Demonstration of technical and visual skills
I continued to try out various techniques throughout this assignment. I started out using hand held with zoom lenses, playing around with compositions, moving on to on-board flash trying out different moods.
Although I wanted to capture everyday scenes around my home I needed to ensure that I removed any distractions that may have impacted the reading of the image.As a result the scenes were staged to a certain extent but there was no major re-arrangement of rooms. An additional issue arose due to it being December, resulting in decorations going up at a surprising rate around the house.
My major influence for the wider room scenes was Nigel Shafran’s Washing -Up series. He had stated in an interview that the things around the edges added interest so I was comfortable with some of the miscellaneous items being in the frame.
This was my first proper ‘indoor’ assignment and I struggled with some of the shots, in particular the twitter tablet shot. This room was fairly dark in the corner where I required the bookshelf in the background. The brightness of the transmitted light from the device contrasting against the subdued natural light of the background made this a challenge. I had several attempts at setting this up, including bringing in a fill light, but I am still not happy with the result.
Quality of outcome
I have a concern with the final production quality of the eBook and the variations across platforms meaning the viewing experience is out of my control. However, I feel this highlights the nature of new technology where the rate of change in technology leads to incompatibility between hardware and software…and user!
This was my first experience of producing an eBook which has been frustrating at times especially when trying to use free and open-source tools. It has still been worth doing and I am confident that it was the right presentation choice for this assignment.
Once again I have spent a lot of time reflecting on my decisions and given the idea a chance to develop. Once I was happy with the individual images I spent a week on the final presentation and engrossed myself in the options and settings of the eBook. One example being the background, where I have settled on a wood grain effect to represent the diary sitting on a table or desk. The wood grain also complements a lot of the furniture around my home. I feel that this level of thought and detail adds a level of quality to the final submission.
Demonstration of creativity
The eBook offers an interactive experience allowing the viewer to flip back and forth studying aspects of the images not seen initially. Obviously a printed book would offer higher production values and a full control of the final image but would not be in-keeping with my narrative of analogue to digital.
The layout and aspect ratios of the images was a stumbling block as I wasn’t sure I had the experience and good judgement to make these decisions. Paul Graham’s layouts for Shimmer of possibility were well considered but I was concerned mine would end up looking a little haphazard. By choosing aspect ratios matching the old media gave me confidence that I had the basis for a decision making process. The orientation decisions were consistent across each set where the wider angle (first and last images of each set) were landscape, the close-up images were portrait. Obviously this does not impact the 1×1 image set.
The ordering was important to the ‘cadence’ of the series: three from the same story; introduce a new a story; add the ‘end’ image of the previous story to the middle of the current story; The final image of the series leaves the story unresolved and is positioned on a double page spread next to a blank page ready for the next diary entry.
Sizing of the images was the next creative choice and I chose sizes that gave the page layout a scrap-book informal feel which relates to the look of a diary. My tendency was to align things consistently so it was a struggle to get the balance right.
One of my earlier versions moved the whole series forward 1 page so that the double page spreads showed images from 3 stories rather than 2. This version became too confused and the stories became muddled. The images lost their impact and were stronger with 3 together across a 2 page spread. I thought placing a single image on one page to introduce a new story worked well with regard to representing the start of a new day in the diary.
Context
Capturing the mundane was a key device to conveying the day to day life of a mature, distance learning, art photography student. The artist I used to kick off the assignment was Nigel Shafran, not only his Washing-Up series, but some of his bookshelf and empty container series. I was quite critical of this work when I initially wrote about it in the coursework exercise. However, by trying this style out for my assignment I have learnt to understand and acknowledge other levels that can be conveyed by an artist.
Abellardo Morell provided more examples of taking photos from around the home, although his were in black and white as I feel he was attempting to have them accepted by the art world. There was obviously a lot of staging and careful consideration to lighting in the Childhood series and as a result I do not consider these to be mundane.
Paul Graham’s Shimmer of Possibility was another influence due to the use of multiple shots of the same scene. Although this series is a street photography/documentary piece it shows the use of photography in replicating the stages of a viewers gaze. It is also a good example of the use of ‘cadence’ and the way a book can control the way a series is viewed. I have attempted to use these ideas in the eBook that I have produced for this series.
Martyn Rainbird 