, began to take shape.
I added a couple of new feeders, on the patio area, as I figured even in wet weather, as there is a covered area outside the patio doors, I would be able to set up the camera and get some good, clear shots.
The birds had other idea's - although they were visiting the feeders and table regularly, they took great exception to the camera being set up - or, more specifically, to any movement I made when trying to take the pictures. And the sound of me actually taking a photograph sent them into flat spin panic - I'd decided to take the images with a very shallow depth of field, to really make the birds stand out - but with the birds reacting so badly to the sound, I spent the first few days getting some great pictures of 'blurs' shooting out of the frame.
So, I switched the camera to live view, selected an area to concentrate on (like the table, or just one of the feeders) got the focus and depth to what I wanted, and used a remote shutter switch to capture the images, if and when the birds decided to visit the specific area's I was focused in on. That took care of me being able to stay pretty still and not spook the birds - but I would say it took 2 to 3 weeks of me spending at least an hour taking pictures each day, before the birds were completely used to the sound of the shutter. Finally, I started to get some images that I thought I might be able to use!
Although it took a lot more work than I thought it would, to get a selection of images that I was happy with, I really enjoyed this part of the brief - apart from anything else, it re-kindled my interest in my garden visitors, and I really enjoyed watching them. I learnt, as well, from the practical problems I had to solve to get the images without the birds really being aware and nervous. But, now it was onto the rest of the brief.
Writing the article was no problem, as it had to be short, it was just a brief explanation of how the 'Big Garden Bird Survey' had clearly shown the drop in numbers, a few examples of what could be potentially causing the problem, and the information about how important setting up feeders and tables are to try and combat the problem.
Stewart gave us some useful information on presenting the work as an article, talking to us about grids and using Serif, which I was able to get a somewhat limited, but free version of, and I found it pretty easy to figure it out, and after several experiments and trials, I got a presentation I was happy with. But, I really struggled with what font to use - the style, the size, everything. I went on line, and got information on the type of fonts commonly used in magazine articles, and used one of the recommended fonts from it - but I really wasn't happy with this aspect of the finished piece.
I really wish we had been given some sort of tutorial or workshop about this aspect of the brief, particularly as I assume that we will be marked on it? Although I was really pleased with a lot of the images I got, I felt the overall look of the finished piece wasn't as good or as polished as it could have been, had I been given some idea where to start with how to select the right font, sizes and so on - and feedback at my assessment confirmed this. My specialism is photography, and whilst I really appreciate and understand that its a good thing to have some knowledge of the work done by designers I may collaborate with in the future, I feel if any aspect of a brief carries marks, and its outside of our subject, then some sort of guidance or tuition is appropriate. I could look at the finished piece, and know that it wasn't right - but without even any basic knowledge of the area , I just couldn't work out exactly why - much less work out how to correct it. Typography is, after all, a specialist subject in its own right. I did put in a lot of effort trying to get it right, incidentally - and have to admit that I felt quite resentful as with the workload we had, I would rather have put that time into developing other aspects of photography - the subject that I am actually studying.
The trouble with Serif is that it won't allow me to save the finished article as a jpeg, or any other format that blogger accepts, so until I get the work back, and can scan it in as a jpeg, I'll have to leave adding the finished piece till a later date.
Book Jacket.
The brief was for us to produce a new cover for a book or magazine, using photography. We were told to think conceptionally about the image, and again typography had to be incorporated into the finished piece.
This brief really appealed to me - I am an avid reader, preferring books to TV, 99% of the time, and the biggest difficulty initially was making a choice of book - I have so many I enjoy, covering a lot of different genres. So spoilt for choice that I was having trouble making a selection, I decided to choose a favourite author, to help me narrow down the field.
Patricia Cornwall is an award winning American writer, who specialises in crime fiction. She has written a series based on a central character of Kay Scarpetta, who is a pathologist, who's work often brings her into contact with victims of crime - specifically murder. Both the characters and the plots are complex, full of twists and turns, and there is a great deal of technical detail about forensic investigation and procedures.
I selected one of the series that I had enjoyed . . .
And then began thinking of how I produce a new cover, that would work. Given the nature of the content, I felt it had to be quite a graphic image, and I also felt the typography should be strong - but I didn't want the Title and author to be the main focus of the cover, as that seems to have been the approach for the original cover.
Despite the lack of much insect activity in general, you can generally find flies about, so I began by taking several shots of them - I wasn't too worried about them being the exact species specified in the title, as I had idea's about manipulating the image in photoshop, to increase impact, and if it worked, I hoped that getting the exact species wouldn't be an issue from a visual point of view.
Text wise, I found a font that I felt worked, but I used it at a much smaller size than that of the original cover - however, I kept the colour quite bold. I was pretty happy with the two final images for this idea, that I came up with.
I used unsharp mask, and played with contrast and sats to make the image of the fly the main focus.
