New concept/Final evaluation

As my last concept/shoot plan didn't go the way I wanted to as I was told my images may come across offensive, I decided to use some diverse/cultural work that I had taken before, when I was in London. My approach to these images is the diversity in London, in the photo's you can see the different cultures, ethnicities, sexual orientation, gender etc... which is pretty much what we're covering in this project. I love these images because I feel they look very natural and not only do they show diversity but they also show tourism in London and how many people from different countries come to see it's beauty.

Overall I haven't enjoyed this project 'the others' as I found this project quite a challenging one and I felt that it was confusing. At first, we were told to look into different things, for example religion, class, race etc..however we were later told and explained that this had to relate to the diversity of Plymouth. I felt that this was a very vague brief for such a bold subject. It also didn't help that I took some images and were told they could come across as offensive so I felt I had to change my idea for this project quite suddenly. In this case, I think that we should've been given a more clear guide to what could come across as offensive, as the whole project was about culture, I would've thought that we'd of been given more of an insight on what we were actually allowed to do. Personally, I don't think my images we're offensive but I think I could've taken the images in a better way, maybe used someone from that religion or got a real niqab instead of trying to make my own. I, however, have not covered diversity in Plymouth, instead I chose to use my images from London instead. I felt that I was managing my time well before I had to change my idea, I was keeping up with my blog regularly and frequently taking photos, however I either didn't like the photos or they didn't fit the brief well enough so I couldn't really use them. I feel that the images I am using fit the brief and I am pleased with how they came out.

 

Tuesday 26th January 2016

Today we spent a lot of time finishing up our blogs, I spent the majority of the morning continuing this, however I then went to the small studio to take some photo's for my final images, I was really pleased with them but I decided not to use them as I was told they may come across as offensive. Obviously I didn't want them to look offensive so the better idea would be to not use them images and try and take some different ones. I think I am going to focus more on street photography than focusing more on one culture. In the afternoon we then had a session with Cass and Jack on Donald Trump and freedom of speech. We had a group discussion talking about how Donald Trump may have wrong opinions in our eyes but he is entitled to his own freedom of speech, however, what he says is not be morally right. A lot of people had many different views on this matter, people said that he should be banned from the UK, however other people say that he shouldn't because he hasn't done these wrong things in the UK so he shouldn't. In a way I see both opinions as correct, although his views may be seen as wrong he still has his own opinion, and if he's running as president he needs to get his views and points across. Also people in America are agreeing with him and from what I've heard many people in the UK aren't, however he's in a completely different county to us and maybe that's what the people of America want, it's not our choice to decide because it's not our country he's running at the end of the day.

Concept

A couple of weeks back we were given the brief as to what we are doing on this project, which was obviously diversity in Plymouth, however I wanted to go that extra bit further and look into Muslim culture. My idea was to do a similar image recreation to Steve McCurry, who took the famous photo 'afghan girl'. In most of his images he concentrates on the eyes, which is what I have tried to recreate. However as I didn't use a model that is from this religion, I didn't want it to come across as being offensive, so I felt I should look more into the religion and find out some more about the culture. I researched the different Muslim headscarves, there are a few different ones and they're called a Niqab, Hijab, Burka, Chador and Dupatta. From my research I also found that many people get a Burka confused with a Niqab, which before I researched I have to admit I was confused about too. The Burka is a veil which covers the entire body and face, with a mesh window across the eyes for the woman to see out of, however a Niqab is a veil covering the head and face but not usually the eyes with a lose black garment that covers from head to feet. In the images I took I used a large piece of material and made my own Niqab for my model. In the photo's I took, I used two types of material that weren't the cultural black veil that Muslim women wear, I decided to use two different materials which was a patterned and a pale blue. However I did decide to also look into 'Niqab' and 'Hijab' fashion, which showed different Niqab's and Hijab's that women wear in multi-coloured patterns. This changed my concept slightly as I thought it would be cool to look into a more fashion approach on cultural diversity. In the photo's below are a couple of images I found on the internet which are similar to the images I have taken and they also concentrate on the eyes which is what I wanted to do for this project as well.

 

 

Monday 25th January 2016


Today our contextual studies lesson was on semiotics and religion, we started off by doing a task in which we looked at an image and had to denote and connote the image. For example we looked at an image of a heart and had to say what we thought it represented. We also looked at a power point telling us about religion etc..in which we looked at different religious iconography and how different artists have used this. We looked at Madonna's song 'like a prayer' because it shows conflicting aspects of religion and challenges the typical conventions of Christian imagery, it also shows many controversial aspects of The Church, including the KKK, which is represented by a burning cross. We then moved on to a different controversial piece called 'piss Christ' by Andreas Serrano. We then went on to continue with our blogs for the rest of the day.

 

Wednesday 20th January 2016

Today we started off the day by reflecting over the past week and writing up what he had done on the board to help us with our blogs.

