What I think of my power piece

To be honest when I started this project I did not think that it had much life in it at all and thought that it would really bore me and I would completely regret doing it. This said after doing it and editing the pictures down to my favourite ones I actually think they are o.k. The blurred ones work mixed in with the normal ones as it says that even though Sam may think that he is an individual and other people may think this as well it still doesn’t mean that he can’t get lost. In this day and age it is completely impossible to be a hundred percent individual. After doing the project I started thinking about it a little more and it may have worked a little bit better as a staged piece. Perhaps with Sam in a crowded place like a pub surrounded by drunken people his age with just him stood there in the middle completely sober or maybe a restaurant scene with people eating big chunks of meat while he sits there and eats his salad. I thought about this because looking at the pictures I don’t know whether they completely put across the idea of individuality or whether people may confuse it with loneliness. Thinking about it though can’t these things be seen as being the same thing at times?

Power of Individuality

After realising that I really do not have enough time to do one of the power projects that I would prefer to do I have decided to go with a new idea.  Given this is a new idea to me but I guarantee someone else in the class also does it as it is so obvious a thing to do.  It is the power of individuality.  I am going to do a set of pictures with a friend of mine named Sam.  Sam is twenty one years old and goes to university in Birmingham.  He studies mechanical engineering and I met him through a friend of mine.  Sam is straight edge. For those that don’t know this is a term coined by a hardcore band called Minor Threat in the eighties.  It means no alcohol, no drugs and no smoking.  Some also say no promiscuous sex and choose to be vegan.  I don’t know about the former but Sam is Vegan.  He says that it’s not something to do just to be different but that is a bi-product.  I wanted to look at Sam because I don’t really know many vegans my age.  I know no-one who is straight edge who is my age and I think it’s really cool that Sam has the self discipline to do this and stick to his guns especially while being at university where drugs and alcohol are rife and easy to get hold of. Not being easily influenced by his peers I think makes Sam a very powerful person.  This is simply due to the fact he has more power over his own life than most people do who just live their lives following the pack.

Power – Portraits

I would love to do something similar to this project by Richard Avedon and do my own set of portraits with people who have been involved in my life who I see as having some sort of power.  People along the lines of family, friends, teachers, people I have worked with and so on and so forth.  

 

Considering most of my family are really camera shy that totally takes them out of the frame so then we move onto people outside of family.  I was mainly thinking of teachers who have had an influence on my life.  My year six teacher Mr. Underwood who actually got me into school work and made it fun for me.  Mr. Streeting my form tutor throughout the whole of my secondary school life.  Mrs. Roberts who in sixth form taught me that I can actually do whatever I want to.  Jonathon Worth who in my second year of University got me properly into photography and so on and so forth.  I could also extend this to people who I have known that have had influences on my life outside of education.  With people like this I’m talking about Stacey Guiney who gave me my first job in a record store and opened up my head to all sorts of music.  Spencer Hickman another employer who introduced me properly to film and opened my mind up to a lot more different types of movies and so on.

 

These are people who in my life have held some sort of power over me and have influenced my life in some way or another.  They are people that I have spent a lot of time with and who I will always remember.   The problem with doing a project like this is the plain and simple fact of finding some of the people and also having the time to hunt them all down which at the moment I really do not have.  It could also be seen that I am simply copying Avedon’s idea but my idea of people with power and Avedon’s idea are quite different things.  I do not have the access to the same sorts of people that Avedon had access to so it does change the idea of the project quite a bit.

Power – Marvels

Marvels is the title of a Marvel published comic book ten years ago that was based around the idea of a photographer catching the great adventures on film of the Marvel superheroes.  The idea of the book was to show people’s reactions to the events that happen around Manhattan to do with the superheroes that operate in the city.  After this book there was rumors of Marvel commissioning a photography project to re-create this project on film.  Images of the superheroes around the city performing their acts of good being captured by a real photographer.

