Thematic Project Summary
For my photography project, I toyed with a few ideas. One of which included black and white portraits of hands, with the focus being hand tattoos. But eventually settled on using the contact ball in the Back Alley Gallery, as I like the different ideas of perspective and how photography can distort the real life image and moment into something completely different.
For my project I used a Fujifilm X10 Digital Camera on a Tripod in the Back Alley Gallery. I took all the photos in one shoot. To create the effect and my concept I used a ‘contact juggling’ ball. I had a friend sometimes hold the juggling ball and also pose for some shots. To create different visual effects I held the juggling ball in different ways and shot from different angles. I also used an array of different street artist’s pieces so help me convey different moods and context to each shot. At times I used the timer to set up my shot when I was shooting by myself. It was sometimes difficult to create depth of field, whilst keeping the image within the contact ball in focus. It was an overcast day with times of bright light, which made for some difficult but also great shots. I found that my best shots were in the shade of the buildings. I love the Back Alley Gallery and the distorted images, which I can get through my contact-juggling ball, so naturally for me it has been and idea I have often wanted to explore. I can’t reference any photographers that have use this technique, although from memory there are definitely some within the alternate festival scene who use this same method. I have always been drawn to images of street art worldwide. I find the work inspiring and fresh. I love the textures the colors and the artistic display in a public space. Street art is a passion of mine, which often means many hours of exploring cities in search little nooks and crannies where people have chosen to display their artistic talent.
The concept I chose to explore was is the idea of perspective and how it changes for each person. It was great to be able to alter each shot with the aid of the contact-juggling ball. To me it was like an eye of a different person and a view of how the see their particular world. This is why the textures, colors and content changes in each shot. I also explored ideas of society and civilization in a much subtler way in these shots. It used different Hume/ Saturation, Black and White and many other tools to create a different feel and perspective in each shot. It was great to be able to use different political messages, which popped up on the alley walls as a way of displaying different feelings and emotions about society and culture. I am a very passionate person regarding political, environmental and social activism and found it a great aid to be able to incorporate hidden messages within the shots. Something which I found to be a really valuable expression tool to come out of this project, was the ability to create different textures within the same shot and finding the ability to highlight different elements of the shot to display different levels of importance within the shot. An example of this was in the shot “Matty’s World”. In this shot I dulled the background of the image and gave more saturation and vibrancy to the image and person in the contact-juggling ball. This was a way for me to display how I believed the figure experiences the world. In “Lost”, I tried to create a feeling that this photo was taken in a different time in a completely different place. By changing the photo to black and white it allowed me to change the reds, yellows and other colors to give the photo more texture and an almost unnatural feel. The most time consuming photo in this project was actually one that didn’t make the cut for the 12 displayed photo’s. It is called “Listen to Yoda” and I cut out the figures head in order to saturate the background without saturating the figure and making him look unnatural in the image.
I am defiantly happy with a lot of my shots and I really found it difficult to decide on the which, twelve I would present. I actually had to get a friend to assist me and we voted on them. I was really glad to see that I had the ability to present the photos in the way that I wanted to. I feel with more photographic and Photoshop knowledge I would be able to surpass my own expectations of what I feel is possible. I believe having more photography experience I really could have pushed myself in a lot more directions exploring different mediums. I also believe with much more experience with my X10 I could have bent ideas of mainstream photography and really explored different ideas of ways to use the camera to display different perspectives. I loved experimenting with Photoshop. I definitely feel I extended my limited knowledge with the software. Allowing my self to explore different methods of creating different feels for each individual photograph.
For my project I used a Fujifilm X10 Digital Camera on a Tripod in the Back Alley Gallery. I took all the photos in one shoot. To create the effect and my concept I used a ‘contact juggling’ ball. I had a friend sometimes hold the juggling ball and also pose for some shots. To create different visual effects I held the juggling ball in different ways and shot from different angles. I also used an array of different street artist’s pieces so help me convey different moods and context to each shot. At times I used the timer to set up my shot when I was shooting by myself. It was sometimes difficult to create depth of field, whilst keeping the image within the contact ball in focus. It was an overcast day with times of bright light, which made for some difficult but also great shots. I found that my best shots were in the shade of the buildings. I love the Back Alley Gallery and the distorted images, which I can get through my contact-juggling ball, so naturally for me it has been and idea I have often wanted to explore. I can’t reference any photographers that have use this technique, although from memory there are definitely some within the alternate festival scene who use this same method. I have always been drawn to images of street art worldwide. I find the work inspiring and fresh. I love the textures the colors and the artistic display in a public space. Street art is a passion of mine, which often means many hours of exploring cities in search little nooks and crannies where people have chosen to display their artistic talent.
The concept I chose to explore was is the idea of perspective and how it changes for each person. It was great to be able to alter each shot with the aid of the contact-juggling ball. To me it was like an eye of a different person and a view of how the see their particular world. This is why the textures, colors and content changes in each shot. I also explored ideas of society and civilization in a much subtler way in these shots. It used different Hume/ Saturation, Black and White and many other tools to create a different feel and perspective in each shot. It was great to be able to use different political messages, which popped up on the alley walls as a way of displaying different feelings and emotions about society and culture. I am a very passionate person regarding political, environmental and social activism and found it a great aid to be able to incorporate hidden messages within the shots. Something which I found to be a really valuable expression tool to come out of this project, was the ability to create different textures within the same shot and finding the ability to highlight different elements of the shot to display different levels of importance within the shot. An example of this was in the shot “Matty’s World”. In this shot I dulled the background of the image and gave more saturation and vibrancy to the image and person in the contact-juggling ball. This was a way for me to display how I believed the figure experiences the world. In “Lost”, I tried to create a feeling that this photo was taken in a different time in a completely different place. By changing the photo to black and white it allowed me to change the reds, yellows and other colors to give the photo more texture and an almost unnatural feel. The most time consuming photo in this project was actually one that didn’t make the cut for the 12 displayed photo’s. It is called “Listen to Yoda” and I cut out the figures head in order to saturate the background without saturating the figure and making him look unnatural in the image.
I am defiantly happy with a lot of my shots and I really found it difficult to decide on the which, twelve I would present. I actually had to get a friend to assist me and we voted on them. I was really glad to see that I had the ability to present the photos in the way that I wanted to. I feel with more photographic and Photoshop knowledge I would be able to surpass my own expectations of what I feel is possible. I believe having more photography experience I really could have pushed myself in a lot more directions exploring different mediums. I also believe with much more experience with my X10 I could have bent ideas of mainstream photography and really explored different ideas of ways to use the camera to display different perspectives. I loved experimenting with Photoshop. I definitely feel I extended my limited knowledge with the software. Allowing my self to explore different methods of creating different feels for each individual photograph.