We were then told we were going to have a great opportunity to have a talk with a man called Solly Irving, who was one of few survivors from the holocaust. This talk was a very moving one as Solly told us about his traumatic experience he had from the age of 9 years old. Imagine that, being 9 years old and going through that. The way he told us really put it into perspective as to what life was like then compared to now and you could really hear the emotion in his voice. He held no paper or device in front of him, nothing written down, it was all just from pure memory and emotion. It was a very upsetting story and even had a few people in tears. I was very proud of this man for coming in, all the way from London to tell us his story and give us factual information on this subject. Very amazing and touching experience that I wont forget.

Letter for New York Times

Lens Blog,

Editor in Chief,

The New York Times,

The New York Times Building,

620 Eighth Avenue,

New York City,

New York,

10018,

UNITED STATES

Dear whom it may concern,

I read your article from the New York Times about debating the rules and ethics of digital photojournalism, my thoughts on this article was that it came across quite bias. The reason for this is because most of the people you interviewed in the article were part of the competition, however you only interviewed two photographers. There was only one actual partaking photographer interviewed for this article and he was anonymous, showing that either he must've not been allowed to show his identity or he was too scared of the officials on their high horses as they seem to have a lot of power, which really only gives a one sided opinion on this matter.

Moving on to the actual situation from this article, I agree with Melissa Lyttle who says “The fact that some photojournalists think any degree of lying and manipulation is okay, makes me question the message they’re sending to others”. I feel that the photographer was wrong to edit the photo for something that is going to be used for photojournalism as it can completely manipulate the image and the meaning behind it. However, if this was a different situation I would 100% agree with the photographer that photography is an art form that we all do differently, so there shouldn’t be any disqualification based on art, however, there is a line to where you should stop editing out things, as sometimes it is best to leave things in so it lets people see the whole image and the meaning behind it.

Thank you for your time

Yours Faithfully,

Bethaney Dean

Tuesday 19th January 2016

Today we started off by going into the small studio and Kevin helped us out with some different lighting, such as beauty lighting and a lighting that was more of a low-key, shadow lighting. Here are a few of the beauty lighting photos I took, I didn't get to take any of the dark shadowy lighting because I was helping out Amy and Jordan take photo's with the reflectors, which was part of the whole shadow process. To do the beauty lighting, we used a reflective umbrella and attached it to one of the lights, we had to stand at the same angle of the light otherwise you get dark shadow on the models face, which for beauty lighting you don't want a lot of shadow. We also used a reflector under the chin so it didn't create a harsh shadow there either. Then for the more dark lighting we used a soft box and attached it to the front of the light and also used a reflector to a slight angle to produce highlights on the face. In the afternoon we had a session in which we in a way carried on with the task we did last week which was about an article from the New York times about a photographer that was disqualified from a photography competition for editing a photo used for photo journalism. So this week we had to write a letter to the New York times about this article and some of our letters could even be published in the New York times!!!!

 

 

Beauty Lighting Diagram

Monday 18th January 2016

Today we had a contextual studies lesson on Gender equality, in photography. We talked about how we usually see more male photographers than female photographers that become famous. We were also told by one of our fellow students that more females go into photography than males however we notice that there are usually more famous male photographers. We then spent most of the afternoon continuing with blogs and research until we had a lecture on stereotypes and subcultures. We were taught about different music, fashion etc.. and how it had evolved/ originated and had been influenced by other cultures. For example, rock music originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, from a combination of African-American genres such as blues, boogie woogie, jump blues, jazz, and gospel music. We were also taught about stereotypes and a stereotypical surfer, for example when you think of a surfer, you think, blonde hair, tanned skin and from somewhere like Australia, however surfing actually originated in Hawaii.

Wednesday 13th January 2016

Today we started off by doing a mind map on the board to show what we had done this week to put into our blogs, we then continued to do our blogs for the rest of the day. We then had to partner up with someone we don't usually speak to on the course and look at each others blogs from this term.

Tuesday 12th January 2016

Today we looked at Photoshop, in which we talked about layer masking and airbrushing, this process was done by taking a portrait photo we had taken and creating 2 layers, one sharp and one soft, we created the sharp layer by increasing the clarity and the soft layer by decreasing the clarity. We then had to rasterise the sharp layer, then layer mask and paint brush where we wanted to make the models features softer. Here is the original image that Bridey took of Jordan which I used and the edited version of the image, as you can see the features on his face that you would want to be softer have been made softer and features on his face you would want to be bolder and stand out better have been made sharper. In this session we also looked at fashion photographers such as David la chapel, Nick Knight, Rich Lewis, Dave Hill and many others.

 

In the afternoon we had a session on the law and ethics of photography, this included looking at an article on a photographer that had taken a photo for photojournalism, and had photo shopped it and the company thought it was wrong for them to do that. We were asked our opinions on what we thought and were told to write a 250 word assignment on our opinions on two quotes from the article. Once we had completed that we were allowed to go out and take photo's. Me, Amy and Jordan went to Beaumont park to take some pictures.