 

What I want to do is to take this idea and change it slightly.  I want to have another go at staging photographs and use this as my inspiration.  The photographs would be taking people and making them look like they are about to perform heroics but these heroics would not be the heroics you see in the comic books.  I’m talking about heroic acts that some people would do in day to day life but we take for granted.  Someone holding the door open for someone else, someone carrying an old lady’s shopping for them, a person voting and so on and so forth.  I think to amplify the fact that this is based around the idea of power I could make my subjects wear masks and costumes and so on,

 

This is power because it is the power to help people.  To make people’s lives better is something that all people should strive for.  The person with the most power in the world until recently was George W. Bush.  His aim should have been to help the people of his country and instead he decided to inflict an incredible amount of pain and suffering on not only his own people but other people in different regions in the world.  The new President of the United States is Barack Obama,  He says he wants to undo all the things wrong that Bush did and make life better for people throughout the world.  Obviously this is massively different to what I want to take pictures of but imagine if everyone all of the world did one nice thing for someone else everyday.  Its that whole idea of the “Pass it on” theory.  If someone does something nice for someone and then they do something for someone else sooner or later everyone everywhere will be doing nice things for each other making the world a better place.

Richard Avedon – Power Portraits

Richard Avedon brings his famous and distinct style to this set of portraits he made taken through his illustrious career.  This set of portraits are of people that Avedon has met and made images of people that he saw as being in some sort of power at some point or another in their lives.

 

Most of the images are Avedon’s classic style of his subject against a white background.  I have loved Avedon’s work since I first got into photography.  His style is something that people have tried to mimic since he became big.  We all know what they say, imitation is the biggest form of flattery.  Avedon’s portraits are renowned for how his subjects open up to the camera in that one single frame.

 

The only images out of the “Portraits of Power” series that I saw the only one that I didn’t really get is the out of focus photograph of Malcomn X.  I couldn’t really get why Avedon took this image when it was out of focus.  All of the other images I saw from this collection are all perfectly in focus and expertly composed and exposed and yet this one is really quite out of focus.  I started to think that it could be to do with who the subject is in this image.  I thought that it could be something to do with the fact that at the time when the image was made Malcomn X was such a big force and so busy that he could not afford the time to sit still long enough to have his picture made by Avedon.  Another idea was that at the time X was scared for his life so again he didn’t want to sit still for too long which again all of this adds another layer to Avedon’s image.

 

What I want to take from Richard Avedon’s work is the clean and crisp style of his images.  I love how easy Avedon makes his style look and how easy it makes it to read the looks on his subjects faces.  What they feel, where they are in their lives and so on.  I mean obviously with something like this you can’t be sure that you are right about what you are seeing as you aren’t there to ask the subjects what they are feeling.  I feel though that this is one of the biggest and best parts of photography.  With reading images there are no rights and there are no wrongs.  There is just what the viewer feels about specific images.  What they like about them, what they dislike about them and what they feel about them.  

What I think of my memory piece

I actually really quite like my sound piece and I am much happier with this artefact then I was with my previous one. I am very happy with the writing of the piece as I think the dialogue does flow and sound pretty natural. Due to the fact I used two people’s voices to put across the idea that everyone can get these feelings I think that some edits could have been cleaned up a little but all in all it is edited together really well. I think it could still use some work though due to the fact that I changed the script from being a film piece to being a sound alone piece. This means that some parts of the script really did need the aid of visuals to go along with them so that people got the proper idea of what was happening in the narrative. I think as a full video piece I would have been even happier with this artefact and it would have put across the idea of memories to the viewer really easily. I think that this piece could have also easily worked as a sound piece with photographs to go along with it. These could have been the same sort of visuals that I was thinking about when it was a video or they could be something different. Something along the lines of someone on their own at the beginning and then when the tone of the piece changes we could see pictures of a couple or something along the lines of that.

Memory – Objects 2

Another idea that I have had for my memory section of this module is the idea that objects hold memories.  Rather than the classic stereotype of photographs I want to concentrate on other physical objects that we may have that hold some special memories for us.  Things we may have received as gifts from people at different points in our lives, things we may have bought ourselves for one reason or another and so on and so forth.  I want to show how one thing no matter how small or mundane to some people can hold special memories and make other people feel certain things.  I want to show how remembering things about objects can turn our mood instantly can make us feel in ways that we may not want to feel. 

