I knew I would forget some things!

During the panicked blog post that I did last night, I missed out a couple of things, that I think I need to mention:

1. The size and presentation of the piece - smallish prints (7x5) ish max, white mount and white frames, hung close together in the order I have placed them (see last post).

2. Influences - as always I like to try and reflect on others work and for this piece, my nod goes to Paul Graham and his latest body of work 'The Present'. (Generally I like Paul Graham's work, especially his earlier images, but with these photographs I have to say I'm not that keen. I say this very quietly as I don't like to say that about people's work).

3. Thank you. Thanks #picbod for running this class; I've learnt such a lot and have been introduced to a plethora of other people's work, many of which I don't think I would have ever discovered for myself. In reality I would love to complete a degree in photography but at this moment in my life it is not a possibility. This class has given something to focus on and develop and for a small amount of my day I don't have to think about ......the washing, cooking, cleaning, spreadsheets, budgets, meetings, after school activities........

It remains for me to say thanks again and good luck to all the students who took the class.

Picturing the Body - An hour in the life of..........

It's my own fault for not reading the schedule, but I thought I had another week before I handed in my final piece for Picbod. Plenty of time I thought, until I realised that the piece had to be in this Thursday (8th). After a lot of swearing, I began to think of how I was going to complete my piece. I had just started to experiment with some street photography and had some ideas on how to develop the work after my last shoot, however time was of the essence and due to work and family commitments I knew I would not be-able to go into Nottingham to shoot again.

I had to make my pictures during a lunch break and it was by luck that today I could take my lunch break in Beeston (I'm not normally based there and had to go for a meeting). There is a 'famous' statue in the high street of a Beekeeper and I decided that my piece would revolve around him (he is a 'body' after all)

I set up my tripod (I wanted to keep a fixed position - well apart from when I kept knocking the tripod, which prompted more bad language) and fixed my focus on the 'Beekeeper'. I wanted to explore the interaction between myself, the public and the Beekeeper over a period of 1 hour. I envisaged that the piece would have at least 9 frames in it, as I wanted the viewer to experience those moments of time I had chosen to preserve. It was really interesting how the public reacted to me; some people went out of their way to ignore me, swerving at the last moment, others were not bothered and walked straight across the frame. Some people talked to me (it must have looked odd, a woman in a suit kneeling on the floor behind a camera!), others just stared. Unusually for me, I felt quite comfortable taking these images (not in the physical sense - my knees were killing), but I think this was because people thought I was taking pictures of the Beekeeper and not them.

Picturing the Body. An hour in the life of..........

Single images of the above can be viewed on my flickr stream (but my favourite of the lot has to be the middle one)

Exposure for these images became quite tricky, as the light changed so dramatically. I quite like the difference now, although at first I did want more of a uniform feel.

Am I happy with the final piece? Not really, I wish I could have spent more time exploring this, I have never taken, edited and pieced together photographs so quickly and I am sure I will look at this tomorrow and go ...'I wish I had'....., but its my own fault for not reading the timetable.

I am yet however to produce this in the physical sense and I'm thinking that I may show this to the Communications department of the Council I work for as they maybe interested in hanging it in our reception area?? (its worth a try any way)

and the 'street' goes on!

I had some really useful feedback from Jonathan on my last post;

"As you'll know, when we flatten the world with a photograph we make relationships that only exist at that moment using that lens from that point of view - so the background references the foreground"

My first set of images were indeed flat - there was no depth to my pictures, I had been so caught up in capturing anyone using a mobile phone, I had forgotten about the environment that they were in. The people had become lost and whilst I had made them the focus, it wasn't enough. Your eye  remained in one spot as there was no incentive for it to explore. (as it does in the case of Friedlander's photographs).

Jonathan recommended that I took a look at Peter Dench's and Nick Turpin's work, before I went out to shoot again. I did this but while I was at it also looked at the work of Matt Stuart, Paul Russell, Boris Savelev, Gary Winogrand, William Klein(to name but a few).

Boris Savelev
(I love this photographers use of light in his work - beautiful)

Whilst looking at other people's work is normally a source of inspiration to how I work, I found that this time it frightened me silly!! There is so much to think about, decisions to be made and all this in a split second. Normally at this point if things get or seem difficult, I would dump the idea but this time I've decided to continue on.

