Evaluation
A01
Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.
During the course I have explored the work of many artists who include: Anna Atkins, Edward Muybridge, Pablo Picasso, Jaromir Funke, Ralph Eugene Meatyard for inspiration but also just out of curiosity to see how different photographers work. One artist who I find particularly interesting is Ralph Eugene Meatyard. His image distortions are very abstract and they communicate a feeling of coldness and the unknown which I tried to include in some of my images for the abstraction project. I found out about him through my teacher who said he has some interesting images of nature. One example which stood out to me was the long exposure of a tree in black and white. It looks as if it is shaking and is one of a series called ‘Motion Sound’. I think the photographer is trying to suggest the idea of sound through the vibration of the image. Although I have looked at other artists his interest in disguise and distortion has had the biggest influence on my own work. This is the reason for my final image for the abstraction project being black and white. I wanted to draw attention to contrasting tones without the distraction of colour. His work gave me a different outlook on photography and i’m prepared to use some of his techniques in future work.
A01
Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.
Throughout the whole of the unit 1 I have looked at many themes and subjects. In the abstraction part of the course I have looked firstly at two of the formal elements line and light. I thought that my light set came out a lot better than my line set and I found the theme of light very interesting and I used a similar theme in my final piece. Also although my main theme was light in the set I played around with focus which I realised I wanted to include along with light. I have experimented with shadows and focus in nature to obtain two photo sets which I could compare and see how to improve them. I eventually rejected the nature images to concentrate on images inspired by Ralph Eugene Meatyard in terms of focus and Jaromir Funke for shadows. My teacher informed me of these two photographers who I both really liked. I mainly used ideas influenced by Jaromir Funke in my final piece. My final piece consisted of about 15 pictures of man made shadows on the wall of my bedroom decided that man made would look better than natural as the outcomes are more abstract and you can be really creative. I brought my camera into school so I could edit the photos in photoshop, I change the contrast and made them black and white. This was because black and white are contrasting colours so the shadows really stand out. However I did not crop them in photoshop to a square which was quite irritating however once they were printed I realised I could cut each rectangle into 2 right angle triangles. This had a more abstract look than a square and you can make lots of patterns out of it. I didn't actually get this idea from a artist I came up with it myself, I was very happy with the final outcome and it lots of the ideas from it where from Jaromir Funke, the main criticism I have is there was some air bubbles under the final image so it wasn’t very finesse.
A02
Experiment with and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining work as it develops.
In unit 1 there have been involved many experiments with the various techniques and processes. Firstly near the beginning of unit 1 we used the darkroom to create the cyanotypes and photograms however the first main decision we had to make was how long we wanted it to be exposed to the light. This is because different amounts of light cause different outcomes on the paper whether you want a faint image or the objects to be really clear on it. Also the amount of chemicals applied to the paper would determine had the image looked so you would have to be careful not to ruin the image. Then later in the course when we were doing light paintings depending on how long you kept the light in a certain place the light will be more prominent on that place however going to fast leads the picture to look messy. I then realised that going at a controlled pace would give the best results for light photography which gave us better results than other attempts. In multiple image GIF’s were created lots of times and experimented with them there were two main problems we encountered these were the speed to put the pictures together and how many to use. I found out it is better to use more images therefore the transitions between the pictures was more fluid and each GIF will either run fluid or the jumps between images e.g someone transporting will look smoother.
A04
Present a personal, informed and meaningful response demonstrating critical understanding, realising intentions and, where appropriate, making connections between visual, written, oral or other elements.
Each personal project had a slightly different outcome for my personal project 3: multiple images I decided to make a narrative sequence. Throughout the development of my third personal project I decided I really liked narrative sequences. It’s because it tells a story through a photograph which i find fascinating, this was the main reason that I wanted to continue research into it. Also my research photoshop skills are quite bad therefore I decided it was not best to choose multiple exposures and I could not make images with decent exposures. When I decided I was going to create a narrative image for my final piece I wanted to have a lot of images so I would have the same feeling as a story therefore I decided I wanted somewhere between about 20 and 40. From this idea I then decided to have a family member in the sequence because I wanted it to be more personal and I also had it around where I live. The idea was someone who smokes quitting smoking, overall i was quite pleased with the outcome however not all the lines where measured so somewhere slightly out of place and when i tried to trim the edges it went very bad. But I got some assistance and managed to sort out the lines and I feel it was an effective narrative sequence. Then when I got to the end of abstraction I realised I wanted to have a image based around shadows influenced by the work of Jaromir Funke. I was really fascinated about his work which made me want to incorporate it into my final piece. Originally my i started with light which progressed to shadows and focus. The final project was not really planned very well so the presentation was a bit scruffy with air bubbles underneath many of the pictures. However the actual end product of the picture I was very pleased with it I as I had a geometric shape to it. It represented my photographic interests as I like when photos are planned and have a structure behind them.