 

This piece could work as a photography piece but as I previously said I want to avoid that stereotype of photos as memories.  This is the reason that I decided that this piece would be best as a video piece with sound. It would consist of someone looking at something and remembering something in their life.  The video would be one shot to show the emotion in their face as they remember different things about the object and the voiceover would be there to explain to the viewer the object and the character’s past with the object.  I want the piece to be an emotional piece and for all of the emotion to be in the characters face and that is why I will use static long shots of the character.  I think I want the person to be in a public place when this happens as it shows that things can surprise us at any time in our lives.  We may forget about something or put it to the back of our minds but then when we least expect it the smallest thing can make memories come flooding back to us in a heartbeat.  The object I have been thinking about is a watch or a piece of jewelry or something as these are the sorts of things that people buy each other as presents a lot of the time.  The setting will be something like a classroom situation or a workplace situation could be good with some ambient noise in the background of the video behind the main voiceover which will be the voice in the character’s head. 

Memory – Objects

Another idea is taking pictures of things and objects that I feel resemble memories.  In a sense I will be trying to create memories.  Trying to turn something into a memory may be quite hard as sometimes we will never know what will be memorable and what will not be memorable.

 

Taking pictures of things around my own home, people I know, people I don’t know and so on.  Another thing I thought that I could do was to take pictures of the things that I take with me everyday. Like just at the end of the day empty my pockets and take pictures of the things that I have.  This should show what I have done that day and helps me remember where I have been and what I have bought and so on and so forth.  Taking close up pictures of things will be something that I have never really done that much before I usually stick to wide shots of landscapes and portraits.  I could perhaps make this a mixed media piece and add sound to the pictures.  The sound could be a range of things that I could record over time.  Important times and conversions that I feel count as things that could be important or memories worth remembering.

Estevan Oriol

I have been a fan of Estevan Oriol’s work for a good while now due to his work in the streetwear industry.  He has worked with several brands I am a fan of quite a few times such as Stussy and Supreme.  I really like Oriol’s style of street photography.  The he captures his subjects in environments that they are comfortable in is something that I am a great fan of.  Like Weegee and Brassai this is the thing that makes a great street photographer. By sucking us into the subjects world it makes us read the pictures much more in depth.

Oriol has worked a lot with the street gangs of L.A. in the way that Boogie has worked with the gangs in New York.  Tattoos within the gangs of L.A. is a huge thing.  A whole persons life story can be told using the tattoos on their bodies.  The crimes they have committed, the people they have known who have passed on their past loves and current loves and so on.  Oriol focuses a lot on the art work that these gangsters cover their bodies with and he works with a variety of different subjects from lots of different gangs.  The fact that he makes most people pictures in the streets they live and operate in brings us deeper into their world and makes us think more about their stories and their lives.  Again Oriol has this passion for his subject matter that a lot of photographers do have and I think that this is a very important attribute to have as the more you care about your subjects the more you want to put their story across to the viewer resulting in better images.  Tattoos are something that I have had an interest in for a long time as my brother is covered in them and a lot of my friends have had quite a bit of work done.  I think that if I bring this to my images it could result in a good body of work.

I still want to stick to the idea of taking pictures of the tattoos filling the frame on whatever part of the body they are on rather than doing full body portraits.  I also want to take the pictures of the art wherever my subject may be at the time.  I think that colour images would make more sense just to show exactly how much work has gone into these pieces of artwork.

Justice Howard

I have to be honest and say that I am not a huge fan of Justice Howard’s work.  this is due to the fact that a lot of it is your pretty standard studio based stuff.  Full body shots of models against a blank background and this sort of work doesn’t really appeal to me.  I just think that with a little bit of time, a decent camera and a flashgun this sort of stuff can be produced fairly easily and it just doesn’t really feel very creative to me.  I much prefer the shots that she has taken outside of her studio environment.  The one in the garage with the guy with his back to the camera is good.  I also do like the shots where she has zoomed in on just the body part with the tattoo as I think this makes you focus a little bit more on the art work and what it may mean.  It also makes the artwork a little more anonymous meaning it could belong to anyone.

I think that if I were to do my project on tattoos I would do it so that I fill more or less the whole of the frame with just the tattoo art.  I think the closer up you are the more personal the shot is as well.  I think I would do this is a studio space just to practice but to be honest I would probably prefer it if I did it in a more personal space for my subjects due to the fact that I think it would make the image more interesting to look at and I think it would also make it a little more personal.