Critical Review
For the module Constructing Narratives; I started off with the idea of feelings. The photographing style I wanted to try was using long shutter speeds to create movement photography. I wanted to focus on the ideas of feelings, and how a person can answer a question so differently to another person. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted use location or studio for this module. But after some thought and also doing a test shoot in the studio at university I decided to go that as I like the outcome of the photos, and felt that the location backgrounds would get too distracting from the movement from the person. Even though I didn’t actually go to a location and do a test shoot I knew this was not what I wanted to do. The next thing was whether or not to use a black or white background. With my test shoot I started off with a white background but soon realised with the lighting my photo would be too bright, and the look I was going for. So decided to change to black and it didn’t reflect the light so became as solid black background, and I moved the lights so there were no shadows behind the model.
Photographers I looked at for this module didn’t necessarily always link to my work, especially as my work went on. In my proposal I mentioned Vivian Maier for her subjects poses and the composition of the photograph. I also looked at Duane Michals after he was mentioned in one of our lectures, his work with the writing was what inspired me too get the question answer by each model and to maybe write it on the photo/ border of the photo. There was then the photographer Tom Ziebinski which I feel my photos ended up being mainly like, I did use him as a photographer in my proposal so I feel his work was always in my mind throughout the brief. His work inspired me to change the photos to black and white. Gillian Wearing is another photographer that really inspired, she done street photography, where people’s feelings were written on a piece of paper, and photographed holding them. This work was suggested to me when I first started this module and I have referred back to it through out, because I felt what was written in the photos really helped as a guide to show my models the sort of things that could be written.
When I first started I wasn’t even sure if by the end the photographs were going to have any movement in them, but as I continued I realised how much I liked taking the photos and the surprising outcome each time you took the photo, not knowing exactly what the movements would look like. And with this sometimes it could be frustrating if the photo didn’t come out exactly how I liked it, but the people I photographed were amazing and patient and would continue going until I had achieved my best shots. I also found as I went on shooting I went further away from most of my photography inspirations and found my own style, which I really enjoyed. Throughout this time there were a few problems I had especially with the white balance, because I had the lights up high and didn’t use a flash at times the model could have come out overexposed and one came out slightly red. For the first few shoots I found it really frustrating because I wasn’t sure whether to have the photos in colour, but when I started testing black and white and was comparing them against each other I felt the black and white had much more of an impact on the viewer, and it makes the movements a lot more clearer, because the two tones bring out more details. After deciding to go with black and white I realised that tops with logos or designs on didn’t work that well as I feel they distract the viewers eye, so edited the designs’ out; like in one of the photos I edited out using the patch tool and spot heal brush a embellishment on my model Sophie’s jumper, and I feel it made the photo look a lot better. After one of my feedback sessions, it was suggested to me to try videoing the model moving and then screen-shotting the movements, I tried this at the beginning one of my shoots, by setting my camera to record for a couple of minutes. This didn’t really work out, as the quality was not good, and there was less blur in the photos, which was not the look I was trying achieve, I also felt that when videoing it came out brighter so there was less tonal range. So I decided to continue with just the photographing, it was a good technical experiment but it just didn’t achieve the outcome I would have liked.
When editing the photos, it was quite easy to do for most of them as a lot of the work was done during the shooting with the lighting and then just changing them to the correct black and white on Photoshop. But for some of the photos if someone had a mole or spot on them when they moved it would create multiple and would almost look out of place, so I would spot heal the duplicates out of the photograph to create more of a simplistic photo
A few things kept changing over the whole process with one of the things being whether to use the answers within my series. I started off adamant I wanted to use them just like Duane Michals, but then started going off the idea of writing over the photos. I then started speaking to fellow students and one suggested me writing them as captions below my photos, as titles. I was 100% going to do this for a while, but then though they don’t have any connection to the people as titles so was going to scrap them completely, but then the final shoot I did of my model Jamil, decided to write a quote and I had the idea of that being the title for the whole series, so started thinking about that. It then got to start thinking about how I wanted to print my photos. So I printed some without borders, there just wasn’t something right about them. So I then did border's some wider and some thinner. I then just thought I would just get one person to write over one of the borders or the photos, and ended up really liking the looking of the photograph. So ended up being back at the start with the answers being on the photo, and I am really happy I went full circle as I feel my work has benefited a lot from it, with me thinking a lot more about the composition because I wanted to make the photos interesting with or without the writing and still wanted them to able to give of the feelings even if the writing wasn’t there. I feel I definitely achieved this with the movements. Another thing that changed in my photographs was the final print size of my photos, originally in my proposal I wanted the photos as a series of 4 at a3 size plus a border, but decided to go with smaller photos and 6 of them as I felt they work well together. It took a while to achieve the perfect size as my photos aren’t landscape but also aren’t square, and I decided to do this after I felt there was too much black space around the models and wanted to bring you in closer to the person, I also found some of the photos didn’t necessarily go with the others so decided to prints them all out slightly smaller and figure out which ones went well together.
I feel my narrative from this series is de – centred as my photos can go in any order and still make sense. It creates a story no matter the order which is what I wanted to achieve. The story being that the movement is how this person feels on the inside, like when people go ‘my brain is a jumbled’ or my head is a mess’. I wanted to show that. I wanted all the models to have movements even if their answer was happy because I think no matter how happy you are on the outside, your mind can feel like that. they will feel a bit confused/ messy. and I also feel anyone can relate to the story of how people are feeling. This is where I also struggled with keep the answers to the questions in because if I hadn’t put them in the viewer could almost create her own story, but with them there they can relate to it, and see themselves in the photo and the answer but not think why the person could be feeling that way.
For my final layout of the photos, I felt this was difficult to decide the order as they could any way. With that being said I decided to split the two men in the photos to mix the genders up and especially as there was two men to four women. There was no particular reason to why I photographed more women, apart from more said yes. I would of liked to photograph more men to have more options but I am happy with the photos that came out from these ones. When I was printing the photos from my final layout I couldn’t decide whether to use matte or glossy paper, as both of them really appealed to me. I also really wanted to use matte paper as in all my previous modules I have used glossy. I printed the same photo on both papers and looked at what was best and it was really hard because I liked the look of matte, but lost a lot of the detail in the movements, and because of that I went with glossy as the whole point in this series is too show the movement, so using the matte paper would of almost dulled the photos. So with the border around the photos that is where the person will write on the photos and I decided it doesn’t have to be the person who was in the photo as long as it is their answer written down.
I feel my work turned out really well, and how I thought it would. It ended up being very similar to how I wanted at the beginning on the module, with just a few slight changes, and I feel it turned out better than my original concepts. I think I have gone out of my comfort zone, not only with photographing but also using the studio and the studio lighting, as have only used if for techniques, but when doing for a series of photos that’s going on a wall I felt a lot more nervous. Overall I feel I could of photographed more people to give me more options for photos, and more practice at long shutter speed photography. In conclusion I really would like to continue this series past hand in, as I feel I could get a lot more comfortable doing this sort of photography, and studio work, and also to see what sort of answers I would get if I photographed more of an age range, and more than just students. The photos have got a few marks on them from the cutting ruler and such but as these issues could not be changed and also not that noticeable I decided to not reprint the photos due to the cost.
