For my independent project, out of the choice of words we were given I wanted to create a response to the word ‘migration’, as after brainstorming some ideas of what I was interested in shooting I felt that this starting word best suited the concept I was aiming for. In terms of my concept, my initial thought was that I wanted to experiment with night photography specifically within the landscape genre.
Todd Hido-
When first suggesting that i wanted to look in to night photography, my tutor suggested I look at photographer Todd Hido that has a specific night photography project called ‘Homes at night’. The aim of his project is in the title, I quite liked the simplicity of his work and how he just travels round and takes photos of random houses at night. Without giving his audience context behind the images means that he is creating a mysterious atmosphere within his images and leaves the project open to interpretation.
Ron S Levy-
I was looking through the ‘lensculture’ photography website for inspiration when I came across the work of photographer ‘Ron S Levy’ who specialises in night photography, particularly with light painting. His images caught my eye as despite the fact these images have been taken at night time there are rich, aesthetically pleasing colours brought out within the landscape due to the effect the artificial light source creates over a long exposure. From this I had the idea to try light painting within landscapes myself, as I also thought this could help me to be more creative in terms of having control over my lighting within my images.
With regarding the response to the keyword ‘migration’ I had the idea of capturing shots of abandoned buildings to show how humans have built these structures and then over time they have been left and migrated from. By shooting these abandoned places it can help to symbolise how ‘human action contours the landscape’ (Wells L, 2011, 19) despite the fact the human structures have now been left for nature to take over, displaying that despite human migration ‘nature can be viewed as timeless’ (Wells L, 2011, 19). Whilst developing my idea I thought that it would be a good idea to focus my project around a particular industry area in terms of the type of buildings I would be taking photos of, so I would be able to scout places easier and create a stronger concept for my project. I went out and did some trial shots of a couple of abandoned buildings I had discovered in passing, one being an old pub and one was a rotting shed in the middle of a farmers field. However from this I discovered it was much more difficult to shoot images of the pub due to the fact that it was on a main road, so at night it was surrounded by street lighting which interfered with the quality of the LED light painting look I was trying to achieve, as ‘too much intensity and duration of light will result in overexposure (Child J, 1999, 10)’. Whereas because the shed was situated within a field in an isolated environment the light source I was using was the only light that was affecting the image, meaning there was no light bleed from anywhere else creating a successful image with just the subject being the area specifically lit up.
An example of one of my failed ‘pub’ images-
From this discovery I decided to concentrate my project on rural areas, therefore I thought that the subject of abandoned farming industries would work well as an overall concept. I wanted to gain some more knowledge on why so many farms are being migrated from and these businesses are falling in the UK, therefore I did some research and found an article called ‘After Brexit: What happens next for the UK’s farmers? (Robertson J, 2017)’. Within this article there were statements such as ‘Brexit could devastate the farming sector’ showing the impact that could affect and has effected agriculture within the UK, and the fact that ‘the government has promised nothing’ in terms of helping the farming industry shows the loss of support for the industry in terms of growing. After doing research in to the number of factors that impacts the struggle of the current farming industry in Britain, it helped give this project more of a purpose and has enabled me to give the audience more of an insight and reasoning behind these images I have captured.
In order to gain more knowledge in terms of working with artificial light sources and light painting within photography, I looked in to the work of specialist light painting photographer ‘Troy Paiva’ when I came across his ongoing project called ‘Lost America’. Within this work Paiva also focuses on abandoned subjects, however he travels miles around America finding large scale abandoned areas and uses extreme long exposures on his images so he is able to capture movements within the natural lights of the sky which complement his use of artificial light sources. What interested me about Paiva’s work was the fact he used different gels over his lights creating different colours within his images helping to make the subjects look unnatural within their environment.
Troy Paiva-
Images with technical issues-
In terms of images that I did not select to use within my final collection of images to represent my project, there were a number of images with technical issues. Firstly, some of my images had unintended lines of light and light bleed from where I hadn’t moved the light source around the subject quick enough for the actual light source itself not to be captured within the exposure. I also had many underexposed images, I found this an issue within my work as the longest exposure I could have on the camera was 30 seconds which meant I needed to get quite close to the subjects with the light source for them to be lit successfully within the dark environment. Furthermore the odd image was effected by distant street lights bleeding in to the image creating a flash effect which is not the look I wanted my images to have. I also think to improve some of my images I could have been more experimental in terms of my lighting, I could have perhaps tried using different gels to create different colour schemes within the settings such as Paiva did in his work. However, overall I think my final choice of images are successful, in terms of reflecting my project aim of displaying abandoned farming landscapes in a night time atmosphere. After using Lightroom to edit my final images in post-production, it gave the images strong depth and more intense colours within the subject and the sky were brought out, creating well exposed and composed images displaying the decay of the buildings in their environment.
Sources-
http://www.toddhido.com/homes.html
https://www.lensculture.com/ron-levy
http://lostamerica.com/
Wells, L (2011) Land Matters: Landscape photography, culture and identity. New York: Tauris
Child, J (1999) Photographic Lighting. Oxford: Focal Press
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38510423
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