Welcome back to my first new post for the Photo Challenge Friday Segment.
Today I’m bringing back Photo Challenge Friday where every Friday I will be setting myself a new photography challenge which I have a week to complete.
You may or may not remember that my week 9 challenge was to photograph Organic Shapes, however, I got rather busy and didn’t post the results and forgot about the segment. So here are my images from that challenge where I decided to photograph Pumpkins:
This week I decided to start up the challenges all over again after reading two books called Be A Super Awesome Photographer by Henry Carroll (Aimed at Kids but good for Adults too) and Photocrafty: 75 Creative Camera Projects For You And Your Digital SLR by Sue Venables.
Over the coming weeks, I am going to be doing challenges you can do with just a short walk to the park or staying at home due to The Coronavirus.
Week 10’s Challenge was to Pretend You’re a Dog. This is about taking images from a dog’s eye view so think low angle images and think about what a dog would do. What unusual angles would the dog shot from if the dog was a photographer. For this shoot, I decided to go to the park with only my 55-200 mm telephoto zoom lens because I wanted to be able to shoot from a distance so I didn’t trample on anything and stayed respectful of my surroundings. Most of the images here were shot at 200mm. Back in the house, I decided that dogs would jump on armchairs or lie on the floor so I photographed what would be seen if they did this with a 50mm Prime.
For week 11 I am going to be doing another challenge from be a Super Awesome Photographer called See Things Differently. This challenge is about taking ordinary things and seeing them in a new light. For Example, a vacuum could be a twisting python or pancakes could be planets or you could find the alphabet in your photographs. Just use your imagination and see what you come up with.
If you enjoyed this weeks challenge why not have a go at next weeks See Things Differently challenge and tweet or Instagram to @lucyandthelens and don’t forget to #seethingsdifferently.
Having seen countries on lockdown already. I think that it is immnent that the uk will follow suit.
We’ve already seen people panic buying toilet rolls, hand sannitiser and pasta.etc.
At the moment I’m just starting out as a freelance photographer so I’m still doing a lot of marketing so I’m doing the majority of my work from home but I think the virus could delay client bookings for the forseeable future.
Currently my cancellations include shifts for my part-time ad hoc job and workshops for me to learn new skills.
This week I have a planned campaign to work on as I’m trying to work as normal until we can’t work. The reality is this campaign is related to an upcoming event which may not even happen if we are stuck at home.
If we are on lockdown I won’t be able to go out and shoot so I will have to focus on more marketing and plan some personal projects I can do around the house. I feel this might be all we can do once all the photographs we have already taken have been edited.
So is coronavirus affecting you as a small business? Let me know what’s been happening to you in a comment below.
I think the first step to learn things you didn’t already
know about photography is to join a society to meet other photographers like
mine. It’s my fifth year at Preston Photographic society and I’d like to talk
about one of the aspects of the society that I really enjoy which is the
Portrait Nights.
Originally you had to sign up to this and the coordinator
booked a model for the evenings which is hosted once a month and invited 5 or 6
people on the list to join him or her on a rota system. Now you buy the £10
ticket in advance which is a system I much prefer, and these are allocated on a
first come first served basis.
Each evening starts with setting up the studio lights in a
makeshift studio setting. Initially on the portrait nights I used them mostly
to learn about how to light a subject as this wasn’t something, I knew much
about until I started going to these evenings. In a later post I will discuss
my tips on this. Since then I’ve done a master’s in photography, set up as a
Freelance photographer and spent hours on end in the studio by myself with
models and my own lighting set-ups.
So, for me a lot has changed from my early natural light
only portraits up until now with my studio and location work, but I think today
could be very different if I didn’t step into these portrait nights.
Portrait nights for me now are about meeting and interacting
with brand new models that I haven’t previously encountered. Yes, I do have
repeat work with models, but I feel that working with new models gives you
challenges because its like starting all over again. What I mean by this is that
every person reacts differently to the camera.
I’ve been to early nights where the host did a 10 minute
masterclass on shooting models and then we all shoot the models by ourselves in
10 minute slots in there first and second outfits, with our own ideas of poses
and directions, based on what you want to get out of the shoot. Then the final
setup was to create headshots in short 3-5-minute slots.