I think both these covers work pretty well, and fulfil the brief - and thankfully, although more by luck than judgement, the fonts chosen and their placement seemed to work well - BUT, whilst working on these, other idea's were beginning to take shape, and I decided to pursue this brief a lot further.
As I said, I do a lot of reading - and I also like to collect books too. One of the collections I have is based on the stories I loved as a child - when I had my first daughter, I began to collect all the books I remembered from my childhood, hoping my daughter would one day enjoy them as much as I did - classic like the Alice books, and Heidi Books, lots of Enid Blyton, and Elenor M Brent-Dyer, and Louisa M Alcott - and inevitably, lots of fairy stories, from the traditional to the modern.
It struck me that an awful lot of the traditional fairy tales are quite dark and actually pretty scary, so I played with the idea of re-writing a short famous tale, emphasising the darker side, aiming it at an older audience and taking a photograph that reflected this. But as I am thinking fairy tales, I also started thinking about fantasy art work, which is something I actually quite enjoy, especially the work of Jasmine Becket Griffith -
I love the colours she uses
And I think her style can be, and actually is aimed at an older audience.
Whilst not aiming to reflect her exact style in a photograph, the idea of illustrating a book of fairy stories with fantasy art created using photography, really started to appeal. I looked at several examples of fantasy photography, and as its something I had experimented with before, I decided to go down this route for my second attempt.
I discarded the idea of re-writing a fairy story aimed at an older audience, simply because of the time factor - and the fact that I felt I had done a lot of written work already this semester. Instead, I found a book of short stories that were aimed at an older audience, and which focused on the darker side of fantasy and fairy folk.
I liked the fact that this book had what I thought was a fairly traditional style illustration for the cover, as I felt this gave me plenty of scope for perhaps creating something a little more modern, which would hopefully appeal to the target audience. Thanks to the likes of firstly, the Harry Potter novels, and then the Twilight series, fantasy stories are now quite a popular genre with audiences in their late teens, and I decided that this would be the audience I would try to appeal too.
I started by selecting images that I had taken of both my daughters, that I felt might work, and using photoshop, I isolated just them from the background.
These are just two examples of the images that I experimented with - as well as isolating the subjects, I also played with tone and saturation, as I wanted the overall feel to be quite magical and eerie
Although I did produce several drafts of the cover using my younger daughter, I decided in the end to focus on images of my older girl, as I felt her age was more appropriate to the books potential audience.
I also went out in to my garden and took macro style shots of little bits of it - I intended to used several layers of different images to create the final piece.
I deliberately used flash when taking these images. I wanted the final image to look like it was taken at night-time, and the effect from using the flash went some way towards giving this impression.
This was my favourite of the photographs I got - the forget me nots in some of the other images were just a bit too 'sweet', given the feel I was after.
I also found and downloaded some stock images of different types of 'wings' - lots of these are available free, especially for this type of photographic editing.
I then went through the font styles available and listed several I thought might work
And then it was into photoshop with all the images, to begin putting them all together. I combined 3 or 4 layers, then used tools like burn and blur to add shadow and blend the layers together. Depending on the pose of the central model, I occasionally had to manipulate the perspective of the wings, and often play around with changing the actual size of the different components.
Here's a selection of the pieces I came up with
I played with using sepia for some of the pieces, as I felt that its slightly old fashioned look might work
I also did some in black and white, again looking for something to compliment the 'darker' eerie feel I was after
I settled pretty quickly on the font that I thought worked best
I also played with adding filters like 'glow'
Another sepia, with glow, piece
I also played with using different tints and tones, trying green as that colour can be used to eerie effect.
With this one, as well as using stock wings, I also played with using stock images of toadstools - however, I felt it was more appropriate to stick with the backgrounds that i had actually photographed myself.
I liked several of the ideas I came up with, but in the end the final choice was made based on the preferences of my daughters and several of their friends - particularly with my older girl, I thought that she and her friends would give me the best idea of what was appealing to the audience the book is aimed at.
This was the one that all preferred.
With this image, I had increased saturation, and also used one of the light effect filters - omni - as I felt this was pretty close to the effect of bright moonlight.
Happy with this, I then used a programme that a friend had discovered, to turn the image into a 3D representation of how it might look if it was really made into a book jacket.
Once again, though, at assessment, the placement of the text was questioned - considering how much work I put into this, and considering that the image itself received a lot of positive feedback, it was frustrating to realise that I may be marked down for an aspect of the finished piece that can't really said to be part of photography at all, in my opinion . Out of the 7 units, 4 of them required us to use typography in differing degree's, and at assessment, 3 out of the four generated feedback that was on the negative side. Again, I wish that considering typography played a part in more than half the units, that we had been given access to some tuition and guidance on it.
Next - Modern Master and Elegance of Decay/Fallen Grandeur.
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