Mind map + Moon board
Three artist which inspire me
Penelope Umbrico
Penelope Umbrico is a photographer which uses a focus of producer and consumer, local and global and individual and collective. This means that her work is very broad and has lots of different ideas about the world and how to photograph it. One of her project explored the constructive landscape sunsets where she collected lots of photographs of beautiful colorful sunsets with someone obstructing them and then later collected them all together and arranged them all in line. The photographer then did the same process for planets in our solar system and another sunset collection. What I like about this project is the way that there is a common theme throughout the pictures and this connects them all together to create a new image. This is very interesting to me as we get to experience a new feeling towards each individual image. You may dislike one image and really like another however it's placed there for a reason to establish the main image. Each individual images have their own story. Additionally we see a black outline of an individual in every image. This is quite scattered and unorganised however this sense of mystery to why she chose to do that is unknown which means we are left clueless as to who these people are and why she chose for them to be there. This sense of mystery is what I want to take from this project and use for my own as I want my audience to question why I decided to do what I did. Additionally I will be taking the collection of many images and using them to tell a story. This collection will all have a common theme which I will follow with every individual image until I build a bigger image.
Sidonie Hadoux
Sidonie Hadoux is a photographer who did a collection of work called 'Exploration' in 2022. This work was was taken in the North of France region where she was born and lived and through this work she questioned capitalism and patriarchy as a system that led to exploit land and bodies. She chose to call this project 'Exploration' as it reflects on the idea of time as a subjective and nuanced experience. This photographer caught my eye when looking through the many different artists as the process of using two photos with a similar connection into one. What I really like about thus was how the two images contrast each other and this was done in the first image with colour vs black and white. This contrast is what I will be taking from this photographer as I like how you can take two different images and use their different story to bring them together and tell a completely new story. And as my final project will be about telling a story within an image/images is works perfectly. Additionally with her work I would like to experiment with the spacing of the images and choosing a place to put it without just randomly placing it. This is so that I can incorporate the two images into one so it looks more connected instead of isolated. This process let's be analysis the two juxtaposing images in depth and really study the true meaning of why they chose to do two photos side by side. This further made me feel a sense of division as there photographer chose to separate the images instead of incorporating them into one. This may have been done to show different emotions being present through the landscape which has been shown.
Richard Long
Richard Long is a British sculpture and has a long history is the artist business. When he was away on a trip to china in 2010 he decided to photograph this specific specific river called the River Yangtze located in Shanghai. After coming back to the UK he decided to refine and add text the the bottom of the image reading ' A THOUSAND STONES THROWN INTO THE RIVER YANGTEZ ' this text was chosen as a message to the people watching and I really like how it sticks out and we are able to get an understanding of the image before analysing it. This is what I will taking from his work and using for my own as i like the ability to tell a direct message within a photograph instead of always being so discreet.
|
My ideas for my project
Experiment 1
My first experiment was going to be inspired by Umbrico's work of choosing multiple images of a similar theme and arranging them together into a new image. With this experiment I was going to do two separate collection, one for cityscapes and another for nature. For my first experiment I wont focus on the time of day necessarily because this first piece will be focusing more on the placement of the photographs instead of exact detail. My prediction will be that the natural collection will look more messy and unorganised however the city will look more collected as I will be taking photos of the same cityscape which is London as it is my local area.
With this first attempt I really struggled when achieving this sunset to night process into a collage. This was because i had to do this on powerpoint which resulted in non of my pictures being aligned and some being bigger than others. This was a good first attempt however next time I would try this on photoshop or a a website where i could properly align them.
Further developments
Experiment 2
My second experiment will still focus on the theme of my project which is nature vs cities, however this experiment will be different to other previous experiments where it we heavily rely on photoshop to bring it together. This experiment will need two separate images which will contrast from nature and cities and I will take out a specific part of the secondary image and then overlap/integrate it into the dominant image. However with this specific section which I have taken out I will ensure that it is translucent so that you cant see it very clearly. This will give the image a ghostly effect but I will still be integrating the theme of nature vs city.
