Lucy Cooper- 16628002

Which of the words given in the brief document have you selected, and why?

I have selected the word ‘Migration’. I passed an abandoned building and thought it would make an interesting composition, and seeing the word migration I thought I could create a project about how these places are left when people move on to somewhere else or for economical reasons.

What do you want to point your camera at?

I want to take wide shot landscape images of abandoned buildings at night time. I have researched particular industry areas that I could focus on and I have found abandoned farming sites with abandoned barns and other buildings which I can access.

Why are you interested in this subject?

I find the fact that buildings become abandoned interesting as they were once someones home, or used for industrial purposes which could have once been worth a lot of money/value in a time period before becoming abandoned and left for anyone to tamper with.

What do you hope an audience will take from your images?

I hope that an audience will have more of an insight in to how many places actually become abandoned and are just left for a long period of time. It will also aim to give more of a perception of how the natural world affects man made materials when they are left neglected.

What areas of research are you considering to help deepen your understanding of the subject you have chosen?

I am going to research some articles and other photographers that explore landscape photography, and also night photography in order to get some tips on how to light my subjects.

What practitioner(s) or visual resources would you consider to have influenced you? This not have to be photographic.

I saw an article about night photography and light painting and found it really interesting how with the use of light a subject can be brought out of and manipulated within it’s environment. I also like how you can change the way an environment looks and create a different approach to something in a way that an audience may not think to interpret it.

What support or equipment might you need to achieve your goals?

I will need some form of LED light source or torches in order to light paint the subjects within their environments. I will also need a tripod in order to stabilize the camera so there is no motion blur over the long exposure time scale.

Artist Research- Stephen H Smith

I looked at the work of Stephen H Smith due to the fact that within this project called Strangers in a Strange Land, he purely photographs people he doesn’t know which relates to the task we were set. In terms of the deeper concept behind his images he focuses on people that have been discriminated against due to their sexuality, religion or beliefs. When it comes to the location of where the images are taken, there is no specific set location he just photographs the people where he meets them. However he uses a wide lens with a shallow aperture so the pure focus is on the subjects rather than the whole environment. The shallow aperture creates an aesthetically pleasing image and complements the natural soft ambient lighting.

My Portrait-

Here I have taken a classic portrait of a stranger I met in the street. The subject looked like she was waiting for someone in the street so I approached her and asked if she wouldn’t mind me taking her picture as she was stood in one spot. I decided to take a mid shot as I wanted the image to have a shallow depth of field so the focus was purely on the subject, I had the aperture set to f/5.6. The first picture is the original image and the second image is what the image looked like after post production editing in Lightroom, to make the image look less flat I edited the levels, slightly increasing the highlights and shadows in order to give it more depth.

Artist Research- Malcolm Easton

Within this series of images Easton photographs domestic household objects that have been disposed of due to being broken. Within his work he aims to portray a sense of loss and a theme of old memories. I like Easton’s work because I think the objects stand out against the black background, really bringing out the details of the broken cracks within the subjects he has photographed. In terms of lighting his subjects, Easton uses a studio like environment with an artificial light source, and he also uses a hand held mirror to reflect the light on to his subjects in order to create a softer light effect on the subjects.  He usually photographs one object within an image, however like in the image of mugs below he sometimes incorporates multiple of the same object in order to create a more interesting composition.

https://www.lensculture.com/malcolm-easton

My Still Life Images-

These two images that I have selected are my favourite from the still life images I took. The stopwatch was a borrowed object from a friend, it belonged to her great grandfather and has been passed through her family. The little old bear was something I found in a charity shop, I thought it would make an interesting image due to its worn down texture and the fact it only has one eye makes it look like its seen better days. In terms of the setup for capturing these images I created a mini home studio, to do this I used a black sheet and laid this out on the floor and lay the objects on top of this. When it comes to the technical aspects of the images, for my lighting I had the room in complete darkness and used a small torch to paint the objects. I had the camera on a tripod at a low angle leaning over the objects and set the shutter speed to 10 seconds in order to balance a good amount of light around the subjects. I wanted to have control of the lighting in this way so I could practice with light painting as I would like to explore this within my independent project. Black was a good colour background to work with in terms of long exposure light painting as helped blend the background with the darkness so only the subjects can be seen, really emphasising them and bringing them out of the environment.

I took this image as the cathedral is one of Lincolns symbolic landmarks and it’s what many people come to see. I like the fact that the image has been edited in post production to produce a double exposure. The blending of the image of the cathedral with another image of what looks like a forest gives the image a lot more depth and texture to the image, rather than it just being a common image you would expect of the cathedral on it’s own. It also creates an artistic feel rather than what we would expect to see on a typical advert for this type of monument. Rather than facing head on to the image I took it from a ‘looking down’ perspective to create a new way of viewing the image.

I found this image on the hashtag #ULimagesinthewild and it stood out to me because of the choice of composition that the person that took this image has chosen. They have purposely chosen to cut out most of the face from the original image creating an extreme close up which really brings out intricate details of the person’s facial features that are shown. Also I think the use of a black and white filter works well with the highlights and shadows within the image.

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