During my time with component 1 I wanted to try new thing and test new ideas but also further develop each time to keep improving and refining my work. For my project our theme was constructed landscape which made me question the meaning of a constructed landscape. I started brainstorming my ideas in a mind map and just wrote down anything that came to my head at the time. This included cityscapes, nature, weather etc however my main focus then shift to a narrowed down sub-theme of nature vs city. The reason I chose to narrow this down was due to the broadness of constructed landscapes. So for that reason I wanted to shift my focus on a natural constructed mirrored with the cityscapes to express a contrast between the two. I also thought it would be interesting to incorporate these two constructs into one piece as there differing concepts also compliment each other in way too.
I chose to look at 3 photographers to start with as they all used very differing but interesting techniques to show there work which I wanted to incorporate in my work. The first photographer I chose to look at was Penelope Umbrico due to there work expressing many photographs with the same theme into one. His collages had a direct theme each time such as sunsets, planets and more. I found their work on the Thomas Tallis web page which had a selection of photographers but his work stood out to me. I also attempted to achieve a similar piece of work like his however I figure out how difficult it is to exactly fit all the images together in one image when you have to consider the length and width of each image. My second photographer was Sidonie Hadoux who used the ideas of using two images next to each other but having contrasting themes. I also found her work on the Thomas Tallis photography page but I thought her constructs would work perfectly when contrasting my themes of nature vs city. Additionally she also contrasted the colouring of the two images so she used black and white vs colour but also the arrangement of her images. She has some images smaller than the ones next to them and changes if they are landscape or portrait too. As I said this was perfect when contrasting the two theme I had picked as it showed that direct comparison I was looking for. My final photographer was Richard Long who was also found on the Thomas Tallis photography page again but explored more simplistic ideas than the others. With these pieces the main stand out was the lettering at the bottom of their photographs. With each photography he would put a little message or phrase which would solidify the true meaning of his photographs. I wanted to take this idea and use it as my own to but my own message. This unfortunately didn't work well and I didn't like the final product. With all of these artists I wanted to incorporate all of their ways of working and use it for my own collaborating them all together into one.
With my work I wanted to tackle the big ideas of humanity disrupting and destroying nature to build these cityscapes. I wanted to express how nature is constantly having to fight against humanities greed for wealth and has come at the cost of natures survival. Thats what I wanted my work to express awareness for natures destruction and how we need to reverse the damage we have done and try change our ways.
My experiments came in all different techniques as I really wanted to explore the different ways to construct my work. I used resources such as photoshop to refine some of my images and use for my collage which required me to try line these up correctly making sure I had correctly collated them together. I also used the darkroom in some cases to turn my acetates into negatives and positives to get direct comparisons with my work and experiment how this might affect my images. I also used cyanotypes which was one of my personal favourites as each time I created a new cyanotype new lines would develop changing the images each time. However my main way to experiment with my work was by hand. This was also my favourite way as I was able to have pretty much full control on how I am creating work and changing it each time. But one thing I would say was how I did struggle with making it look the best it could be. Many times my best work has come from photoshop as this was due to me being able to fix any thing I had done wrong however once I had done this by hand there wasn't much I could do to fix it.
Developing my work was one of my favourite aspects of component 1 as It gave me to freedom to change things that I didn't like very much or produces a new piece of work completely. I redeveloped my first experiment by reflecting the same collage against itself with a piece of card I found. This was simple and easy but I like how I could stand the two same image against each other similar to reflection on water. My second development of my experiment came from my photoshopped ghostly image which i wanted to turn to acetate. This experiment was the most successful I would say as This is what I later chose to use in my final project. What I wanted to achieve was the visions of the backgrounds being changing each time due to the lighting. I put the acetate on the window and photographed it at different times of the day to show this change in the background each time.
My final redevelopment of my experiment came with me creating a circular feeling as I rotated my images 90 degrees each time. I also used the same image again but stuck them together to give it that round structure. This again was really simple but I thought it came out well. However if I wanted to develop it even more I could have made a stop motion video to show a more continuous rotation instead of 4 separate images. The common theme with all my redevelopments was they were really quick to produce the work. It didn't take my long at all due to the concepts already made and all I had to do was refine them.
