Demonstration of technical and visual skills
I think this assignment has shown my development in visual awareness and compositional skills more than any so far.
Thinking first of visual awareness, If I look for a moment at the image “Nat has Herpes”, in the past I’m not sure I would even have noticed the message on the bin, or if I had, then I would have been frustrated at how it was distracting from the view rather than enjoying spotting the strange juxtaposition of the part and the message. All of my chosen images rely on a specific, often small, detail to make their point. Going beyond aesthetics and spotting these details required concentration and focus on seeing the world around me with a ‘lens’ that captured my three stated intents of the project. I have learnt that this concentration needs to be maintained most of the time and that this means photographing with purpose rather than spotting something as an aside from doing other things. Ignoring composition for a moment, things such as the broken satellite dish (Real Camden – 14) would unlikely be spotted without this level of focus and concentration.
Composition wise, I can see quite a development when I compare this set of images to those from my Square Mile assignment where I was actually trying to show that I was enjoying the mundane of my home town; not an entirely different topic to the one I have finished with here. In Square Mile, I was framing a lot of images in a classic ‘rule of thirds’ way and aiming to show depth with a lot of use of leading lines. The result was a bit samey and I corrected this to an extent with an updated set. This Assignment though shows something very different. My compositional skills here aim to highlight the object that is leading me towards capturing somebody’s decisive moment. I have framed shots much more tightly and aimed to show the object along with just enough of its surroundings as necessary to put it in context. That might mean a wide(er) shot as in “Nat has Herpes” or just the object might be enough as in “Ash Tray”. Although the broken satellite dish was an image I liked because it seemed to me that somebody had decided to break it, it was the lack of sufficient context that led me to exclude it.
Quality of Outcome
I think that this assignment brings together and applies a lot of my learning from this part of the course and the module overall. I noted in my assignment write up:
As I walked the area I realised that I needed to decide how I was going to capture it. Reflecting on my experiences of Exercise 3.2, visiting the Radical Eye, researching Egglestone, and my views on the Decisive Moment, I decided to capture with three factors in mind:
- I wanted to capture mainly the surroundings rather than people and make the images somewhat timeless (Egglestone)
- I wanted to capture the trace of somebody else’s decisive moment. (Exercise 3.2 and Man Ray).
- I wanted to show the condition of the area, in contrast to the market (my thoughts at the time).
I think these points, combined with the resultant images, show my progress in building a coherent perspective and demonstrating it in a piece of photographic work.
The Assignment was all about “The Decisive Moment”, before the assignment I had written up my view on that; I feel that this piece of work has developed my thinking further. The notion that I have explored, that of capturing somebody else’s decisive moment and, paradoxically perhaps, encapsulating time within the image itself by making the image timeless, is a different interpretation to that of Catier-Bresson’s but it is something that I think has worked well and could be explored further at another time.
Demonstration of Creativity
When I carried out exercise 3.1, I enjoyed it partly because of the impact of the images produced but also because it felt like a melding of creative thinking and technical ability. Reflecting on that now, and especially in contrast to exercise 3.2, I think there was an emphasis on the technical skills. In exercise 3.2 I think my eventual concept – people fading to crowds fading to traces fading to just buildings was orientated more to the creative side and I am pleased with the outcome. Assessment 3 takes a different approach to time again and instead aims to create a timeless image by capturing somebody else’s decisive moment and the trace it has left in the environment.
Before this part of the course, if I had been asked to comment on time, I would likely only have mentioned the technical aspects of shutter speed; the creative input of the notion of time itself is new to me. I am therefore pleased at the way my ideas for the three pieces of work adopt different creative approaches to dealing with this concept of time and as a result, produce three very different outcomes.
Dealing with time has had some side effects that I have learned to deal with. When I went to photograph Waterloo station I fully expected that I would be quizzed by security cards. Sure enough I was but as I wrote up in the exercise, I was able to negotiate a media pass for the day and to carry on. Before I went to Camden and in my initial thinking for this assignment I reflected on the idea that I was going to need to go close to people. Sure enough, I had a few people shout at me, including the first shot I took. I learned to smile nicely, and just carry on without being put off. The general point here is that doing things a little out of the ordinary are not just ‘risky’ from a creative perspective, but they could also make you stand out and you need to be prepared to deal with that. That said, the results to facing up to these challenges are equally less ordinary and therefore worth the effort in my view.
As I carried out this Assessment, I was conscious that my images needed to align to my notion of “Real Camden” but I would have liked to capture more of the market and of the people there too (it would have made an excellent destination for Assignment 2). There is actually a third side to Camden which is the new buildings and re-generation work that is going on, which will clash with both the poor parts and the market (Camden Market-13 shows just how close this work is being done with the cranes in the background). As a future project, I would like to explore something along the lines of “The many sides of Camden”. I don’t think that it is possible to do this in 6-8 images as the set would not be cohesive and the point I was making re decisive moment would likely be lost but, a larger project would provide the space to create 3 distinct sets of images that would contrast with each other and in doing so would also emphasise each other more. Being 20 minutes from where I live, this is a project that I will pursue further in longer time.
Context
Whilst carrying out Part 3 of the course, I have researched Chunking Express, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Martin Parr and Egglestone. I have visited The Radical Eye at Tate Modern, Hockney at Tate Britain, and London Photo (where I also attended a talk by Martin Parr).
I have listed the above not so much because it is a long list that is an increase on the level of research that I completed for Part 2 of the course but because, on reflection, I can feel and see the impact this has had on my thought processes and in the output of my work, particularly this assessment.
I am surprised at the influence studying images can have on my own photography. At the talk I went to with Martin Parr who was interviewing David Hurn, they were discussing photography education and Hurn described the course he ran in Wales during which every day they would spend the first hour simply looking at a chosen photographer’s images and discussing them. Hurn’s view was that this act alone could not fail to improve the abilities of his students (Hurn, 2017).
I am also enjoying the broader perspective on photography that this research is giving me. I now have an expanding base upon which I can use to reflect on other photographers or images and upon my own work. Recently, I was drawn to an image when visiting the Tate Modern as it reminded me of the style of an Egglestone image, on inspection I was only to discover that it was actually one of his own.
I can see that making research or some form of development activity a critical part of my practice is clearly something that I will need to maintain even when I have eventually finished this Photography degree.
Bibliography
Hurn D. (2017) David Hurn in Conversation with Martin Parr. London. [Lecture at Photo London. 19th May].