This was my first attempt at this process and i have included a backdrop picture from inside greenwich park and overlaying that is some graffiti street art which i took in Peckham and the 286 bus which goes just outside my house. I managed to achieve this on photoshop and I got this shadow of the bus and street art by lowering the opacity of the two layers and then rearranging it to look like the cartoon women is summoning the bus. While doing this I was experimenting on what different objects would overlap nicely and give me the mysterious sense which I was looking for. This was partially achieved as I could of lowered the opacity more or chosen different objects to overshadow the image. Next time I would like to use more extravagant images which tell more of a story and has a more symbolic meaning behind it which incorporates a city vs nature theme as this didn't really look at this much.
Further Development
I then further developed this idea by taking this image and transferring it onto asatate. I did this so that the image had a see-through back and I was able to incorporate setting into my image. I then worked on changing the setting but also using the setting to show the change of time of day. I did this with the backdrop of the science block in my school and I used the natural sunlight to incorporate lighting in this piece. Although next time I would like to vary the backdrop more and see how far I can take my images and play around with lighting of different color and brightness.
Final attempt
Experiment 3
Experiment 3 will include two artists work which will be Hadoux double contrasting photos and Long's text below the image. I was thinking of doing one image contrasting the other and see the difference between nature vs city. I was also thinking of having a double image where the second image is a reverse of the first image which flips the purpose of the images. This will be done on photoshop as I need to add the two images together and add the writing to go with it which will look nicer on photoshop then by hand.
This experiment was the outcome of my ideas of how to construct a piece inspired by Long and Hadoux. This piece was done on photoshop as I thought it was the best way get the right the flipped version of my images. For this experiment I used a picture I too in Croatia and contrasted in with a picture I took in London. These photos however I contrasted the so that the colors came out bold and this enhanced the sunset feature on my images. I chose to use the words ' Sunset City ' as I think in shows the contrast of city and nature quite well and doesn't take away from my image. If I was to do this again I would change my city image into black and white as I think it would show more of a contrast and I would also keep the natural image colored to show the true colors of nature challenging the grey cities.
By hand
After completing my first attempt on photoshop I wanted to try by hand and see if it wold come out better. I used the same images however I turned one into black and white and the other in colour. For the text I wrote myself free hand however I don't think it came out well due to it being unaligned and the sizing not being consistent throughout.
Final attempt
After testing both way of photoshop and by hand I much preferred my edited version and decided to make a collection of the same image however each time it has rotated 90 degrees .This gave my images a circular feeling as each time I rotated them and took the photo a new image was created.
Final Piece
For my final piece I really wanted to bring my photography work to life, so I decided to construct a sculpture which incorporated nature with the city integrated within it. After some time debating of what to do I came up with an interesting design where it will be a model symbolic of a tree and on the branches I would add pictures of the different cityscapes I had collected. I really liked this concept as it achieved the different variables I wanted to incorporate. Before I started fully creating this sculpture i wanted to make a starter smaller model to mimic the real thing and test it before fully making it.
Step 1 : Model
This model to the left was the starter model before I created the real thing. As you may be able to recognise I was unable to finish this construction due to a lack of time however I think for a basis it turned out well. With this model it was really about the basics. I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to add branches onto a base and have them stay there. I worked thankfully and if I was able to finish it it would have looked a lot cleaner and more refined. Additionally I wasn't able to stick my pictures onto the branches again due to the lack of time. However it was about creating the spine of the model and less about the fine details.
Furthermore while creating this I used the material cardboard to create this as it will be the same material on the day. The problem came after I had cut apart my different branches I struggled actually putting them all together. It kept falling apart and in the end i had to glue the branches together and thats why it looks very compact. I also had to put a slit in the base of the tree so that i could slot my branches in and keep them standing with no human support. |
Step 2 : Cutting
After I had satisfaction that my project could work I started to assembling the tree into life. I started by cutting out the spine of my tree and scalping out branches for each section. The aim was to differentiate the ways the branches are formed as I wanted to keep it different and fresh. After I had cut out 5 new branches I started to print out some of the photos I had taken and trying to cut out specific sections of buildings or buses but always keeping it different and new. This worked quite well however it was a very long process and when i started sticking these parts onto the branches it was hard not fill the branches up completely without leaving any cardboard spaces.
Step 3 : Glueing
As I said previously the glueing process was very lengthy and took a lot of time. On the making day this was what used up the majority of my time as i had to be very precise and sure that no cardboard was showing. Another aim was to ensure that i was keeping my constructions on the different branches different so that repetition wasn’t used. I tried adding a different range colours to the branches to differentiate from the consistent greys from the building. Before I had constructed this fully and sticking the images on it started with the us of the sky in the pictures. However once assembling this it looked very clunky and there was too much blue sky. This pulled away from the focus of the branches which was to resemble constructed landscapes.
