Assignment 4: Submission

Man Versus Nature

Topic Selection

I chose to base this exercise on daylight – evolving Exercise 4.2 further. I made this choice not so much based on what I learned in carrying out the exercise but more because of what I learned in my research. When reviewing both Mann and Schmidt I was intrigued to see how they had each chosen to use light in very different ways but both for specific creative reasons. Ordinarily, I would be choosing light to be golden or to capture the ‘blue hour’ and this is what many magazines would advise, I make reference to this in my research. I wanted to forget about pure aesthetics and explore the idea of using daylight creatively.

Process

For my subject, I chose the Turkish hills in the south near Göcek where I had been on a week-long retreat. What struck me during my time there was how harsh the environment was and how anything built by man was slowly decaying due to the strong direct sunlight. But by contrast, nature seemed to thrive in that same environment and in fact take over that created by man. I was almost as if nature and man were battling each other.

I wanted to capture the harshness and this battle in my images so I decided that I needed to choose a time when the light is at its most harsh. Based on my observations on Exercise 4.2, I chose to capture my images in the middle of the day. On two successive days, I went on a 5-mile hike through the mountains right in the middle of the day when the sun was directly overhead and the temperature was in the high 30s. It was certainly physically demanding! I captured everything I felt illustrated the concept of man versus nature, and often the decay of anything manmade.

Shooting in the middle of the day is the same as Schmidt’s technique although I chose to do this for different reasons. Schmidt goes for midday in order to avoid shadows, with the sun directly overhead, any shadows that do exist will be directly underneath things rather than spread out to the side. His choice is made to leave the eye focussed on the objects themselves. My choice was made to capture the very harsh light of the day and so bring out the harshness of the environment. I do think that this shows through in the images, there is no ‘warm glow’ and the images that do not include shadow are very flat in their contrast – as it is in real life.

Schmidt converts his images to black and white to reduce further any distractions from the subject and in my initial thinking, I had expected to do the same. I tried a few conversions but felt that although doing so removed the washed-out look and therefore improved the aesthetics, it removed the emphasis that I wanted to portray, the harshness of the environment. I chose to retain the colour in my images.

Meeting the Creativity Criteria

Imagination

I wanted to capture harshness and man versus nature. The image ‘Halt’ cold be nothing more than a plant in the road but captured as it is, the thistle could be a sentry blocking the man-made road. In ‘Abandoned’, the isolation of a dumped sofa under some trees shows manmade items slowly decaying. What I like about all the selected images is that I think they all show the concepts I wanted to embody but at the same time, they have a lot of variety in their subjects. I am pleased that the concept and approach has resulted in a consistent set but a good variety of subjects.

Experimentation

I wouldn’t have taken any of these images like this had I not wanted to experiment with taking forward Schmidt’s techniques or learnt of the idea of deliberately choosing light conditions to express something. I experimented with colour and black and white to see which captured best the themes I wanted to express. In particular, I wasn’t sure if shooting at the middle of the day would capture the harshness of the environment, I think it helped a lot although it does not look as harsh as it felt when walking in the extreme heat.

Invention

I needed to think of way of using the light to capture harshness and accentuate the battle between man and nature. This is the point I was getting at in my reflection on Exercise 4.5, using creativity and invention to express something rather than invention for inventions sake. I think that choosing to take a hike in the middle of the day was a technique that worked well and was not an obvious choice.

Personal Voice

After Assignment 3, my tutor said she felt a little flat after looking at the images, that they didn’t quite live up to the setup I had described. I had perhaps chosen to isolate a specific theme whilst leaving behind more powerful images on the contact sheet. In this set I don’t think I have left anything behind and that I have expressed what I wanted to.

I am starting to see a sense of embedded reflection across my assignments. This started with Assignment 1 and my discovery of the deadpan style, in Assignment 3 I wanted to capture the ‘tragedy’ of the Camden Market surroundings and here in Assignment 4, I wanted to capture harshness and the losing battle of man versus nature.

All of these combine into some form of commentary on life and perhaps that is a theme emerging – whilst the subjects are very different, it is the expression on life that I see emerging as pure aesthetics recede. Within this commentary, I feel myself wanting to say ‘look what man did’ or ‘look what is happening here’. This is a way of thinking that I can see me developing a lot more, I feel this Assignment builds on that, but I think I still have some way to go to decide just what it is that I want to comment on.