Now instead of a master class you take your portraits where
if needed you can have input from the other more experienced photographers than
you, and the host. I think this is great
because I believe that you learn by doing sometimes rather than watching.
I then go home and spend time editing my images in lightroom and some of these have gone fantastically in the internal portrait competitions that we have at Preston photographic society. Try and guess which images below are from my first ever portrait evening and which ones are from the newer ones and you should see a difference in the images. If you enjoy this post, please comment below.
As you may know from my previous posts or my FAQ page, I have seven lenses. Today I am going to write about the wide-angle lens and after this post throughout a long period of time, I am hoping to do a series of these for each of my lenses.
There is no right or wrong answer as to what to use a lens
for its all about your own self-expression but here I am going to tell you what
I use it for.
When I thought about buying the Sigma 10-20mm I wanted to
have a better landscape lens as before this I only had the 18-55mm kit lens and
the 55-200mm telephoto zoom lens which didn’t provide me with the depth of
field I wanted for my landscapes.
So, what is a wide-angle lens? A wide-angle lens is any lens that can view more than the human eye sees. Wide-angle lenses distort the subject and enhance perspective. This means whatever is in front of the frame will appear larger than anything that is further away.
I soon realised that you can also create creative portraits with a wide-angle lens. In my opinion, by positioning yourself at a lower angle than your subject you open up your surroundings to a whole new point of view.
In architectural shots, you want to use this lens to capture the entirety of a building so you can see all the detail and not just glimpses of it.
In one of my university projects during my master’s I used
the wide-angle lens to take images I wanted to create a perspective where I had
the full person and aspects of a building behind to convey the way in which we
use public spaces to this day.
A great use I’d say is these lenses are great for events as
they allow you to photograph much larger groups of people.
The final thing I have used this lens for is when I photograph fencing charity events. The reason is that I want to get every one of the participants in the frame which I can’t do with a zoom lens maybe I’d need a zoom lens in a larger venue where I need to be further away from the action.
I feel the wide-angle lens provides you with new perspectives that you didn’t even consider before. You can see a lot more with a wide-angle lens than a fixed perspective. Below is a gallery of some of my work using this lens:
If you liked this post and want to read more please go through my previous posts, subscribe or check out my best of page here: Best Of .
Brainstorm some ideas by creating a mind map and asking other people for inspiration.
Check no-one else is using the name you want.
Do you have a unique first name or surname. If you do try and include it into the business name.
Make a list of photographic terms and see if one jumps out at you.
Don’t Do what everybody else is doing. Try to make your name stand out.
When choosing my name Lucy and the Lens step 1 and 4 were the ones I used the most then I got a logo and cartoon me designed by @emiliaclarecreates check out her Instagram.
This next article is one i wrote for my Final Project for My Photography MA with a few minor adjustments.
The aim of this project was to examine the role of photography in illustrating and reflecting aspects of cultural life in this country. This was executed by focusing attention on two key themes performativity and identity. Performativity can be defined as the interdependent relationship between words and actions while identity in photographic terms can be defined as how people see themselves and how they see themselves in relation to others. I have examined these themes through the eyes of a variety of performers whose views about themselves and their art informed my work. I desired to show this through my photography. I seeked to answer the question does performativity and performance impact identity through photography?
The term Performativity was first
introduced by the philosopher J.L. Austin which he defined as, “The symbiotic or interdependent relationship
between words and actions that the performative encompasses is a key aspect of
performance art, with theorists and philosophers examining the role of actions,
gestures and artistic decision-making through the idea of performativity.” He
went on to say that, “Performance art can be photographic based artworks in which
the actions of artists, performers or the audience are conveyed.” ( https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/performativity) Conveying ‘the actions of artists and
performers is what I primarily want to show through my photographs and practice-based
research. Capturing performance through photography has been used since its
invention right up to the fashion today for ‘Selfies’ on mobile phones. (https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/performing-camera) The selfie is
often a form of self-expression depicting a person how they desire to be seen
for wider consumption. Arguably like photography in general, the selfie can
also be seen as showing a snippet of one’s identity.