The first thing I changed on this second shoot was the 'theme', I found that I got so caught up on the mobile phone thing that I forgot about anything else. So I decided to photograph anything that caught my eye.

Confrontation

Suits

Greggs

Ok so here's a bit where I sound strange; normally I see my images in black and white (which is why I convert to mono) as looking at them in colour seems strange. On occasion I do 'see' colour - hence my images  from this shoot are a mix.

Push

I  experimented with reflections:

2 bears

stairs

Gallery

If I managed to get close enough to the people I was photographing I caught snippets of their conversation as we walked past each other and I have put together what I heard with the image that I made.

...'its all bullshit'...

...'excuse me, I'm late..'

....'it has to be this big..'

. These images (the rest can be seen on my flickr stream) are not the greatest pictures I have ever made, but the pieces of conversation that I heard as we passed has I think, added another dimension/interpretation  and is something I would like to try and explore further (although I'm not quite sure on the time frame for final piece submissions for the Picbod class??)

Any thoughts on a direction to go (reflections, conversation snippets) or something in my images that perhaps need addressing further would be most welcome.

Final Piece - First thoughts.

To be honest I've not given this final task much thought and I'm not completely sure what direction I'm going to go in. I've focused very closely on my family and my home/work environment and after the 'white shirt' incident of last week, I've decided that what ever I do, it will not be about my family.

To help get things going I decided to take my camera and have a walk round Nottingham to see if anything caught my eye. I really love in terms of style, what would probably be termed as 'street' photography with Lee Friedlander's work being some of my favourite (his ability to bring order to chaos is absolutely amazing).

Lee Friedlander - America by Car

Lee Friedlander

As I wondered around Nottingham I was struck by the amount of people who were either talking, texting or listening to music on their mobile phones - not interacting with the world or the people around them, so I began to photograph them. (It reminded me of Alex Harris's - Gameboy series.)

 Alex Harris - Gameboy Series

Initially I found the process difficult as I worried about people's reaction to be photographed, so I started by using my XA2 and phone. I hoped that by using these smaller cameras (which are not as obvious as my DSLR) would enable me to establish a 'flow' after which I could then move on to my larger camera.

Taken using my XA2 - (scan is not great)

 Taken on my phone

After an hour or so I began to feel more comfortable and decided to change cameras.

on a break

shopping

standing

Yawn

I like the concept that I have come up with and would like to develop it further (I would like to continue with the mobile phone concept, but would also like to explore the same idea but with people using cameras? Any ideas or advice from anyone would be useful.

One other thing - I need to get much closer and as Robert Capa said:

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough"

Lots more work to do here, but at least its a start. 

Final piece re-think after flickr incident

On Sunday I thought I had finished my final piece for the white shirt task. I posted 2 blog pages describing my thought processes and placed my images on flickr. In the morning I checked my flickr account and noticed that some-one had added my final piece as a favourite. I clicked the stream of the person that added my image and was confronted by something that frightened the life out of me.

The person (woman) that had placed my final piece as a favourite, was what I would call an extremist in her religious beliefs - the context and tone of her work frightened me not only as a photographer, but also as a mother. My final piece sat amongst other images which I found disturbing (showing other children in various states of distress, captions on photographs that stated because the way a particular child was dressed that one was good, the other not) This upset me so much that I decided to delete my photographs and take off my blog posts until I could think about what I wanted to do. I didn't not want photographs of my son viewed in that context, my work was never meant to reflect such extreme views and I was concerned that some-one had  misinterpreted  what I had produced - had I as a photographer finally pushed the boundaries too far?

My piece revolves around the 'naughty step' a technique that I use to install discipline with my children; the piece is meant to reflect the emotional process that my children under go whilst they are there. How did the white shirt fit in? My son has to wear one as part of his school uniform, so its part of our everyday life. The piece was 'staged' this is because I wanted an intimate  feel to most of the photographs and had I created images during an actual 'timeout' process there would have been no way I could have gotten so close. Time is an important part of this process, which is why the piece was called 'A minute for every year of his life' - but as I reflect on what has happened this narrative label must have only helped to add further fuel to the misinterpretation of my photographs.

