Supportive
Something New
To start the year, we were asked to try something new, something we had never tried or attempted before. Packaging was something I had only briefly looked at and had enjoyed very much. I felt that although this was not completely new to me, it was a chance to re-visit it and try again. I like things that are made by hand as they have a personal, unique touch and i felt that this was something i wanted to try. After seeing some of the complex things and ideas people had come up with, I felt as though I played it safe and kept things very simple without taking risks. People tend to produce better work outside their own comfort zones and I find that this is the case with me so making an invitation was probably the wrong decision. I have always enjoyed making things by hand but felt I could have pushed this a lot furthur, had I used less conventional designs and been more creative.
London Living
After a talk with Luke, I realised, that living in London, i’d never used the city as a location to focus my ideas on. My daily routines envolve taking the same routes to the same places all the time, with no variety or spontineity. This means I dont see certain things, even though they are there and I have always known they are there. So I decided to go out with a camera and take a closer look into minor details along my journeys. The two images above are places I go by on a daily basis and just taking a closer look has really opened my eyes. The shop on the left is called costless and for years, due to the fact that the colours and font are the same, i thought it was a Costcutter. The image above does not appear to be much but the exciting thing about it to me, is that there is a story behind it. It lets the mind wonder as to how those few bricks became painted and none of the others did.
London Living These photos were all taken in different places but all show the same thing. The more I looked at type in London the more mistakes and damage I would see. The image on the left has obviously had the letters fadded away to a certain extent, however, the beauty of it is that we are still able to understand and see what it is they are selling so the sign in itself has no real significance. In places like markets type is not as essential as it may seem, giving the owners the ability to leave these errors untouched. The photo to the bottom left caught my eye when walking down the high street in Shepherds Bush. There is almost a sense of Irony when looking at it as some of the letters have begun to come loose and you almost have to focus your eyes even harder to make out the words of this optitions. Also i felt it was very basic and literal having an eye just ‘Bang in the middle’. Seeing images like this helps my mind work as I always question how I would have done things differently to make it not necesarily controvertial but definately more appealing. I took a photo of the sign below because out of all the things I saw that day, this was the least legible. Too much had been removed or worn away to even know the name of the place. It made me think of the dificulties people face when delivering around these places and how the letters disappeared in the first place.
London Living
3 Minute Hero The 3 Minute Hero brief was a chance for us to do anything we wanted too for three minutes. This was very exciting as the video could have any outcome immaginable and the only boundary was the time. Having said this, with endless possibilities I found it hard to brainstorm and come up with realistic ideas that could be recorded and edited within a week. As I had never made or edited a film, my first decision was to make the video in one shot with the minimal amount of cutting and editing needed. I decided to focus on the relationship between image and type, connecting them through a piece of music. I think the video was successful and the image and type work well together with neither overpowering eachother. It felt refreshing to go outside and work instead of being stuck infront of the computer. If I was to do another three minute video I would go into it with a lot more confidence and would spend less time thinking and more time doing.
Areas of Proposed Investigation
When it came to choosing five areas to investigate, I didnt know where to begin. I wanted to try new things but at the same time do things that I felt confident and confortable doing. The five ideas were; 1.Photography 2.Branding/Packaging 3.Short Films 4.Advertising 5.Signage and visual communication I felt like these were all fairly broad and a wide vareity of different medias.
Signage and visual communication
For this I wanted to look at signs and type but not necessarily in London. I found it very difficult to come up with ideas on how I could make a series of my own and so I spent a lot of time researching and comparing signs in different countries. In hindsight, a lot more thought could have gone into looking at signage, not only envolving type, but also imagery. Even though I do not feel as though this was time wasted, it could have been better spent and planned out.
Signage and visual communication When researching signage I came across a selection of public toilet signs that I found very interesting. They all share the comical effect they have as public toilet signs are just a small piece of information which is like no other.
Short Films
After the 3 Minute brief, I wanted to push foward with this idea so i experimented with various techniques. The idea was to do a time lapse out of my window. With this video, I had high expectations having seen similar things already done. The video, however, did not come out well as nothing much happens. The idea was to be able to see the clouds moving rapidly through the sky. Even though i sped up the video, I did not record for a substancial amount of time for the video to look interesting. Visually it is not very intersting at all but in the bottom right corner cars can be seen moving fast giving away that it has been sped up. If i was to repeat this I would have to record for a longer period of time and maybe choose a slightly busier location.
Short Films
Here I felt that I wanted to re-visit using words and image together. This video is very similar to the 3 Minute hero but the location and environment has changed a lot. I feel it works well but weather conditions gave me a limited amount of time to do it. I feel as if the video gets lazier and lazier the more it goes on even though that was not the way it progressed. If I caught all the lyrics to the song, in the video, it would have left no room to capture the surroundings. I chose to use the first half to follow lyrics and the second to capture the unfamiliarity of the environment.
Short Films
In this video, I wanted to show how some people live happily with the simplest of things. I took a series of photos in quick succession in the little villiage where i spent Christmas and added words to it to compare how others live around the world. Im not to sure on weather or not I like the final outcome. Having spent all my childhood summers here on holiday, it is hard for me to view it as an outsider who doesn’t understand what it is like.
London Busses After a few days of having my mind blank, I decided to go out and photograph busses. This turned into a small self-directed project where I tried to get numbers one to one hundred. It was not difficult at all, just time consuming. When I began, there was no real thought of where this was going but after some thought I came up with the idea of having a guide book with the routes the busses take alongside the photos. It was a stressful and tiring experience but at the same time enjoyable as I got to see parts of London I had never seen before.
Image Manipulation Having previously enjoyed the photography so much, I decided to focus on that and see where it would take me. Having descovered some new techniques I tried to play around and experiment with image manipulation. I found that light was a great way to manipulate images so most images had to be taken at night or in a dark enclosed space.
Image Manipulation
After having posted some of my manipulated images on my blog, I was contacted by a new media student who was doing something similar. He was looking at current events and with the student riots in full swing we decided to go and take some controvertial photos around London. For me, these were not part of any project, but just furthur experimentation to help me understand more about the photography I was doing.
These images were produced by cutting out stencils and holding them completely still whilst shining light behind them. This was done by leaving the camera shutter open for long periods of time, however, we had to act fast as the longer we stayed in the shot, the more we would appear alongside the images. Although for me, this was not pushed furthur, it was good to work with someone else with a similar thought process and it helped me to understand minor details that I did not quite capture the first time round..
Image Manipulation
Image Manipulation
I feel that the lights in these images work really well together. It is as though even if the image is very out of focus and blurry, the characteristics still shine through to help distinguish what the photos are of. I have also began to look more at cars and moving lights and speed. I have began to also edit the images on photoshop to try and bring out purer colours.