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