The piece in question

To be honest after this incident I was almost ready to throw in the towel and not finish the course. I felt that I had not protected my son and that he was being misjudged by other people for an interpretation that I had created. I spoke to my husband who was really supportive, whilst he said that he was not keen on me capturing the more emotional outbursts of my children, he liked my work. He said that in the few years that I had started to take photography seriously, I had taken risks (he saw this in a positive way, as normally in the rest of life I am extremely cautious) he also said that photography for me was no longer about 'just taking a picture' that I am starting to see and work in a completely different way. He wanted me to continue; everything I did he pointed out, could be taken in a different context. If I wanted to continue with photography which I have found a real love and passion for, I would in many ways have to get use to this. So I have decided to re-post, all be it with a tweak.

I worried about posting this piece again, so I have decided to create a simplified version. I have also changed the title to 'Time out' which is much softer. I feel mad at myself in way for doing this, but I wanted to minimise any potential for misinterpretation.

Time out

Photography is so very subjective, which is what can make it great if the dialogue and discussion it promotes is treated with respect. Not everyone is going to agree as to a photographs interpretation, as that depends on a myriad of experiences and understanding that each viewer has and brings to the table.  (Like the winner of the World Press Award) I am happy to see debate regarding my work, I am happy for some-one to tell me they don't like it, but what I'm not happy about is the way that some-one has taken my work completely out of the context it was intended and used it so that it fits their own way of thinking.

Clothed body - White shirt Task - Initial thoughts and inspiration

Following on from from my exposure testing, I thought I had better work out the scenario for my white shirt.
It had to have a body, so immediately that limited it to my children ( I was away from work and my friends and some of my family refuse to pose for me) and the only time my children wore a white shirt was to school. So I then knew that my narrative would be based around their school uniform.

I decided to look at some other photographers work for some inspiration and came across the work of Duane Michals. He is best known for his use of photo sequences and whilst I'm not too sure on the images, I liked the narrative flow.

After some cake, a glass of wine and an omnibus addition of Coronation Street, I hit upon an idea which I briefly sketched out below. I'm in no way artistically gifted so please excuse the scribble, but it gives some idea of my thought process.

I liked the juxaposition of the white shirt (symbolically it could reflect goodness and purity) verus the notion of the naughty step, what had the child done to land its self there?

My initial thoughts were to set up the tripod and lock in one postion. The idea behind the shoot was to photograph one of my children as they moved about the frame, they would move but my camera position wouldn't, hopefully emphasising their movement.

The lighting for this first shoot wasn't particulary good (I wanted to use only natural light), yet I continued on any way. When I looked at the results I wasn't pleased.

• The pictures seemed flat, with no depth.
•  The hall bannister dominated the frame too much for my liking.
• The perspective is skewed due to my camera angle.
• There was no real emotion to the piece - tricky when you are working with an eight year old, even though we discussed what it was like to be sent to the stairs when he has done something wrong.

I liked the concept of my piece, I just need to adjust it slightly to see if I can get it to work.

Clothed Body task - Exposure testing

The task:

Take a white shirt, it can be any form of white shirt. It can be a £1000 Prada white shirt or a £1 t-shirt, the emphasis is on pairing the process down to it’s ‘bare-bones’.

Your direction then is to make a series of images using a white shirt and a body, exploring the relationship between the two and consider shape, form, texture and light. Consider the environmental context , what does that say about your shirt and subject? Does it reveal a fragility, a nervousness, a confidence, perhaps a dissonance?

OK so where do I start?

I wasn't sure what I was doing with regards the 'narrative' of piece, but I knew that photographing a white shirt was going to be a bit tricky (in terms of keeping the white shirt white - as it can very easily go quite dull depending on the lighting).

So for a bit of practise, I took my son to Wollaton Hall. I knew that what ever I ended up doing, I would be using natural light and the Hall has some lovely large windows which I could use for practise.

I was right, getting the shirt white without blowing the highlights or loosing some of the shadows was tricky. I had to overexpose, this varied but on average I ended up going 1 stop over. I don't think I did too bad a job, although I did have to tweak slightly still in Photoshop (which I hate).

This picture is my favourite of the bunch. I managed to keep the detail of the room without it loosing it, or it becoming too over powering. My son Alex, also said that this was his favourite and although he is only 10, to me here he looks like a teenager ( I think that's why he likes it). The shoot was really relaxed and we both enjoyed making these images.

Now I just had to think what I was going to do for the task?