Please, please, please let me get what I want.
In this task we had to come up with a story that linked to the title "please, please,please let me get what I want". The class had a series of specific photographs that needed to be involved in this. These include: a screenshot of a film with english subtitles, scanned/photocopy of a found image, a photograph of a photograph, a portrait (can be a self-portrait) and one blurry image. All of these images had to link in some way to either create a sequence of images or a story. I decided to make a story and the image of the photogram that has broken sticks brought my idea to mind. This made me think about taking photographs of broken things but then I found the screenshot from a film and decided to make my story about someone wanting for happiness because they have felt lonely for a very long time. The pictures start in black and white as they are quite depressive and as the story line progresses into happiness due to them finding companionship the pictures gain colour as they become happy because they are not alone anymore. Once I had found an image that I believed would be easy to take photographs around I scanned through my phone to find any photo's that now fitted my criteria. After that I had found most of the images I believed I needed as the requirement was only 5-10 images. However, I still went into the dark room where it was quite and lonely so I could take a few more images to go into my sequence. I only put one of these images into my sequence as many of them were too similar and others did not fit my sequence very well. There were a couple of difficult things about this task such as, having to work to a tight deadline in which we had to come up with a story. This was hard because we had to deeply think about our sequencing and the way we placed our images. What I realised was my photos had to link visually not actually tell a story like you see from a book but this is what I had done in my sequence. However, my images did still have some visual links. But if we do a task like this next time I will just attempt to make visual links not create a verbal story through my images.
Images I was choosing from:
Images I was choosing from:
I printed out my images and shuffled them around a few times to see if I wanted to change the sequencing of the way I had placed it online. However, in the end I kept it the same as I believed this is what suited my pictures best. I then decided to stick them on the wall in this order. All the examples we have been shown were in a straight line but I decided to put my images going in a sort of diagonal which to me sort of reminded me of stairs. This was a good line up of my pictures as it shows my story line of a person taking steps out of loneliness and into happiness. The thing is struggled with the most about this task was trying to find an interesting way of how to make the photographs link but when I saw the photogram of broken sticks I choose to try and base my photographs around this. This then made it easy for me to get all the pictures from the criteria that I needed and I chose to use all of them. At first I skimmed through the instructions and did not read them carefully but once I went back and read it properly I found the task slightly easily. I do believe if I researched artists before I started my projected I would of had more inspiration to do the task and my sequence of photos would of come out a lot better. At first I was pleased with my final outcome as I believe they portray the story I was trying to put across of someone emerging into happiness but then I realised my images did not need to tell a verbal story just a visual one which meant they just needed to link in some way. This would of made the task for me a whole lot easier and also made a huge improvement to the image sequence I produced. If I were to do this task another time I would approach it completely differently by just trying to make visual links on my photos which would be a lot easier than creating a verbal story which I tried to do. This gives me a better idea of the kind of photos I will use in my photobook and how to link them better visually.
Artist who create narrative sequences:
Duane Michals:
Michals is a photographer who uses sequences of images to tell a story; he often incorporates text along side his images to evoke emotion. The main link in his images are the people that are in them. All of his sequences have a specific person or group they are focused on and this helps to link all of the images together in a sequence. All the images are also in black and white which gives them all a similarity. Each image seems to have been taken quite soon after one and other and they often provoke the emotion of suspicion or sadness. For example, it is sad the angel loses his wings due to giving in to temptations he has. I like the way these images are put together as they make me question what is going on in the pictures and actually form a story in my mind. The sequences of the fallen angel starts with the angel coming into the shot and then ends with him coming towards the camera out of shot. This is similar of all of Michals images as the women with the mirror is just minding her own business looking in the mirror at different angles and then at the end its like something catches her eye and she peers towards the camera which also intrigues the person viewing the photo.
Marta Berens - Dream Chapter:
In this set of photos there are a lot of images that link due to colour and there are a lot of natural colours such as, greens, blues and browns. When there is a person in the photo it also portrays a sense of differentness and things that aren't real (which links to unrealistic things that happen in dreams) because the children don't have facial features their face is always covered by a frilly mask or an animal mask. These all link to the idea of dreams. However, the main things that link for me is the colours and subjects of the photos.
What kind of photographer am I?
In lesson, we had sheets to which we had to circle which side of the scale we were closes to for example, more subjective or objective. We did this for each pairs of words that linked to photography and came up with a idea of what kind of photographer we were. We then watched a video of an interview with Philip Perkis where he was speaking in the background about his photography but his work was showing on the video. I took notes from this video and had to come up with some inspirations for my own pictures. We were then given a list a possible pictures that would be interesting in if photographed and I ticked off some of the ones that I believed could be found around school.
Most of my images where taken to try and meet the criteria of my list and the ones I believe could be taken around the school. Some of them did not go to plan for example, the portraits were meant to be blurry but the ended up blurring the background and making the person stand out meaning I did not use the right technique but this can easily be taken again and adjusted. I also tried to take a couple of pictures of the same object that represented a certain topic as this then gives me a variety of photos for each and gives me the opportunity to pick from my favourite photo.