On The Street Project 4
Day 1
What have you learnt from the first walk that you can take forward in the second walk?
From my first I realised that my rule was quite hard to work with as it was difficult to take pictures of subjects such as people walking by. I often also found that I would switch between landscape and portrait photography as it was easier to take pictures on portrait sometimes. On the other hand, I think giving myself a restriction enabled me to create images that I wouldn’t have been able to take without these restrictions.
As I was taking the photographs I noticed that I was also breaking the second rule I wanted to break for the second photo-shoot which is why I decided to change to the rule of the picture not being blurry / not in focus. This is one of the reasons why I decided to change my second rule and opt for something much more different.
What aspects of the disciplines you were introduced today most interest you at this stage? Why? (photography, art direction, graphic design)
Photography is the medium and practice that interests me the most at this stage because it’s a medium that enables me to visually communicate what I want to express in the best way possible. I think photography is allows me to express my ideas and thoughts much more effectively than any other medium I have tried so far.
I think when given a general theme or concept I can visually translate my ideas and feelings better through photography than any medium practice I have tried so far, I think this is mostly because I like looking at images and researching photographers that inform a lot of my practice. Moreover, in my free time I always watch a lot of films which is why I have developed a very photographic eye and a certain cinematographic approach to the way I take pictures.
What was challenging for you in the process of applying your photography rules? How did you deal with this challenge?
I think the most challenging thing I had to deal with when applying the photography rules was to try and find a way of taking pictures of the subjects by sticking to the rules. For example, I found it hard to take pictures of strangers at not an eye-level view: more than often the faces of the subjects would be cropped or out of the frame which is something I noticed after taking the first few shots.
I tried zooming out so that I would be able to take pictures of the full bodies of the subjects without cropping anything. Although the cropping of the image was somewhat of a challenge, I think at the end it proved to be one of the strongest features in the layout of the images.
How well do you feel that your selection of images tell the story / capture the essence of your work?
I think that my selection of images captures well the task that we were asked to undergo because the images work well together: when selecting the photographs I tried to position next to each one an image that had similar colours or a similar subject / composition so that they would fit well together. Having taken a variety of images of the sky, landscape and urban photographs of the street and cars, the layout was in my opinion the most difficult task to do. I think that the outcome of this exercise was quite effective though because I can see a visual narrative going on.
As I do not think I experimented enough with my first final outcome, I decided to try out a different layout in my second outcome by trying to to position two very different images next to each other. I think this layout looks much more interesting than the first one as it is more dynamic and includes a set of very different images. These photographs in my opinion capture the essence of my work much better than the first ones.
Creating the editorial
What things did you find difficult when creating the editorial? How did you deal with them?
I think one of the main things that I found difficult was layering the photographs together so that the story telling would be very strong and powerful. I think when I started combining photographs of daily life / objects together with the fashion shoots I did things got a bit tricky. But nonetheless I think planning the text before laying out the images was very important and helped me deal with the difficulties that creating a story through images sometimes has.
How has peer feedback helped you evaluate your project?
I think peer feedback was really helpful because it helped me understand what were the strongest pieces of my work. It was suggested to me to cut down the number of photographs I presented because they were getting too repetitive which I agreed - I think this was the most helpful piece of feedback I was given on the crit today. After cutting down on the images and also including some 'ordinary life' images I took after the crit I think my outcome looks much better and cohesive than what it looked before.
How can you improve the way that the photographs are presented?
I think I can improve the way my work is presented by looking at different sizes, perhaps the photographs might look better in A4 instead of A5. I think adding text and drawings by hand is one of the features that I like the most about my zine: when it comes to creating a storyline using text, I found that drawing directly on the printed zine gives me much more freedom because I am able to control whatever I write and draw directly with my hands instead of using a computer. I prefer that a lot to digital text because it makes me think that each piece is authentic and doesn't look the same. Obviously if I had to create this on a bigger scale it would not be easy, but for now I prefer doing things this way.