This video clip basically looked at the expressions of the poeple playing games, I wanted to experience how people react on some thing, because I was going to act and change my expressions for different reasons, I believe this video would help me alot in changing my expressions.
Reflection
In this post I will assess my project called Emotions and Memories. The project was part of my pathway module called Photography and Media under the M.A Communication, Culture and Media. Relating to my project, I shared it with my fellow classmates who gave me positive feedback when I explained my work to them and they really appreciated it. It was also great talking to the classmates on getting different ideas and how to display projects. The reason of making this project is because I wanted to be an example and motivate the other people especially the teenagers to have strong hearts, to respect others and to love the elders, this project also tells the audience of not giving up in front of different challenges. At some point this project also shows the different phases of life where one has to fight to overcome the problem. This story also tells the viewers that hard work is important if you want to reach your goal but most of all this photo film is dedicated to the people who also lost there loved ones.
Skills developed
Personally, I think the practical part of the project was a bit challenging especially when it came to the studio shoot as I am not someone who does studio shoots normally and prefer natural light, this was one the biggest challenges I faced but to overcome the problem I tried to do some research on studio shoots on the internet, watched tutorials online and saw some examples of the works photographers shared with the audience online. Secondly, I practiced in the studio with different lighting conditions and as I experimented with different lighting which included light settings, looking at shadows and so on, I also gained some knowledge about the whole concept of using the studio. This was also one of the reasons I didn’t want to do a studio shoot due to the less experience I had.
Another aspect that gave me difficulty was the editing process and selecting the images, basically this took most of the time as I had a large collection (120 images) and had to choose only 10 accordingly to the story I was telling which also confused me. Changing the original presentation idea from doing a gallery and speaking live to making a photo film was also hard due to the time I had. Coming to the technical aspects, I believe, I could have done more with the images if I had practiced more in the studio.
As this project needed good acting skills especially when it came to show the different emotions, I wasn’t confident but somehow came into the story and made it natural for the audience. Other than that, I learnt how photographers portray the subject using different styles of photography, in addition to this, doing this module and project helped me look at different artist which can be used in a different project.
As I am hoping to motivate other people, who will face such situations when growing up especially teenagers, I think it is good to share such stories with schools and educational charities. Talking to different people about my project left me confident with what I do, adding to that, photographing in a different style was a good experience and especially using the lights in the studio helped me do the project and will also be useful for me in the future as I want to be a photojournalist or a storyteller. Over all, I showed my feelings and shared a personal strong story which can help or motivate teenagers who aren’t confident due to the issues happen in daily basis all over the world.
“On the October of 2009, my mother’s travelling ticket was arranged immediately, I had an idea why she was going back to Pakistan leaving me, my younger sister and my dad. The next day, I had a cricket match with the two times champions, on that day I was sleepless.
At 8 o’clock in the morning I got ready while wearing my wrist band and at that moment I was asked by my dad if playing the match was important. I said yes confidently and started packing my cricket kit because this was a do or die match and I was so proud of being the vice captain of the team remembering only the best ones are chosen to be the leaders.
Reaching the ground, I was happy to see the boys doing some warm up exercises, after some time, the toss was done and we selected to bat first, I was so furious to see the other team and promised myself to give the best. While batting I kept on motivating the other batsman.
My team made a total of 138 runs, which gave me a Hope of winning the match. As we started bowling, the opponent team got out on 130 runs and I was surprised by the performance of the juniors. This made me realise hard work pays off.
Later on in the day, I went back home just to get a shock of every one wearing white clothes, I questioned myself, what does that mean?. Someone told me my grandmother had passed away. This made me sad and my expressions changed. I would have stayed back and prayed for my grandmother because for me elders are like shadows, there are always besides you and should always be respected. This taught me a lesson and should always think before you do something. I miss my grandmother’s stories and will always remember her. I won the game but lost some one special.”
“In this mini task, the students were asked to make a story using images to create a comical narratives”. For this task, I decided to do some thing different, I was basically taking photographs of squirrels in the park and thought I could bring up an imaginary story. The scene had both pigeons and squirrels adding to that there was a metal rail also. At the site, the pigeons were sitting on the metal rail where as the squirrels were playing around the metal rail, I imagined the pigeons to be the police and squirrels being the thieves. Using three images I made up a story and named it “Jail Break”.
Image 1
In image 1, I imagined the squirrel being behind the bars, here the subject was looking at the metal rails.
