It has become harder to decipher whether photos are fact or fiction due to the amount of editing software that is now available to the photography industry. A lot of editing companies and tabloids edit photos to make them 'perfect' meaning our perception of what is real and what is fake is a lot different to periods of time when photographs were as they were without any editing.
Hicham Benohoud- La Salle De Classe
His work is very hard to categorise because his work is unconventional in some ways and hard to interpret however that is one of the things that makes him such a good artist. Having work that is unusual and hard to interpret means that he is creating work that has never been done before which makes him original
His series La Salle de classe was inspired by his years as a teacher, he borrowed objects from around the classroom and staged them around the room to get the photographic interpretation that he wanted. This demonstrates that he is a conscious photographer and understands that props and placements are an important part in getting your photos interpreted in the way you want them to be interpreted.
he has participated in many international art exhibitions and fairs
The interpretations of these photos can be varied depending on the person. To me, the photos represent the restraint that classrooms can have on people and how they can make them feel trapped because they are all forced to do the same thing all the time.
The photos being in black and white help reflect the mundane/ bored mood represented in the photos, it juxtaposes the mood presented in some of the photos where there is a child messing around
Experiment 1
We have been taking photos inspired by Hicham Benohoud and making sure that the props, setting and lighting all correlate to a story that our photos are centred around. We also thought about how to make the photos unusual to incorporate the idea of 'fact or fiction' into our photos. We experimented with different objects to make the pictures look obscure and abnormal, we used bubble wrap, pictures, film rolls and coloured plastic to alter an otherwise normal photograph. I think there is room for improvement and in the next task we get given, something that will benefit the outcome of our pictures would be to plan exactly what we want to use and where and how we want to take the pictures more.
Experiment 2
For this next task, we each had to write a story about a fictional photographer, we had to be creative as well as very specific to what they photographed, why they photographed it and how they photographed it. We then swapped our stories with other people, and we had to take pictures dependant on what kind of photographer the person wrote about. One of the aims of this task was to get us to take pictures of things that we wouldn't usually take pictures of instead of gravitating to what we normally take pictures of. I liked this task because I feel like I had a lot of freedom with what I could take pictures of in nature which allowed me to be able to experiment with taking pictures of a lot of different things to see what worked best. This task was inspired by the work of Broomberg and Chanarin
continuation of fictional photographer task
Broomberg and Chanarin - ' Scarti and Ghetto'
their work is unconventional
they have unique perspectives and ideas about how to create their art
the pair have been described to have 'legally, economically, creatively and conceptually committed suicide due to their partnership ending on the 20th of February 2021
their style is traditional documentary including portraits of people
they took pictures in physciatric hospitals and war zones however they began losing a following interest in their work, so they decided to change their style of work to be about counter insurgency
they created a performance piece about war and its relationship to photography because it is an enduring theme that is part of their practice
there is always careful consideration about how Broomberg and Chanarin present their work such as: colours, spacing, shades, framing, the message and its ability to be simple yet powerful
THE BUREAUCRAY OF ANGELSRUDIMENTSKETTLE'S YARD EXHIBITIONRUDIMENTS
Kettle's Yard Quick Fire Exhibition
based off of work made by Jospeh Boyce
The way that Ollie interpreted his work was that when looking at knife crime, we need to start looking at the causes of violence rather than their effects (effects are predictable however causes are not)
Going to a high security prison whilst doing documentary photography and finding out that the prisoners did actually cover knives in bandages to determine whether they were going to create a minor injury or a more severe one inspired their work too
they printed the photos for these exhibitions onto cardboard, it is seen as a useless and low value material however printing their photographs for their photomontage onto cardboard gives it value (they believe inanimate objects viewed as poor materials can be given a purpose and mean something important)
Task 3
The camera is blind and doesn't understand emotion
Make a portrait of something that you love
Make a portrait of something that you hate
Recreate a dream or a thought in a series of ten images
create an image you don't understand
create and image that creates questions
Make images where the subject is on the edge of the frame and then make images where the subject is outside the frame
The camera is blind and doesn't understand emotion
Make a portrait of something that you love
Make a portrait of something you hate
Recreate a dream you've had in a series of 10 images
Take a picture of something you don't understand
Take a picture of something that creates questions
Make the subject inside the frame and then outside the frame
Task 4
For this task, we had to write down how we were feeling and if anything in our surroundings was contributing to our emotions. This task was difficult because I wasn't quite sure how to portray my emotions through the photographs in an interesting way. However once I began taking pictures and not overthinking it, I started to get some pictures that I was happy with. The main concept of the pictures was feeling tired and the pressure of time when you have to get up early a lot. The third picture though represents when I feel happiest because I'm with my best friends. We continued this task the next lesson and I found it much easier when I wasn't overthinking what to take a picture of and I discovered that taking. If I were to do this task again, I would adapt the mindset I developed further into the task so that I had a wider range of pictures.