In
one sense it can be argued that all photography is an exploration of identity
and or of place. In photographic terms identity can be seen as an expression of
individuality and the traits that set individuals apart from others and perhaps
just as importantly, what defines them as being part of a distinct group. This can be shown in a myriad of ways, such
as “our choice of hairstyles, clothing, and make-up
through to marks on our bodies including paint, tattoos, scars and piercings.”
And of course, through ethnicity and race.
Eight of the subjects of my shoots are actors and actresses so my starting point when capturing identity with these subjects was to take headshots because these are a trademark of their chosen profession. Although Headshots do not in themselves identify a person’s occupation, it can be argued that headshots become a part of their identity because it becomes natural to them throughout their career. I believe that headshots can capture the personality of the performer through different emotions but also need to be neutral in the sense that potential employers can picture them in varied roles. Headshots are more representative of the perceived identity of the performers, so casting directors and agents can see them as an individual. In the headshots the actors aren’t playing any character, so they adhere to be the most authentic version of the actor’s true self.
Another technique I used during my shoots was asking my performers to bring props that represent in some way, who they are. It became rather noticeable during shooting that some of my performers had a vulnerable aspect to their identity that you wouldn’t expect from them. They used scarfs and jackets to hide parts of their face to represent the past shyness they had before performing improved their confidence.
When I look at identity in performers, I am trying
to discover how they see themselves through photography and also perhaps
capturing the memories they have made and are making during their past or
current performances. I desired to show them in two different personas. One
Performed and one not. Either way they have a story to tell.
As Stuart Freedman (Photographer) recently declared, we need “a return to a storytelling in
photography as rigorous in thought and research as it is beautiful in
construction and execution.” (Campbell, D: 2010) This is relevant because I decide
to allow my subjects to tell their own story about identity and performativity
and I gave their stories a face through having them record journal style excerpts
about their performing identity and photographing them performing in the studio
and taking natural portraits of them with the aim of capturing a sense of who
they are.
A quote from the
photographer Loretta Lux in the book Imaginary Portraits by Francine Prose
(2005) states “ A work of art that focuses on a child seems to burrow under our
skin, tunneling back through time and memory to a world whose details we long
to recall, yet cannot, and so we invent a myth that only inserts another layer
between us and what we are trying to recapture.” This is relevant for me because
I was trying to capture the essence of who the person is and how they became a
performer showcasing aspects of their memories in my photography.
Normally when doing a shoot, I will
give directions to my model. However, in looking at their own identity I wanted
to use the studio as a space to give them a platform to express themselves with
little direction. “Space-whether a suspended pause, a blank area, an empty room
or a limitless cosmos-performs.” (Portia Hannah:2011: Performance
Perspectives:54). Peter Brook (Theatre Director) stated that I can take any
empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space
whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act
of theatre to be engaged (Brook 1968:11: Performance Perspectives:58). I wanted
to use the studio as an empty space to give them the freedom to express
themselves as naturally as possible. If I told them what to do and how I wanted
it done it would become more about how I wanted them to be perceived and not
how they wanted to be perceived. I wanted their actions and responses to be as
natural and as spontaneous as possible and not manipulated or staged by me. I was
looking for authenticity.
In my search for authenticity I am
also aware as a woman that gender plays a very important role in unpacking
one’s identity. Judith Butler sums up the issues surrounding gender identity.
“Gender reality
is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent
that it is performed. It seems fair to say that certain kinds of acts are
usually interpreted as expressive of a gender core of identity, and that these
acts either conform to an expected gender identity or contest that expectation
in some way” (Butler in Loxley, J:2007: p118). In using both male and female
performers in my work I want to see whether the performers adhere to their
normative gender identities or does the true self come out.
The academic Patrice Pavis states, “The more the camera has to go in search of an actor who pretends to not be aware of it, and to exist without it, the more naturalistic and documentary the acting seems (Patrice Pavis: 2003:117). In my images of Sophie an actress shown below you can see how she, although performing for the camera has the ability to act natural as though the camera isn’t even an element. She is relaxed and it allows the viewer to delve deeper into her personality, trying to discover her identity in their eyes. No props are used but I have employed them in some instances with my performers to see whether or not their self-perception changes.
