For my final outcome, I want to experiment by grouping photographs together, there will be a main theme between all the photos. I intend to use close-up abstract photos to fill a grid, this creates an interesting and visually appealing outcome, and this works well for my project as the build-up of colours and sharpness of the lines and shapes, ultimately helped me show the more mundane features of my car and alter them so they work well in a photo and then in a grid.
Using a triptych or a diptych, to include elements of my personal investigation really interested me as the grid-like layout was able to show multiple photos at once which linked well to observations of everyday life, I also thought that the pictures I chose to put in the grids represent my other project of artificial coloured lights as they all contain a mix of different coloured vibrant lights.
PRESENTING A MULTI-IMAGE OUTCOME
These photos all include cars in a grid-like pattern, which spaces aspects of the photo out to allow for differentiation between the individual photos, this idea was interesting because at first, I wanted to make up a car out of photos of smaller fractions and aspects of a car itself.
Deconstructed Car Grids
Making the grid
In this screen grab you can see the measurements of the margins and how I spaced out each photo to create part of my final outcome grid. I chose to do 3 rows as it looked tidier and I was able to place each photo containing the same colour further away from each other to make the grid draw your eyes to different parts of the outcome.
Exterior
This was the original grid of photos I had made using Lightroom, I cropped them to focus on the lines and shapes but also the vibrancy of the colour, I made them all a square crop to fit them in the grid, and this also allows for me to zoom in on parts I find interesting.
WWW- these photos contain a vibrant blue colour, making the photo stand out and being eye-catching. I also like how the lines and shapes make up the photo and do transform it into something that makes the viewer question what it is they are actually looking at because at first glance it may not look like a car.
EBI- These photos are not the best ones I took from my projects, and after framing them I did start to think they looked a bit boring, to replace this outcome I will experiment with photos I took using multiple coloured lights to light up the interior features of my car. The spacing between each image is too much so I would like to reduce the white space between to make the grid seem more like one big photo.
Engine
WWW- These photos all focused on the mechanical elements within my car, once making them into a grid they all looked like one big engine even though they are pictures of smaller aspects and parts, I think the grid formation works well for these photos as it acts as a jigsaw and has small parts making one big photo. After my grid containing blue photos I decided to make the spaces in between each photo smaller so reduce the amount of white space in the photo.
Frames here
Multi Coloured Lights
WWW- In all of these photos the dark background makes the coloured lights stand out more, to help me choose the colours I looked into colour psychology which also included the colour wheel which enlightened me on which colours worked well together and complimented each other. Colour psychology helped me with the refinement of my final outcome.
Evaluation
AO1
During this project, I have looked at several artists, during ‘Observations of Everyday Life’ I looked into William Eggleston, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Niall Mcdiarmid and Peter Fraser after this I also looked briefly at a few photos taken by Paul Strand and Walker Evans. However, in ‘Artificial Coloured Light’ I looked into work done by Lewis Baltz, Juan Orrantia and Ryan McGinley.
William Eggleston and Peter Fraser- I found them when I was looking for photographers who looked into colour in a natural environment and that hadn’t been manipulated to fit the photo criteria better. I also found Fraser when I was completing an old project ‘The camera doesn’t take the photo’.
Albert Renger-Patzsch and Niall McDiarmid- I found these photographers when I was looking for artists who take simple compositions and include a variety of subtle colours to add to the aesthetic.
Lewis Baltz- I found Baltz when I read a News Article from the Guardian that illuminated his work with coloured lights and lively compositions.
Juan Orrantia- After researching colour in nature, I found some of Orrantia’s bright compositions of plants he found that contained the most vibrant, highly toned colours.
Ryan McGinley- I looked into Slow-sync Flash and the first few photos that came up were the work of Ryan McGinley, he incorporated compositions that were full of life and stories.
After looking into so many artists, I have learned so many different techniques each from a different photographer, one specific technique I learned was from Peter Fraser, the use of shades when working with colours and then the distance at which you take the photo from, when you are close up it emphasizes the difference in colour whereas when you are further away from the object you only see subtle differences, nothing drastic.
Themes control the photography produced by an individual, although I had multiple themes occurring at different points over this project, one that is always visible in my photos is colour, colour as a theme has no specific limit, you can take the theme and complete endless photoshoots showing different sides to one word.
After choosing colour as the continuous theme for my project, I felt excited to see what work I could complete to fit the theme, i wanted to challenge myself and step out of my comfort zone to find unique compositions but also keep it to fit me as a photographer. Although both of my projects were fun to complete, lighting my car up with LED wands and a Galaxy Projector I felt excited to continue taking photos that are similar to these and see where I could end up with my photos. I first used my car to photograph the simplicity of my bonnet, and then I looked into Lewis Baltz and tried to find ways to merge the two ideas to create an idea that worked for my project and for me.
