Assignment

Make a Google Images search for ‘landscape’, ‘portrait’, or any ordinary subject such as ‘apple’ or ‘sunset’. Add a screengrab of a representative page to your learning log and note down the similarities you find between the images.

Now take a number of your own photographs of the same subject, paying special attention to the ‘Creativity’ criteria at the end of Part One. You might like to make the subject appear ‘incidental’, for instance by using juxtaposition, focus or framing. Or you might begin with the observation of Ernst Haas, or the ‘camera vision’ of Bill Brandt.

Add a final image to your learning log, together with a selection of preparatory shots. In your notes describe how your photograph differs from your Google Images source images of the same subject.

Thinking

I must admit, I struggled with this exercise.  It seems to be trying to generate creativity for the sake of it.  I was so irritated by this notion that I put off the exercise for quite a few weeks.  I will come back to that reaction when I reflect on the exercise at the end of these notes.

Of my shots so far in this course, I think my images of Waterloo are the most creative in what they are trying to express. I wanted to express the passage of time, and the impermanence of mankind.   To do that, I needed to invent a creative way in which to capture the subject.  My result, I felt, did that.

When I researched Sato Shintaro, I discovered his creative way for capturing an empty street in the middle of Tokyo when in fact the street was busy, and his way of creating new skylines of Tokyo by using the fire escapes.

In both my example and Shintaro’s the creative thought process was triggered by a desire to express something.

Here in this exercise though it seems to require the abandonment of expression and simply to rely on creativity for the sake of it – this feels like a retrograde step.  Perhaps I was taking the exercise too literally.

I decided to photograph an apple, it is an example in the course notes and the question.  A screen shot of a google search is shown below.  Searching on the word apple returns either red apples on white backgrounds or of the computer company Apple’s logo.

Fig 1  Google search of “Apple”

Shot

The inspiration of my idea was not of framing, detailed study or juxtaposition, it came from eating at a nice restaurant.   It is fashionable at the moment to serve dishes ‘deconstructed’.  After having eaten a deconstructed apple pie, I decided to simply this even further and capture an image of a deconstructed apple.

Deconstruction seems to imply simplicity to me.  With simplicity as a theme, I decided that I wanted the shot to be an apple and nothing but an apple so I created a setup similar to the one that I used for the Ex Nihilo exercise using a plain background and artificial light.

The contact sheet shows a few of the images including one of three apples.  This shot was used to get the lighting and setup right as I realised that a deconstructed apple was going to go brown pretty quickly once peeled.

Having taken a range of shots there were two main decisions.  Firstly, to arrange the pieces in a row or as a group.  Secondly to shoot with everything in focus or everything sharp.  These considerations are really aesthetic since with the set exercise, I didn’t feel that there was anything to express and, as I have already said, this feels a bit shallow.  I think the positive from this is that I probably would not have been thinking this 6 months ago when I started this course.

My chosen image is shown below in Figure 2.

Learning

I think my biggest learning from this exercise is actually my reflection on it rather than the exercise itself.  That reflection is my desire to use creativity to enhance the the way I capture something as part of what I am trying to express, rather than something creative just so it looks nice.

I believe I have achieved this in some of my other exercises but that it was not really a factor here.  I think this exercise will stick with me as an aide memoir to question myself as to my motives for doing something – is it for expression or simply aesthetics?

All of that said, the image does I think create a little more interest than those obtained from the google search and so I decided to stick with it.  I guess if nothing else, it does show that even the simplest subject can be redefined if one puts their mind to it.

Contact Sheet