The Philosopher Giles Deleuze states that “Behind
the mask… are further masks, and even the most hidden is still a hiding place,
and so on to infinity. The only illusion is that of unmasking something or
someone (Howell, A: 1999:16). That we can truly unmask someone is probably an illusion,
but we can surely unmask aspects of someone’s identity and sometimes the mask
is used for that purpose.
The Theatre director Jacques Lecoq
uses masks in his teachings, firstly in a neutral sense to put the actor in a
state of discovery and then in an expressive sense in order for the actor to
experience an emotional and expressive intensity which enables them to
challenge themselves through playing the mask character and counter masked
character (Jacques Lecoq: 2002:38-61).
In the fifth shoot I did for the
project with Anna an actress I used the expressive mask to see what she would
do and repeated the process with another four of my subjects. I discovered that
you can learn a lot about a person by putting them in a mask because this gives
them an expressive platform in which to create a character depicting how they
see themselves as a performer, exaggerating their usual persona. Using a mask
can push them to see how far they can discover themselves.
Also, it works equally well to
strip the performer back into a neutral outfit (Black or White) as you see who
they are without the props and behind the physical or metaphorical mask. The
only direction I gave was for them to perform in any way they wished. This is
important for authenticity as I wanted them to show me how they see themselves
both naturally and as a performer. I asked each performer to bring a prop that
means something to them to the studio. Then I tried some experimentation with
masks to see what the performer would do with a mask on to represent whether
they hide aspects of their identity or embrace them. Seeking an aspect of
identity can be seen in the work of four noted photographers I have looked at
while undertaking this project.
In The Article New Writing On Jane
Bown (https://photoworks.org.uk/jane-bown/) by
Luke Dodd it is stated that “Many photographers talk of the portrait in terms
of a contract with the subject, implying that the greater the rapport, the
better the finished result. Jane liked it when there was a ‘spark’ with
the sitter, but it was by no means necessary for her to produce startling
results. The famous picture of Mick Jagger laughing was taken as Jane
worked around him and the interviewer with very limited time. And
sometimes a rapport hindered her: the first time Jane photographed Bjork
(having absolutely no idea who she was) it is obvious from the contacts that Jane
had to really work at it because both of them were having too much fun – she
exposed four rolls of film, always a sign that things were not ideal.” She shot
Samuel Beckett with directness and candour after cornering him in a dark alley.
In Jane Bown’s portraits shown through the above hyperlinks
we can see that she develops relationships with her subjects in order to
capture their innermost emotions. She
tries to create a connection with the subject, and she won’t stop shooting
until she has that glimmer of a special moment.
However, Bown caught Samuel Beckett
off guard, with this photo the aim is to expect the unexpected. Despite having
no rapport with Beckett at all she perfectly captures a sense of him and that
is what makes this image so special. As you can see from my images below my subject’s
identity and personality is depicted through their emotions, through a smile, a
look of sadness or a simple hand gesture. I haven’t asked my performers to do
this I have built my own rapport and developed a connection between the subject
and the camera. These moments have happened naturally as the shoot has
developed.
The Dutch photographer Rineke
Dijkstra places an emphasis on capturing the vulnerable
side of her subjects. “With young people everything is much more on the
surface—all the emotions,” the artist observed. “When you get older you know
how to hide things.” (http://www.artnet.com/artists/rineke-dijkstra/) In this project I have
photographed both young and old performers and can see that difference between
them Dijkstra mentions. The older performers are more subtle in expressing
their emotions. Each performer brought their own kind of style to the shoot and
had a completely different take on how they expressed themselves, irrespective
of age. I needed the studio to be a platform for self-expression which is why I
kept it neutral so their entire focus would be on the performer.