Throughout my project what changed was my desire to actually produce nice looking work and thought through to why I am doing what i'm doing. I really wanted to make focus on lining, tone, the contrasts and structure of my work so it had a true meaning behind it. I would say the main Tallis Habits which I have followed with my work is being imaginative and persistent. I think my ideas have been quite unique throughout and i've really tried to produce work that is different to anyone else no matter the challenges it might bring. That then leads me onto my next Habit of persistence with noT giving up on my work or ideas. Many times i've struggled with produce my ideas into reality however i've never given up and always tried to find a different way to resolve these barriers.
I have used my website as a way to communicate on my reasoning of why I chose to do what I did and what challenges I faced with my experiments. I also had the ability to document any pieces of work that didn't come out well and was able to show that not everything I did came out perfectly but I was also able to show off the work that did go well and document that too. I've also been able to document the main successful experiments on my Online Exhibition page were I can collate the successful piece more collectively instead of all cluttered in my main page.
My final outcome came from a quite unique and challenging idea of making a sculpture which is symbolic of a tree scattered with cityscapes on the branches of it. To cut it short it didn't really come out how I wanted it to but I also think it could have come out a lot worse. The problem occurred with how time consuming it became and meant I wasn't able to to finish the base of the tree how I wanted it too which result in it looking a bit out of place. I think it did show the theme of nature vs city being intertwined to show the power of nature over humanity however the base didn't follow the similar them so If I could go back I would have liked to add cityscapes to the base too. I then put the symbolic tree with many other really trees to show the comparison of the two themes even more. The final thing I did to my piece was turn one of the photos into acetate and link it back to an original experiment with the changing backgrounds and photoshopped it even more to show this changing dynamic. This personal project was quite personal to my life style too. As a teenager living in London with the looming fear of global warming and climate change due to industrial city like my own, I wanted to incorporate this into my piece in a certain way. Additionally due to my living in the suburbs of London it also means I am also exposed to a lot of open land and green space. This means I am directly in the middle of both seniors so I wanted to express this in my pieces too.
I'm hoping my viewers are able to look at my work and want to change the way we treat our environment and able to start questioning why urbanisation is slowly destroying our planet and how we can't just sit here and accept that.
I chose to look at 3 photographers to start with as they all used very differing but interesting techniques to show there work which I wanted to incorporate in my work. The first photographer I chose to look at was Penelope Umbrico due to there work expressing many photographs with the same theme into one. His collages had a direct theme each time such as sunsets, planets and more. I found their work on the Thomas Tallis web page which had a selection of photographers but his work stood out to me. I also attempted to achieve a similar piece of work like his however I figure out how difficult it is to exactly fit all the images together in one image when you have to consider the length and width of each image. My second photographer was Sidonie Hadoux who used the ideas of using two images next to each other but having contrasting themes. I also found her work on the Thomas Tallis photography page but I thought her constructs would work perfectly when contrasting my themes of nature vs city. Additionally she also contrasted the colouring of the two images so she used black and white vs colour but also the arrangement of her images. She has some images smaller than the ones next to them and changes if they are landscape or portrait too. As I said this was perfect when contrasting the two theme I had picked as it showed that direct comparison I was looking for. My final photographer was Richard Long who was also found on the Thomas Tallis photography page again but explored more simplistic ideas than the others. With these pieces the main stand out was the lettering at the bottom of their photographs. With each photography he would put a little message or phrase which would solidify the true meaning of his photographs. I wanted to take this idea and use it as my own to but my own message. This unfortunately didn't work well and I didn't like the final product. With all of these artists I wanted to incorporate all of their ways of working and use it for my own collaborating them all together into one.
With my work I wanted to tackle the big ideas of humanity disrupting and destroying nature to build these cityscapes. I wanted to express how nature is constantly having to fight against humanities greed for wealth and has come at the cost of natures survival. Thats what I wanted my work to express awareness for natures destruction and how we need to reverse the damage we have done and try change our ways.