This was the final outcome once I had constructed all my pieces together to create my abstract tree. The purpose of this creation was to explore the theme of nature vs humanity as we as human are trying to cut down and destroy the nature around us to create an even more infrastructure obsessed world. I want to show this in my piece by incorporating both the sense nature being beautiful and abstract, however consisting a constant reminder of what may be lost in the future due to the polluted nature of our society. This piece took way longer then hoped however I think I manage to display my key concept well.
My main struggle point was the base of the tree as I wasn't sure where to go with this. My original plan was to cover the base in more pictures of infrastructure of the city however with a lack of time I had to come up with something else. I eventually settled with a blue card covering the base and sticking down brown carded shapes onto it. I chose this as it made the piece stick out more with its 3D effect. One thing I was disappointed about was the Lack of 3D effects with my sculpture. I should have arranged the branches into different places more or less close to the lens so it adds a broken or damaged effect to the tree which would link back to my key theme in my piece. |
Backgrounds
After completing the sculpture I wanted to change the backdrop of the tree to have surrounding similar to its meaning/purpose. So I thought it would look best to do this with the backdrop of nature and surrounded by trees similar to its purpose. I first chose to set my sculpture in front of a bigger tree to resemble the vast contrasts between our trees now and my symbolic one. I also thought this may evoke a sense of what our future trees might look like if we continue at the rate of deforestation currently.
My second backdrop was the sculpture surrounded by a bunch of previously cut down tree and I placed my sculpture in the centre of them. I did this to foreshadow our future, how our nature may soon be completely destroyed by infrastructure and urbanization. I then found a collection of branches and placed them inside my tree. I did this so that my piece could be seen as nature withstanding the test of time as the power of buildings and infrastructure will never be as powerful as nature. We live around the nature which holds power much greater than humanity can ever possess. I wanted to make it feel like we are intertwined with our surrounding and I think I did this wee for what I had around me however I would have liked to add more branches and possibly even some leafs.
If I was to change this I would want to change my surrounds more and bring my sculpture to different settings. This could be in a city centre backdrop or and forest/woodlands which I could show a contrast of the two concepts in my piece.
My second backdrop was the sculpture surrounded by a bunch of previously cut down tree and I placed my sculpture in the centre of them. I did this to foreshadow our future, how our nature may soon be completely destroyed by infrastructure and urbanization. I then found a collection of branches and placed them inside my tree. I did this so that my piece could be seen as nature withstanding the test of time as the power of buildings and infrastructure will never be as powerful as nature. We live around the nature which holds power much greater than humanity can ever possess. I wanted to make it feel like we are intertwined with our surrounding and I think I did this wee for what I had around me however I would have liked to add more branches and possibly even some leafs.
If I was to change this I would want to change my surrounds more and bring my sculpture to different settings. This could be in a city centre backdrop or and forest/woodlands which I could show a contrast of the two concepts in my piece.
This experiment of my symbolised construction of a tree was achieved on photoshop where I created a silhouette of my tree with a dense black colouring. This was achieved by using the selection tool to create and outline of my subject (the tree), then using the colour tool to change the colour to the densest black possible. I did this to highlight the foreshadowing of the loss of nature due to humanities destruction of it.
I think the dense black colour mirrors a sense of forgottenness as the tree has been masked by the darkness due to the black colouring. I chose to keep the background as the trees to contrast the the silhouette of the tree and make it apparent the message of disparity between the subject and the backdrop. This piece is very simplistic and didn't take much time to achieve however I think the message here is to show the destruction of our planet. Additionally to show how the tree is part of the community of other trees surrounding it and extracting that make us wonder how much worse could it get. |
After deliberating for a while of how to further develop these photos I chose to turn one into acetate and use the similar technique I used previous with my other acetate. These photos came out well as I was able to use my dads Canon camera which refined the photos well. I especially like the acetate on the wall as the circular window which was blacked out on the other side gave it a mysterious feeling of the unknown which I thought added to the picture.
Developments
Outcome 1
Outcome 2
Outcome 3
Outcome 4