The Third
photographer I have looked at Anouk Kruithof created a photographic project
titled Becoming Blue, where she
made constant but minor physical interventions to influence the person being
portrayed. This was done so that her photos capture the subject’s gestures and
facial expressions, interaction to the unknown, irritation or stress. Reactions
out of the blue. poses and gestures of the persons portrayed obviously
contradict such associations – a stylistic means that Kruithof deliberately
chooses in order to visualize different emotional and psychological states
during a process of surprise or even confrontation. (2006-2009)
Anouk’s work is all about adding an element of surprise
to the shoot and catching the subject off guard. Her props if you could call
them that were physical interventions through the use of pins. My interventions
in the shoot were more subtle because as well as capturing the subjects in
performance I was also capturing them off guard just as we were having a
conversation about something. They
brought props themselves such as scarfs, mirrors, dream catchers and I brought
masks to the shoot unknowing what the subject would do with them, which creates
an exaggerated persona, of their identity.
The masks seemed to become something Shakespearean in nature for some of
the subjects and I asked my subjects to perform for me in the studio.
For nearly a
decade of her life, my final photographer Norma I. Quintana (2014)devoted every summer to a
group of people few ever get to capture through a candid lens: circus performers The goal of her book Circus: A Traveling Life was to shine a
light on this, “sense of family and tradition and culture and love of
performance” that pervaded her behind the scenes experience of the circus. And
while some images might seem sombre, especially knowing that Circus Chimera is
no more, she sees the images as a celebration.
Norma’s
work is all about an intimate delve into the lives of circus performers. The
performers look at her as if they know her and have done for a long time. She
got to know them over a 10-year time period and captured, those moments you
wouldn’t normally see at times when they weren’t performing. I feel in my work
I created quite a personal experience in that I had conversations with the
performers as I was snapping and captured them at times when they were not
performing. In doing so I was able to build a rapport and taking the performers
outside their comfort zone off the stage to create a more intimate feel with a 1-2-1
shoot. I got them to perform as naturally as possible and listened to their
stories and collected information about how performing is a part of their
identity.
I chose to use two different ways of collecting data for
the project. One was using an anonymous questionnaire about my two key themes.
Here are my findings: 70% of my participants were female so there might be a
slight bias in some of the results because it wasn’t an even split. I also
asked how long each performer had been performing which is important because in
doing that you can see how long it has been a part of their identity for.
First of all, I asked each performer what they believed
performativity to be. The best of the
responses ‘being able to express a
completely different part of yourself and show something new and exciting to
the world’, ‘expression through entertainment or art’, ‘the way in
which people perform and adapt themselves into their role during a performance’.
Subject 5 perfectly captures the essence of
what my project aims to reflect in his definition he says, ‘Sharing an idea,
experience, emotion, some part of your life with the world’. This statement he
has made states that performativity is demonstrated through parts of your
identity and I want to know if they can both work in synchronisation. I am
figuring out if we can capture identity through performance and this sums it
up.
54% of participants thought gender
influenced the type of performer you are and 70% believe gender affects the
roles they have played. Out of those 70% 3 were male and stated that they would
be unlikely to play a female role based on them looking too masculine but of
the women that agreed, this response jumped out at me because it gives a more in-depth
reason why ‘In
classical dancing the roles are typically very gender-specific, generally with
the males in supporting roles to the females. However, that being said, due a
lack of male dancers I have previously had the opportunity to dance in
styles/roles which would traditionally be classed as male.’ This illustrates
that Gender plays a big role in performance identity because you are mostly restricted
in the type of performance you can do or role you can play.
In one of the lectures in a focus group it was suggested
to me that performers might mask their identity, so I asked in the
questionnaire what my subjects thought and 70% of them said No. Those
responders said You can’t hide
what you look like to an extent, but when I’m performing ‘I’m not me, I as a
person am quite shy and when I am performing I don’t take this part of me on
stage with me’, ‘You are always the same person and
will express the moves in a certain way, dependent on your personality.’ ‘It is part of me as I have danced all my life.’
‘It’s pretty much my life’. ‘I think that performing enables me to have
another facet to my identity, in that when I am performing, I am not
necessarily acting as myself. Yet there is an aspect of my personality which
enjoy performance making it a part of who I am.’ ‘Performing is part of my identity. Acting, singing, martial arts and
music have all helped to shape the person I have become.’ ‘Being a performer is what I am. It’s what I
constantly think about, it’s how people perceive me.’