 

Today we looked at an article from the New York Times about a photography competition showing how 20% of the participants were disqualified in the final part of this competition due to over processing their pictures. We read and analysed several people’s opinions from the article, including the jury chairwoman who is an assistant manager and director at The New York Times. The majority of this article is biased as the opinions are all from the competition officials. Although Lars Boering, the managing director of World Press Photo, was more on the fence than any of the competition officials. 

He found solutions on how to tackle any problems with the rules of the competition and stated that “When they have questions during the period they submit the work, a team is able to answer these questions” this shows that the photographers that were disqualified knew that over processing their image wasn't actually allowed, especially in photojournalism, because nothing should be cut, cropped out, or hidden as it could completely change the meaning behind the image. 

There was only one actual partaking photographer interviewed for this article and he was anonymous, showing that either he must've not been allowed to show his identity or he was too scared of the officials on their high horses as they seem to have a lot of power. He stated that it doesn’t matter what the photographers remove because they all work in a different ways. “As photojournalists or documentarians we aim to highlight life and tell stories, but we are all to do it in our own way.” is the exact quote. However I’m not entirely sure I would agree with him on this account as he is talking about photojournalism, an image that is used to tell a story, an honest story in which nothing should be hidden as people should know the truth because honesty is said to be the best policy.

In my opinion, the photographer does have a point - photography is an art form that we all form differently, so there shouldn’t be any disqualification based on art, however, there is a line to where you should stop editing out things, as sometimes it is best to leave things in so it lets people see the whole image and he meaning behind it. For example take the famous picture of the Vietnamese girl running down a street screaming because she was affected quite seriously by a napalm bomb. The original picture was actually cropped as it showed an american soldier walking besides her on the road just rolling a cigarette and not caring about her or the other children, and this told a completely different story. Overall I am in between opinions on this subject because both opinions are very valid. 

Monday 11th January 2016

Today we had a contextual lesson on social documentary, in which we looked at photographers who documented the difference between classes in their own unique way. We then had to go out into Plymouth and take our own images of 'street photography' here are a few of the edited images I took. When we came back from our shoot, we had to pick and edit our favourite image and compare them to a documentary photographer.

Wednesday 6th January 2016

Today we did a food tasting session, in which we tried different foods from different cultures. I didn't try many foods but the ones I did try were really nice. There were mixtures of sweet and savoury foods like shortbread, oreo bake, naan bread, stuffed vine leaf and many other things. There were two tables filled with so many different foods, which was my heaven, to be honest. We didn't really do much else except update blogs and edit photo's etc..

Tuesday 5th January 2016 

Today we watched a documentary by Martin Parr called "think of England" which was about interviewing people on what it takes to be British. I found this documentary interesting as it showed the younger generation and the older generation and what they thought on not only being British but it also showed how different the two generations live. After we watched this documentary I decided to look into his photography work, which I quite liked. I found a body of work he did called "bored couples" which was basically photos of couples out and about looking bored. Here is one of the images that I liked and found that was quite similar to one of the images I took whilst we were out on a shoot.

Martin Parr - Bored Couples



My Image
 

Shoot plan

.Go around town and take photo's of things that capture my attention
.To go into places like the market, cafe's etc..to take photo's of people in their day to day life.

 

~After shoot~

I ended up taking some cool photo's in the market and funnily enough at KFC, I got some nice shots of Jordan which I really like. The images don't really show "what it is to be British" However I still liked them and think they look very street photography.

 

During the afternoon session we looked at statistics on things that we found interesting. I decided to look at the statistics on religion. I found the religious aspect quite interesting. This could link into my photography shoot/project because I think I'd like to do something based around culture/religion because it can be so fascinating to know about other religions/cultures as they're probably so different to mine.

The others

This project is all about how we see other people. We have to show diversity in the 21st century in our photography by recording our experiences, documenting our findings, explore the impact of words, actions and behaviours on 'others' By the term 'the others' I mean, different cultures, gender, sexuality, religion etc...We are to pick one or several of these and put our ideas into our work. When we first got told about this project I was excited because I enjoy the thought of seeing other peoples views on things like this and I think it's a good idea to put points across however I feel this task may be quite a tough one because, 1, we have such a limited amount of time and 2, it's quite hard to find lots of different cultures in a place like Plymouth. However, I kind of have an idea for this project, I am not certain on it yet but I feel as if it would be quite a cool concept. My idea is to get a few different models and have them wear different headdresses that different cultures wear, but focus on their eyes in the images. So it would be a portrait shoot, preferably in a studio but if not then somewhere else. This shoot would be similar to the work of Steve McCurry, who does portraits of different cultured people. Much like these two photo's he took. As you can see, in his images he really focuses on the eyes, as soon as you look at the photo you are drawn to their eyes, which is what I like about the photo's.