My Aunty and Uncle wearing Punjabi dress on wedding
Me wearing Shalwar Kamiz,my traditional and cultural wear,I always wear Shalwar Kamiz on religious occasions or other cultural meetings.
The ideas and development of my work.
Before i chose my final theme called cultures and religions,i had other ideas in my mind.
My first idea was to talk about racism and its affects in the environment I stay.by use of photography I wanted to show the disadvantages of racism and hatred of people against the different races and cultures.
My secound idea was about sterio types,my plan was to photograph a specific group of people who belief some thing special about other types of cultures or individuals.
My third idea was to photograph a specific type of religion or culture in the enviroment,i thought of expanding my project and thought of combining all the ideas together,in a way to make them one theme(similar) and then I titled my theme ‘Cultures and Religions’
why cultures and religions?
I chose this theme because they are important and they make the society unique,Cultures and Religions are important because they bring the community together as well as bring the foundation of moral values.Not only bringing the community together,cultures and religions bring individuals together and people can learn how other people behave in there cultures.Cultures and religions play an important role in shaping the principle of the individual’s life,they give its people a character of their own.
I planed to look at photographers who were interested in taking photographs relating to cultures and religion,I thought of writing a small biography about the photographers in my sketchbook,doing additional research I used magazines,journals,internet and books etc and scanned some of the pictures relating to my theme as well as cutting out pictures from different medium for example magazines,leaflets,journals etc
My next step was to photograph using the Black and White film,using the darkroom I had to print out the photographs and select the top ten for my portfolio while sticking the other pictures in the sketch as supportive work.
I planed to use white hard paper,for mounting each of my photographs(top ten),as I believe in good presentation.
Mistakes and Problems.
NOTE:I believe mistakes are part of the work and we learn from our own mistakes.When we get problems while doing the project we learn how to overcome the problems.
while doing my project I had got some problems,i had a problem with photographing the religious places and the people,for example in the mosque,I had photographed the people around not knowing I was not allowed to photograph the faces of the people at any time,the reason behind this was ‘we humans are made by Allah,we can not make another image,it is a big sin to do it’said Bilal,one of the officials in the mosque,as being in the same religion I was forgiven and was allowed to photograph people from the back.
Secondly,it was my first time going to the church I remember I had to take permission from the leaders of the church,I was not allowed to photograph while ‘services’ as a new comer to the church I did a mistake of photographing the priest while praying,I was asked what I was doing,being kind to the leaders i explained my project and said sorry for the mistake as I didn’t understand what services meant,well meeting good people always helps you,I was told to photograph the building of the church which helped me a lot.
My third and final place was the temple,I kindly asked the leader there if I could photograph their culture and religion,I was strictly told not to photograph and kindly was asked to sit down for a meal,well i tried my best but nothing worked for me in the temple,looking at this situation I left the temple and came back to the darkroom.
I walked back to the darkroom and started processing the films.after processing my films,I tried to print the photographs using the negatives.I used 5 by 7 photographic paper as development before I did my final pieces,I had problems with adjusting the contrast and aperture,which also brought dark photographs.
I also some times left the prints in the fixer for very little time which brought orange/golden color on the edges of the prints.Well,I also did the test strips in a wrong way.After looking at the photographs I had taken,I planned to print the best compositions in 8 by 10 photographic paper.
After printing my photographs I had seen mistakes in the photographs,the photographs were dark and some of them were grey as well.I was getting dark photographs because the natural light I was using,it wasnt enough for photography and therefore looking at the photographs I was not happy and planed to change my theme to Cricket,i remember my tutor told me ‘photographers take photographs of any thing they like’after failing to produce good pictures from the theme Cultures And Religions(maybe because of less light)I thought of photographing the cricket set I had and photographing it in the studio were I could get enough light.
Well I already got some experience from the previous theme so planed to use 8 by 10 photographic paper directly instead of making prints for development,which also saved my time although I used the same techniques to print.
Theme:CRICKET
The starting page of the new theme called Cricket