My final question in the
questionnaire is the one I’ve been aiming to answer in the duration of this
project ‘Can Photography capture identity in a performance?’. Of all the
questions I asked this was the most unanimous yes with 92% of the subjects
agreeing on this. They answered, ‘Through capturing
performances and personalities’, ‘in emotion’, ‘Possibly, if it is well executed by both the photographer and the model’, ‘the way
in which I dance is part of my identity’. Any photograph of a dancer will
capture the dancers identity, I
believe that in any character you can see a mark of the actor behind the role, Yes, when performing I feel the most like a woman and dancer and seeing
myself mid-performance in a photograph enhances that. The two most in-depth
responses as follows capture the essence of what my project is all about.
‘The
expression of a performance is a visual act. In this way, I believe that the
individual and personal nature of performance can be captured by an image, to
display a person’s identity and attitude towards their performance.’
‘A
photograph can capture the essence, the emotions of that instant. You can see
dynamics within a scene, the characters’ emotions, who the characters are. Even
in music, you cannot hear the music in an image, but you can capture the
emotion the musicians and performers are expressing.” In large measure these
comments summarize much of what I have been trying to achieve with this
project.
I feel that I have managed to capture aspects of the identity of each of my performers through their individual expressions of performance. As Deleuze pointed out you cannot draw out the complete identity but through performativity you can show glimpses of it and this is what I believe I have achieved with this project.
It all started in September 2017 when I’d been out of university for three years. I decided to go to a postgraduate advice event at UCLAN (the university of central Lancashire), looking into studying a master’s in photography.
A few days later I applied hoping to start straightaway. However, I was a little late applying so I waited patiently until September 2018 to officially start my course.
I walked into my first term not knowing what to expect and realising the next year of my life was going to me my biggest challenge yet.
In the first term I studied three modules, two double modules entitled socially engaged art and space, location and territory which both would continue into the second term. The third module was visualising the inviable which was a singular module. The first term all my subjects required me to present my projects in a self-reflective way.
I’m going to start by talking about socially engaged art. “Socially engaged art projects are those that involve forms of social engagement where the participants are directly involved in the creative process” by Stine Marie Jacobsen. For my project I chose to work with fencing and identity and as you may know from one of my previous posts, I am a fencer. This involved a questionnaire and then compiling a pdf with my participants information embedded. In this pdf I had to discuss the concept and talk about my work.
My project focused on a community of fencers at both Preston Fencing Club and UCLAN Knights Fencing Club. The sport of Fencing is the catalyst to examine the key theme of identity and how participating in fencing contributes to that sense of identity. This included showing that fencing is not just a sporting activity, it is very importantly, also a social activity that brings people together and creates a sense of community. and has a positive impact on their everyday lives, including helping them to deal with among other things, their own mental health issues.
It can be argued that all art is socially engaged because it is created to be communicated to or experienced by others. It is community based, collaborative, participatory, dialogic and public art. It involves working with groups of people in a professional capacity. It is an art form that connects with the world around us. It is either politically or socially motivated and can act through the representation of ideas and issues. Social interaction and connective experience ids the key to this type of project. Socially engaged art uses the arena of contemporary art to engage with communities to produce collaborative or participatory projects based around an identified social issue. Pablo Helguera states that “Socially engaged art is a form of performance in the expanded field and as such it must break away from self-referentiality.” You need to engage with others through conversation, collaboration, antagonism (make it confrontational), performance, documentation and trans pedagogy (blends education and art).
This project allowed my subjects to be involved in the process of taking pictures and recording their stories through the questionnaire.
To start I looked at the work of Paul Floyd Blake Paul Floyd Blake’s Personal Best Project.This project focused on young prospective 2012 Olympians.He got them to create Journals to document their thoughts and feelings and photographed them partaking in their prospective sports. He involved his subjects in a participatory way by spending 5 years with them collecting their stories. I tried to do this over about 3 months but used questionnaires where I asked:
1. What Does Fencing Mean to You?
2. How Does Fencing Shape your Identity?
3. Can Fencing be used as a tool of escapism from day to day life in your opinion?
4. What is the most important reason why you fence?
5. Is there anything you take out of your fencing that you can apply to your daily routine?
6. Is there anything else you’d be willing to discuss that might fit into the project?
7. Feel free to add any questions and answers that might help me form this project.
• Blakes images pay tribute to the long slog towards glory that is not usually seen or celebrated, whilst excerpts from the athletes own writings offer insights into their personal hopes and fears. Blake’s approach emphasises the individuals own story and motivations beyond the values and structures of competitive sport, as the title ‘Personal Best suggests’.