Nick Goodden- Street Photographer
he's a photographer and videographer
he takes pictures for big companies like : adidas , Peugeot , amazon and Heineken
he has a photography blog where he advises people on how to take photos
he has had his urban/ street photography exhibited in London with proud galleries, Hoxton Hotels and Drake & Morgan bars as well as abroad in the W Hotel in Barcelona
From past occupations, he has acquired his skills in using photo editing software as well as how to use a camera
he uses drones to take arial pictures
he publishes articles : Isle of Portland, Dorset- Arial drone video, a review of a camera bag and his newest blog ' How to take amazing photos'
The reason I have chose to choose this photographer is because I like his use of bold colours and photoshop. Something I enjoy about photography is that you can experiment with how to take pictures and have complete creative freedom. I plan on experimenting with a couple of different kinds of cameras so that I can compare the results and see what pictures turn out the best or whether I like a combination of photographs from different kinds of cameras rather then just one.
My Response
For these set of images, I highly saturated them so that the colours in them would be bold and bright. Something else which I like about Nick's photography is that his images follow a colour scheme, there's a lot of blue, purple and pink in his images so I tried to convey the same idea of having a specific colour palate within the images. The images that I took, I found that the colours that were particularly obvious were yellows, oranges and then blue, red and purple.
experiment 1
photoshop
The image that I that I experimented with is just one of a few. I like the image because I think the idea of the photo looking real and artificial at the same time is very interesting. Something to improve on with my next attempt is to remove the colored background on the firework image completely to make sure that I get the best results. For the next few pictures I would also like to experiment with the use of editing of color on the picture so that there is a range between black and white as well as different filters on the image which I will edit myself. I also plan on taking more pictures in similar and different locations to him.
paint app
I wanted to see the difference between using the photoshop software and using a paint app that I had on my computer so that I could draw the designs myself. The photoshop images look most similar to Nick Goodden's work however I prefer the images where I have drawn the designs on myself because it is inspired by his work but has more of my creativity in it.
editing settings for the images
exposure +100
brilliance +100
highlights - 14
shadows -18
contracts -14
brightness -18
black point -14
saturation +24
vibrancy +26
warmth +24
tint +28
then the exposure and brilliance back to 0
I had to experiment on old pictures to see whether certain settings looked better as + or - numbers. My goal was to make the images very highly saturated whilst maintaining the quality of the image and avoiding it becoming blurry due to too much editing.
experiment 1
I plan on using a painting software on these images to experiment with different designs. I want to coordinate the colours on the patterns to the hue in the image to keep the aesthetic element to them and make sure that the photo doesn't look too chaotic. I have chosen to the paint software onto these images because the negative space in these images will make it easier to get better effects with the editing as I won't have to make the size of the pattern too small due to a lack of negative space
Overhaul
Rhiannon Adam & Laura Pannack
Rhiannon Adams
Response to Rhiannon Adams Part 1
These photos weren't taken on a polaroid but I want to try and create a similar effect on these images. I took images that had a similar colour scheme so that when I put the photos next to eachother
My response part 2 - Rhiannon Adams
I have decided that I want to do a comparison between different types of cameras to see which pictures I prefer. I plan on using a phone camera, film camera, lomography cameras and a polaroid. I also don't want to replicate my photos to look exactly like Rhiannon's ones, I do want to incorporate her use of colour as it is something I find intriguing about her pictures.
phone camera
digital camera
As my project has developed, I have started to take candid pictures of my friends because I think they produce better results than posed photos sometimes. They look more natural and less structured which is how I prefer photographs to look. Some of them didn't want their faces in the images but they said I could still use them for my project which is why some of the images are of my friends when they're turned around
For this part of my project, I decided to take both candid and posed photos. I didn't tell my friends what to do when we were taking pictures, I just let them pose how they wanted to. I went to different locations around the school because I wanted to experiment with the shadows that the sun was creating in the background and on people's faces. If I was to do something similar to this again, I would carry it out in the same way, I really like how these photos turned out. Throughout this project, I have learned that it is better to take photos without overthinking it because then I don't end up with enough photos that I am happy with.
Paul Graham
This article relates to my photography because I sometimes find it difficult to find what to take pictures of because I don't want my work to be repetitive and boring. However now that I have become more comfortable with taking pictures, I feel like I am taking more pictures of just anything without really thinking about it. To me that is the biggest obstacle in photography, overthinking. I have found that I have taken my best photographs when I don't really think about taking it too much. Taking pictures for me is easy to an extent because I have figured out what cameras I like to take pictures with as well as the editing preset that I use on my pictures.
Workshop
When we did the workshop, we were experimenting with with different negatives and printing them on to photograph paper with an enlarger in the dark room. The next thing we did once we had a successfully printed the image was to then do the same thing but onto a ceramic tile that was coated with an emulsion paint so that the design would stay on the tile. When doing this process, you had to be careful with the tile once it was dry because the emulsion paint is very fragile meaning it could scratch easily and ruin the design