Image 2
In image 2, I imagined the squirrel coming out of the jail after breaking the metal bars.
Image 3
In the final image, I imagined the pigeon looking for the squirrel after the jail break.
For this task, basically I had to use a fast shutter speed because of the fast movement of the subject especially the squirrels, it was tough to capture them. Secondly, the position and angle was another important aspect again especially for the squirrels, the metal bars were wide open and the squirrels could enter in between easily therefore to make the story look natural and original, selection of angles and positions were very important.
Daniel Weinshenker has a different story but the concept of emotions and memories was the same, his story motivated me to tell my past at some point, Daniel’s work goes in a flow and it is simple to understand, he has used his past to tell a story, the similarity of my story and his is that they both have positivity and at some point, the stories show the dark side also. Secondly, I see two stories in one and so does mine. On the otherside, I question my self, who is the audience and why should the audience watch his digital story?. Personally, I believe Daniel has refreshed his memories from the past and maybe this makes him a stronger person.
In this post, I have selected a few photographs from Paul Burns collection done in the studio. Here I will challenege his work as I have disagreed with a few things considering to the technical aspects in photography.
IMAGE 1
Image 1 is a portrait of a child taken in the studio, the photographer decided to take a mid-shot, focussing on the face to bring out the expressions of the subject, here, we can see the background is white and over all the image has been changed to black and white and mostly having bright colors in it. The image is sharp and clear. Some how on the left side, the arm has been cropped but what disapoints me here is the colors used as the background has the same colors of the subject. The subject is blending with the background especially looking at the lower part of the image. I would appreciate it if the photographer had taken this shot on a black background as the subject was wearing bright colored clothes, in this the subject would have differentiated from the background and would be seen easily.
Image 2
Image 2 is a bit different from image 1. Image 2 shows a mother giving love to her child, this image is more natural because none of the subjects are looking at the camera, here we can see the bonding of a mother and child. As we can see the image is in black and white having a white background but what makes it different from image 1 is the dark and bright color combinations. In this image the subject is wearing dark colored clothes where as the background is white, this brings out the story of the mother and child. (love). In this image, I can see the connection due to the expressions as it is well detailed and focussed, but personally I would love to see the image in colored as I believe black and white suites sad and negative stories or images for example crying, fighting etc. After looking at these two images, the question I have is, does color matter to bring out the story? Does color selection make the image stronger?. In the end, its up to the photographer on how he creates the image but it is very important to explain what the image portrays at some point.
In the previous I have been looking at emotions and how I could tell a story using emotions. I love telling stories about my past and that helps me to motivate others. The big question I had was how can I motivate the young generation? and to do that the best was to be an example, what I normally do is to choose a phase of my past and share it with the audience. They are many stories to share but one of the strongest is about my Grandmother and my bonding with her and the passion I have for cricket.
“I won the match for my team and didn’t know I had lost my grandmother”
The first idea I had in my mind was to photograph my self out doors using natural light in different poses and emotions or reactions for example being sad, happy or furious. The emotions I wanted to show were, being sleepless, confident, proud, happy, furious, hope, surprised, sad, pray and miss. These emotions sum up all that happened and has a connection when I lost my grandmother in 2009. Here my plan was to take mid-shots of the body, this is because I was mostly focussing on the face to show the expressions of the subject and what he was wearing(clothes give a clue on what the subject was doing that day). Coming to the style of presentation of the project, I thought of mounting my images on a foam board and then sticking to the wall, so it was more of a gallery type. As I was using 10 images in total to tell the story, I thought of using A4 size for the prints, this is because I didn’t want to occupy a lot of space on the wall and wanted the audience to view the images closely from one to the other, basically the point was to bring out the story easily but seemed this project needed an explanation to the viewers. As this project needed an explanation from the creator, I basically planned to explain every image by talking live infront of the audience, this was a special project for me and I was not confident enough of talking infront of the viewers because this project was more of a personal one and emotional too.
Getting an idea, how it would look on the wall.
Secondly, when I did my shoot out doors, I noticed the background didnt match with the story I wanted to tell. In the background there was alot of destruction for example different colors shades and so on, which also didnt suite the subject. Adding on this, I noticed the subject was not coming out of the background technically which was a big issue for me.