Then I looked at Anthony Luvera who worked with the LGBT community.
He worked collaboratively with groups of marginalized people to explore issues related to identity,community, locality and self-representation which is what I aimed to do with my fencing group.
So how did I execute this project:
I started the project by collating questionnaires and getting each individual fencer to fill them out as part of the project. The first person I used in this project was myself as in order to understand photography you must first become the photographed. I am also a fencer, and this is a great way of understanding my own identity through fencing. After collecting the questionnaires from each of my fencers I did some portraits of them to showcase who each person is. I then showed my fencers how to take photographs on their phone and on my camera. At the end of the project I asked a few of my fencers to send me some images that reflected their fencing identity with an object that means something to them. I also had the fencers take photographs of each other in fights and in the way they wanted. One of my fencers even had a clever idea which was discovered late on to do a photo of himself.
No project would be complete without challenges and this one provided me with many. I really struggled with this project as I had trouble getting the questionnaires of the participants and finding the time duringclass to do the images as the majority of my participants were coaches. I also wasn’t allowed to use anylighting due to it being a distraction for the fencers and had to rely on only my camera and natural light. I also had some fencers agree to participate and others not so had to organize it so those who refused wouldn’t appear in any shots at all.
I initially also had issues with getting the fencers to agree to take photos themselves, so I took them in the beginning but as the project developed the fencers got more and more involved. Images played a very important role throughout this project because they helped the fencers to find strength in community and escape from the challenges, they face in their day to day lives, whether it be mental health, divorce or other issues.
I think that if I were to do the project again, I would reread the concept of socially engaged art to ensure I fully understood it and find more clarity in whether I could take the photos or whether my participants had to. I should have made my participants aware earlier on that they may have to take the photos and think of other ways to get them to participate in their busy working lives. Given more time I also would have gone to their homes, favorite environment or places of work to discover more aspects of their identity.
The second module was space, location and territory. We started of with two presentations on micro landscapes and urban landscapes where we had to take pictures and discuss them using a PowerPoint. Then for part 2 we had to use a concept called the Anthropocene to shape a 6000-word essay.
I believed that the Anthropocene is about how humans interact with and change the space around them. It is largely man’s footprint on the world that is destroying g the landscape which is resulting in a collapse of the natural world into the manufactured world. Photography has charted this footprint. Professor Will Steffen, who gave the opening lecture at the geosphere biosphere conference in 2000, offered the following definition: “the term Anthropocene suggests that humankind has become a global geological force in its own right.” In the age of the Anthropocene the ancient distinction between natural history and human history, between culture and nature collapses. We are woven together, intertwined in each other’s fates.
My project was about human relationships with public space. What did it used to be used for and what is it used for today? I focused on one particular area of Preston called the flag market where the Harris Museum is situated. I spent time both interacting with people in the space and documenting events that happen in the space. I also looked at the history of the space and discovered that the big events from the 1800s to about 1950s had crowds of around 40,000 people compared to the minimal crowds of today. People use the space for varied things, necessary activities such as going to work, social activities and communal activities.
For visualising the invisible we had to create a pechakucha which is a slideshow of images with minimal text and then write and article of our choice. I chose the representation of women in magazine advertising.
During the second term my singular module was titled the independent project. For this one I had three ideas. First was childhood memories, second was lost in books and third was the seven deadly sins. In the end I went with childhood memories, so I started off with a couple of images in the studio but then later it became a project about homelife and past times.
As I chose to do my course fulltime my final project which was about identity and performativity using the studio as a stage to obtain some natural and some performed imagery of my subjects. I worked with a lot of performance students and told their stories which I will discuss in more detail in my next post because I feel that this project has more than a short excerpt to discuss.
