Millennium images of Wealth

As a reasonable starting point to the brief, I decided simply to type in the words 'Wealth' and 'Poverty' into the Millennium images online database. I want to see other people's reactions and images in association with these words.

These are the 'Wealth' images...


(Martin Child)


(Stuart Brill)

I got in total about 96 results for the word, and unfortunately the majority of those were these awful images of expensive cars as seen above. I suppose this is showing wealth, however not in the sense that the brief would ask for, or the way that I would choose to show it.


(Justin Nicholson)

I then came across this photograph of hands holding two pound coins. I'm not sure that I particularly like the image, however I think that's it's doing something a little different and focusing on such a small thing in the large context of wealth.


(Kristina Hruska)

The image with the woman with the earring (ironically in the style of Vermeer) is quite well done and in my opinion represents the idea of wealth quite well. I like the subtlety of it; the way there is not much within the frame, yet we can tell that the lady is of some stature. I particularly like the crop of it.

Competition brief

(All of my entries have been uploaded today from another loacation, so as to avoid confusion)

Assignment four (the final assignment) in unit 302 is a competition brief, of which we have been given a choice of three competitions to enter.

These are live competitions and they are as follows:
D and AD - Tell a story through a photo-essay that changes people's perceptions of wealth and poverty.
Fujifilm Student Awards - Penguin books are looking for a new image to feature on the cover of Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring'.
Vice Magazine Photography Competition - Create a piece of photography which explores the issue of gender, power and poverty.

To start with I don't even want to look at the Fujifilm brief, as to be honest I'm still sick of the one from in second year. The problem with the Vice photography brief is that the deadline is too close and I would like to actually enter. That leaves me with the D and AD competition (which sounds quite interesting anyway) and the challenge of producing exactly five images in a photo-essay about wealth and poverty.

Final Vermeer images/Conclusion

So these are my final four images for the Vermeer assignment...

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)


After lots of editing on them and test prints, I have finally got my four final images, three of which will be used as part of the six needed for portfolio quality images (numbers 1,2 and 4), and these ones simply because they look better than the other one. I've always been pleased with images 1 and 4, and I'm really glad that image 2 came out well and I think that is does in fact work well within the series, despite being slightly different.

Overall with the assignment i'm pleased with how it has turned out, and i'm particularly glad that it's finished with! Not to say that it hasn't been worthwhile, because I've really liked (as I told Dinu) working on something a little different and something I am quite intersted in. I feel I've pushed myself hard and it has been tough throughout, but I feel I've worked well to the deadlines and acheived what I wanted to acheive.

Another shoot

Trying to keep things a little more simple with this shoot I really took some inspiration from the work of Phillip Lorca Dicorcia. I really like how he uses natural light and makes an image look so powerful and have so much mood to it simply through the lighting and situation of model.



The location that I used was the side kitchen inside my house and to get enough light I had to use the windows and also I opened up a door, this as a way to fill a dark space with natural light which also created some interesting shadows. I wanted to have my model sat, looking towards the light, looking to something that the audience couldn't see. I tried a multitude of angles, and I feel the ones from afar didn't work well, however the close up ones look really good but don't really suit the style I have been shooting thus far. The best ones are where she is sat in the room and the angle is looking in upon her, and so I want to edit these down in the future to pick the best one out of the four.





I really like how these photographs have come out and also how simple the shoot was to set up. I feel that I've achieved what I set out to do in taking influence from Dicorcia and created good light with interesting shadows and situation.

Fifth shoot

Continuing on with the idea of capturing a sublime moment in time, last week I proceeded with my fifth shoot, where I set up in an empty room, a table with two chairs and from a doorway a sudden bright light was shining. I chose to have a model (as with all my images in the series) as the main focal point in the photograph, and also to have them being drawn to the light by looking towards to the doorway. I once again wanted to create this sense of a strange moment in time, wherein the audience don't know what is going on, gone on or is about to happen.



I did have a model in mind for the shoot, however whilst setting up during the day, the light being cast in from the window looked really good and so I used my housemates as stand-ins/tests to see what the outcome would be. These are the ones that look really bright and with really strange colours, and to be honest didn't work out possibly due to the conditions, however probably due to my exposures.

I do like how the light in the doorway has turned out, as I really feel it illuminates the images and is genuinely something to be drawn towards for both the model and the audience. Something I don't like about the images are my choice of model; I think he works okay, but he seems to stiff and aware he is in a photograph (something that seems to be difficult to avoid).



The reason that some images are the opposite to others is due to my scanning of them, and so far I've not actually decided which way round to have them; which way round will suit them best.



When shooting I used a bracket of exposures so as to have a good range of images to choose from post production. As you can see, some of my outcomes are too light and some too dark but there are certainly things that I can use.

I think that the images are adequate, just not as good as some of my previous shots, so I'll just have to see how they look within a series.

Steel wall critique

Today we had the group critique of the steel wall images from the group. Because of the fact I saw Dinu the other day in a one to one we didn't actually touch upon my work. However the thing that was really useful, was the book he gave me which related to my ideas and work.

The book was on photographer Phillip-Lorca Dicorcia titled Contemporaries.


I can't actually believe I've never come across his work before, but I'm glad I have now because it looks fantastic.
It really lends itself to what I'm trying to do in capturing a sublime moment in time, however it does it in a different way to what I have looked at and shot myself. He uses daylight much more to an advantage in his photographs making them look really striking and slightly odd. The colours in the above images look amazing and really natural, and really help to give a dramatic feel to them.

Even though my images so far have consisted of me using studio lighting , I still think that an image like Dicorcia's would fit with them. I want to experiment with using natural lighting, and to see if it will fit in with the series.




I just wanted to put this photo in as it looks great.

Dinu Li/Tutorial

When the Vermeer assignment was set, we were told that it was done so by not only Sarah but also professional practitioner Dinu Li, who would at some point be coming in to talk to us about his work and to critique our work to date.


He showed us a variety of his works and projects, but the one that mostly caught my eye, and was relevant to the brief was his series: Secret Shadows



The work was an attempt to show the lives and homes of Chinese immigrants living in Britain.



As a series I think they work fairly well, however not the most impressive work I've seen but there is clearly the Vermeer inspiration which I like, especially in the sense of lighting and shadow.



I really like this image of his, and I especially like the way in which it mimics a lot of Vermeer's paintings. As a viewer I am able to appreciate greatly the compositional elements to this photograph; if we look at the positioning of the woman on the screen, and then that in relation to the window, we see that she is looking out into the outside world, much alike the image of Vermeer's below. It is quite a subtle reference to Vermeer, but I think it works particularly well.




Just a quick thought on my tutorial with Dinu...

We only had about twenty minutes to talk together, but I feel it was very valuable to my work. We discussed my images that I've shot so far and the images that I was putting forward for the steel wall critique (as seen below). He told me that he liked these images, and my idea, however he was far more interested in my latest work; 'concerning negative space'. What he particularly liked was the negative space in the image, and the general composition within the frame.

This was surprising for me as I felt this work was the weakest that I've shot so far, and so it shows how valuable an outside opinion can be. Still though I've decided I don't want to follow this route of negative space images, mainly due to the fact that I've done it time and time again in the past.

The steel wall images...