My experiments came in all different techniques as I really wanted to explore the different ways to construct my work. I used resources such as photoshop to refine some of my images and use for my collage which required me to try line these up correctly making sure I had correctly collated them together. I also used the darkroom in some cases to turn my acetates into negatives and positives to get direct comparisons with my work and experiment how this might affect my images. I also used cyanotypes which was one of my personal favourites as each time I created a new cyanotype new lines would develop changing the images each time. However my main way to experiment with my work was by hand. This was also my favourite way as I was able to have pretty much full control on how I am creating work and changing it each time. But one thing I would say was how I did struggle with making it look the best it could be. Many times my best work has come from photoshop as this was due to me being able to fix any thing I had done wrong however once I had done this by hand there wasn't much I could do to fix it.
Developing my work was one of my favourite aspects of component 1 as It gave me to freedom to change things that I didn't like very much or produces a new piece of work completely. I redeveloped my first experiment by reflecting the same collage against itself with a piece of card I found. This was simple and easy but I like how I could stand the two same image against each other similar to reflection on water. My second development of my experiment came from my photoshopped ghostly image which i wanted to turn to acetate. This experiment was the most successful I would say as This is what I later chose to use in my final project. What I wanted to achieve was the visions of the backgrounds being changing each time due to the lighting. I put the acetate on the window and photographed it at different times of the day to show this change in the background each time.
My final redevelopment of my experiment came with me creating a circular feeling as I rotated my images 90 degrees each time. I also used the same image again but stuck them together to give it that round structure. This again was really simple but I thought it came out well. However if I wanted to develop it even more I could have made a stop motion video to show a more continuous rotation instead of 4 separate images. The common theme with all my redevelopments was they were really quick to produce the work. It didn't take my long at all due to the concepts already made and all I had to do was refine them.
Throughout my project what changed was my desire to actually produce nice looking work and thought through to why I am doing what i'm doing. I really wanted to make focus on lining, tone, the contrasts and structure of my work so it had a true meaning behind it. I would say the main Tallis Habits which I have followed with my work is being imaginative and persistent. I think my ideas have been quite unique throughout and i've really tried to produce work that is different to anyone else no matter the challenges it might bring. That then leads me onto my next Habit of persistence with noT giving up on my work or ideas. Many times i've struggled with produce my ideas into reality however i've never given up and always tried to find a different way to resolve these barriers.
I have used my website as a way to communicate on my reasoning of why I chose to do what I did and what challenges I faced with my experiments. I also had the ability to document any pieces of work that didn't come out well and was able to show that not everything I did came out perfectly but I was also able to show off the work that did go well and document that too. I've also been able to document the main successful experiments on my Online Exhibition page were I can collate the successful piece more collectively instead of all cluttered in my main page.
My final outcome came from a quite unique and challenging idea of making a sculpture which is symbolic of a tree scattered with cityscapes on the branches of it. To cut it short it didn't really come out how I wanted it to but I also think it could have come out a lot worse. The problem occurred with how time consuming it became and meant I wasn't able to to finish the base of the tree how I wanted it too which result in it looking a bit out of place. I think it did show the theme of nature vs city being intertwined to show the power of nature over humanity however the base didn't follow the similar them so If I could go back I would have liked to add cityscapes to the base too. I then put the symbolic tree with many other really trees to show the comparison of the two themes even more. The final thing I did to my piece was turn one of the photos into acetate and link it back to an original experiment with the changing backgrounds and photoshopped it even more to show this changing dynamic. This personal project was quite personal to my life style too. As a teenager living in London with the looming fear of global warming and climate change due to industrial city like my own, I wanted to incorporate this into my piece in a certain way. Additionally due to my living in the suburbs of London it also means I am also exposed to a lot of open land and green space. This means I am directly in the middle of both seniors so I wanted to express this in my pieces too.
I'm hoping my viewers are able to look at my work and want to change the way we treat our environment and able to start questioning why urbanisation is slowly destroying our planet and how we can't just sit here and accept that.