Conclusion
To conclude in facing these challenges through the year I became more confident in talking about my work. I also am proud that I can say that I have achieved a master’s in photography. Even though the last year was a rollercoaster with some success and failure I believe that it helped me to improve my work. But I would say my favourite part was my final project and I can’t wait to discuss that in my next post.
If you remember last year I did a Day Of The Dead Inspired shoot in the studio. This year I decided to plan a Halloween shoot with another photographer. We choose to do glamourous Halloween rather than dark and Gory.
Corpse Bride And Harlequin Shoot
The look I chose was a modern-day Harlequin/ Pennywise look. According to the Oxford English dictionary, a Harlequin is a mute character in traditional pantomime, typically masked and dressed in a diamond-patterned costume. However, I choose to simply get harlequin makeup done by a makeup artist and my model wore a purple tutu dress. Harlequin comes from the french Hellequin, the name of the leader of a legendary troop of demon horsemen.
The other photographer chose a corpse bride/ghostly look. Corpse bride was a 2005 Tim Burton animation where a man about to be married accidentally places a ring on a dead womans finger thinking its a plinth and she comes back to life thinking they are married. Im unsure whether the other photographers intention was to have it appear as though she dies and comes back to life but this is what i wanted to capture through my images.
This time the location chosen was a woodland setting and as part of my idea we used smoke bombs for part of the shoot. This was the most difficult part as you cannot touch them when your lighting them and they can accidentally catch fire. The smoke will also just flow in the direction it desires.
Killa Halloween
My second halloween shoot was for a new clothing company called Killa Clothing. They sell Tshirts and hoodies for men and women.This time Killa clothing hired two special effects makeup artists to do halloween makeup on the models. I went to go and take the images when the makeup was done at a woodland location and a bridge over a train track. Here is the photos from both shoots both shot on Nikond3200 with a 55200mm lens and a 35mm prime lens:
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A lot of people think that Day Of Dead and Halloween are interrelated. However they are two different festivals that appear to unintentionally connect in a number of ways. As stated on the National Geographic website Halloween is a dark night of terror whereas day of the dead or Dia De Los Muertos celebrates our love for those we have lost. The people who celebrate this believe in spirits and use literary Cavaveras which are short poems like a satire that make fun of the living. They also have official flowers called Cempazuchiti which are believed to attract ghosts.
According to www.metro.co.uk website it states that Halloween came from the Celtic Samhain which marked the night where spirits could pass through and the distinctions between the living and dead were blurred. it is combined with the Roman Feralia which commemorates the passing of the dead and honours Pomona the goddess of fruit, which is why we have apple bobbing.
Day Of The Dead Shoot
For as long as i can remember i have been a fan of using skulls in art pieces and for decoration so a couple of weeks ago I organised a Day Of The Dead shoot with Mentally Fit Sam and Aara Beauty. I planned to shoot the doing the makeup shots with a flash in my bedroom and then go to Avenham and Miller Park. However instead I ended up working with another photographer in his studio in Preston called Open Air Studio North West. This was my first collab using a makeup artist as well as a model and I chose to do a Day Of The Dead themed shoot due to my strange love of skulls.
For The Day Of The Dead Shoot we used a red gel on a flash behind the subject which created a more halloweeny feel and made the makeup stand out more. I used my Nikon d3200 with 55-200mm telephoto zoom lens for the majority of the shoot to obtain close ups of the makeup look. However for the aerial hoop shots I decided to add more depth to my image by using my Nikon 18-55 mm lens so more of the body was visible as Sam performed aerialist manoeuvres.
Halloween Shoot
On the 13/10/2018 i went to a photography session days event at Atlas Studios where there was a mystery set which was zombies. This fits perfectly with the Halloween theme. There were also some bloody knives over a door which enhanced this. I framed her under these to add to the terror of Halloween. I also enjoyed using the strobe under the stairs as it added a dark and moody feel to the zombies. The zombies caged and trying to break out adds a conventional, zombie movie-esque horror to the images and creates a sense of escape from reality.
Here is a selection of my images from both of the shoots:
I hope you enjoyed this post and for more stay tuned and check out my Instagram @lucyandthelens.