AO2
After discovering my theme, I experimented with different types of photography whilst using different equipment. Throughout this project, I attempted photos accompanied by a flash gun to add a vibrant hue to cover a mundane setting, i also used a tripod to help stabilize the camera as I took photos of my car which included me using another type of equipment known as an LED wand that lit up the whole frame with a mix of corusicating colours. Using this equipment helped me express my ideas and made them come to life, this was backed up by my photos as they had fulfilled what I wanted them to end up looking like. I used Mind Maps and collages to help me construct a plan for my future photoshoots and other parts of my project, this helped me keep a plan in mind of what I wanted to complete by the end of the project.
To refine my photography in ‘Artificial coloured light’ I looked into ways to manipulate factors affecting the visual aspects of my photos, for both projects I first tested out how close the camera was to the object when taking a photo and I found that being closer to the object and focusing on finer details made the photo more abstract and could leave the viewer guessing. After this, I tried manipulating the lighting by trying different levels of brightness and different types of light, i really enjoyed experimenting with LED wands and my galaxy projector as they both emit a light that fills the allowed space it is in. This experiment really stood out to me, so I continued this to create outcomes within the coloured light aesthetic. Whereas for ‘Observations of everyday life’ I kept my photographic techniques very simplistic, I used natural lighting and natural compositions, which represented what my project was about and the story I was trying to tell through it. The stages throughout developing my work for this project weren’t overly obvious, the main changes were the subjects of my photos, the natural essence of the trees and simplistic photos made the aesthetic continuous throughout all my work until I moved on to photographing my engine.
I think throughout my projects the change in compositions made it easier to get inventive with new contrasting ideas for future photoshoots, this worked well because it helped me enter a new area within my own photography that also helped create a new style of photography that still was able to fit in with my aesthetic and project. I found small aspects of my project challenging, researching photographers and finding in-depth detail doesn’t come naturally to me so I would definitely need to work more on this within both projects. My investigation developed as I did as a photographer, as I became more confident in myself when working with a camera I realized my work had become more defined and to the point. A lot changed within my investigation, I started taking photos using a camera, but later realized my phone was a better camera as I have it on me all the time, so when I see those small details I think fits my project I can photograph them and refine them accordingly. These changes helped make me feel at ease when completing my work as the photography I have completed felt at a higher level and more aesthetically pleasing than what I completed at the start of my project, this made my responses sound more intellectual and more aimed to certain details within a photo.
AO4
For this project, my final outcomes are two grid-like templates made up of photos containing mechanical parts from my car and another containing photos of my car’s interior being lit up by multiple coloured LEDs. Originally my outcome was a grid of close up photos of my car but after I put it in the frame I felt I could refine it further.
I was hoping to have a clean-looking grid formation made up of interesting photos involving bright-coloured lights on boring compositions, this was my main goal for this project but my thoughts for my final outcome only started after I started taking photos with dark backgrounds and 2 different coloured LEDs. Once I started visualising what I wanted it to look like I started working on choosing the photos that fit best with the aesthetic, after I did this I started to arrange them in the grid and moved some around so that it wasn’t blocks of colours it was more spread. Whilst completing this my success criteria was being able to photograph the finer details of an object such as my car but also highlighting the vibrancy of the colours, however, since taking these photos I felt my success criteria changed and I wanted to go on to photograph the artificial lighting in a smaller more contained environment.
My theme was artificial lighting and observations of everyday life, I drive every day so being able to combine these two themes and explore them thoroughly made me feel that I had successfully found a common ground between both themes and combined them into one to create my final outcome. However I could contradict myself and say my final outcome only covered one-half of my project as it is mainly focused on artificial coloured light and not so many observations of everyday life as not everyone can drive daily.
My work is personal because I focus on things that interest me and work them into the theme I chose, I did choose to focus on things such as bright coloured lights in a car because I had been learning to drive and having got my first car I did want to incorporate it into my work and show it off. I also focus on vibrant colours in natural environments which adds to how personal my project and outcome are, as one grid contains a mixture of vibrancy and colours.
Once seeing my outcomes I hope viewers see how interested I am in cars and how lighting can affect the composition as a whole, i would also like to be able to show viewers how a variation of angles and depths can change how an outcome looks and how different ways of presenting can change the whole perspective.
if i had been given more time with this project i would have liked to have tried more flash gun photos where the whole photo is distorted with a different colour taking up the frame and would’ve tried using different colours to change how the environment i am photographing looks.