This meant I therefore had to develop my idea, still staying with the same concept, after dropping the first idea, I went back and looked at more photographers so that I can get an idea on how to continue my project. After looking at many photographers on the internet, Paul Burns, a portrait photographer inspired me. For more information on Paul Burns please visit his website http://www.paulburns.co.uk/index.php
looking at Paul Burns portrait works, I thought this was better for my project rather than doing an outside shoot. So, basically I came up with my final idea here, the only thing which changed was the background although I thought of other things which I will add in my blog later on, my idea was to use a black background because I wanted to show the subject from the background, and there was a color contrast also as the subject was wearing bright colors where as the background was in dark shades, let me make this clear, only one image was not taken in the studio, the image which repressented the emotion sleepless, this image was taken in my room. Continuing the project, I thought of making some of the images in black and white depending on the emotions used. The reason why I wanted to make the images in black and white is because I believe black and white can work best with sad images for example crying although others may not agree. As I was confident with the studio shoot, I came back and changed my mind for the style of presentation.(reason explained above). The best option for me was to do a digital presentation instead of speaking to the audience. As a story teller, the main point is to spread the message to the audience and what they learn from the story told, but on the other side it is very important to select the best medium suited for the story. In my case, I believed a photo-film would work best, so for the final idea, I wanted to make a photo-film. There was no point of just adding images in a film with out a voice, so to support the images I planned to record my voice using my nexus 5 smart phone. please note, the images and my voice go with a flow. For me, I believe the narration should be strong with the rules of having a “starting, middle and an end”as I can connect to David Campbell who tells the audience that, “the event is not what happens. The event is that which can be narrated”.(https://www.david-campbell.org/2010/11/18/photography-and-narrative/) I personally wanted to bring my feelings out and wanted my story to be as natural as possible, for this I wrote down the story and would imagine my self speaking it to the audience.(story will be added on the blog later on). At this point, I can not assure the audience on the timing of the whole photo-film but expected it to be around 2 to 3 minutes in total. As this project is connected to my past and emotions were used, I titled the project “Emotions and Memories“. The emotions are about the feelings as the memories talk about the past. Adding to this idea, I was planning of adding background music to support the audio, but noticing one thing, I wanted the audience to feel my voice, so I removed the background music because it was mixing with the audio. I thought of keeping it natural.
video
Basically this video was my final piece but I disagreed some how on the image sequence or arrangement, Looking at the story line and the images, for me it was to clear and straight forward for the audience, the images and the audio were in a flow which was too simple to understand. After looking at the simple flow, I thought of changing some things but keeping the same images and the audio. I wanted the audience to gain more interest and think what is next?. For that, my idea was to change the image sequence from a flow with the audio to a random one, basically this brings some more suspense in the story and forces the viewer to think more, secondly I wanted to keep the same timing of all the images, the reason for this is because the audience can have more time on looking at the emotions and actions of the subject. In addition, I also added a comment at the end of the video giving a message to the audience. The final video will be uploaded on a another blog post later on.
This task is about text and images! In the coming days, we are doing a studio shoot and will have to use text and images in all together. The topic will be, “what am i?”. This means, personally we will be wearing what we want to be. Basically, this topic will help us make our final project….
Title.
Stand and Hit.
“I played cricket since childhood, what I enjoyed the most was batting, my job was to open the batting and hit runs as much as possible, my nature was different, I didnt like running between the wickets, my plan was to stand and hit, if i missed the ball it made me furious and angry on the ground, I kept my eyes wide open and concentrated on the ball”.
The Image shows a mid-shot portrait with a black background, the photographer focussed at two main things, first the expressions of the subject and secondly the clothes of the subject, these two elements told the story of the photograph. The viewers can see the serious face of the subject in sports wear. To make it more intense I then changed the image into black and white. Another reason was, i wanted to light up the face and the lines on the clothes, in other words these two focussed parts stand out from the background.
Basically, we were given 35mm cameras and were diveded into two groups, our main objective was to get basic information about the 35mm cameras and how to shoot them, other than that we were allowed to use the darkroom and learn the developing process of the film. As a group we were asked to look at four major aspects. The first one was Technique which included slow shutter speed, depth of field, available light and trying a light meter, secondly, we looked at the angles which also included above your head, get somewhere high, get down low, thirdly, we took note of the composition, where we had to shoot on half body, as close as possible, hidden in the shadows, rule of thirds and lastly we looked for text, organic, finding a pattern and an object that we can find every where. We finally had to combine some of these elements above.
Photographs. please note. images not in there original color and size.
talhaphotography 