My Final Major Project (FMP) is the culmination of 2 years of university study, it is an independently written and produced project showing off all of the skills that I have learn't in my 2 years of study that will eventually be shown in our end of year exhibition.
Here you will find all of the research, ideas and the creative process that I have gone through on the road to exhibition.
3 ideas, 3 images, 3 paths to explore.
Idea 1: "Where the wild things are." a photographic exploration of zoo's the people that work, and visit them, the animals and enclosures around. Inspired by the photographic project "Zoo'' by Morgan Silk and Gary Winogrand's series "Animals" documenting the relationship between the animal and the viewer.
Experimental image
Experimental image
Idea 2: little people, Big world. a photographic exploration of scale and perspective, photographing miniatures in large environments to fool the viewer into thinking they are life size scale. Inspired by Slinkatchu's global model village.
Experimental image.
Experimental image.
Idea 3: Documenting a journey using photography, recording and found objects to help the viewer re live the walk/drive that I have taken and see the things I have seen on the walk.
Experimental image.
No matter which Idea I choose I would like to create an artist book of my own to support my exhibition based on an inspirational trip me and my fellow class mates took, to the Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections.
http://www.specialcollections.mmu.ac.uk/artists.php
Definition of Artist's book:
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/04/self-publish-photographers-photobooks
Morgan Silk
Morgan silk was born in 1970 in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, He started off his creative journey drawing and doodling as a child, and then went on to study at Blackpool college. He then discovered post production and photoshop techniques, taking up a career in editing and post production for top advertising photographers in London. He has a very particular
For post production technique similar to the dark grungyness of Morgan Silk's imagery and post
production style. : http://sidvasandani.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/case-study-shiny-and-grunge-look.html
"Zoo" series.
Morgan's dark grungy post production style adds to the mood and context of the shoot. He makes the best of the available lighting and comes up with some very creative shots.
Shots like this that don't include the animals show the character of the zoo. The schedules on the door give the penguins an almost human like personality as they live by time and schedule just like the human condition.
After careful evaluation of my 3 ideas in class with my peers and tutors I have decided that I will be dropping idea 3 as it is the weakest of the 3. I cannot currently decide which idea out of 1 and 2 I would like to do so my plan is to progress developing both projects and see where it takes me. I will do a series of shoots for each and then narrow off onto 1 project once they have developed a little.
And the shooting begins!!!
First shoot for concept 1 zoo images taken in Blackpool Zoo 31/01/2014
I have picked out my favourite images from my first test shoot for this concept, I have been shooting in an alternate way to which I normally do when shooting animals, I have included the zoo environment in the imagery thus changing the feel and emotion of the images and giving them new meaning.
The next few images I played with white balance to give them a similar tonal feel to Morgan Silk's imagery without so much post production, seeing if i can achieve the affect in camera first
The lighting and white balance experiments combined create a dark moody feel to the images that is really quite effective.
First shoot for concept 2 mini sets and miniature photography 03/02/2014
I did some experimenting in the studio with lego figures and lighting. Originally it was just to work out how to light a lego figure correctly , but then I remembered a link* a class mate had sent me about lego movie stills and decided to try some out myself, here are some of the results.
*http://petapixel.com/2014/01/30/awesome-miniature-movie-scenes-shot-using-legos-baking-powder/
First few shots were of a little skater I was just checking out lighting and scenarios with the character, I used 1 light from the left with a snoot to give hard movie like shadows and make the image deep and full of action!
Dark shadows add mood
Here I was going for an old western/black and white Indiana Jones style movie still so added grain and converted the image to black and white.
And a little Sepia to give the images an old timey feel!
I have decided that I do not think my miniature set builds would make a strong enough project for my FMP at university level, however I do like the idea of my animals in cages. showing the zoos and the environments around them. After a chat with a tutor and some feedback on my images of the animals including the enclosures, my tutor suggested that I photograph the enclosures without the animals as the apparent lack of animals seems like an interesting idea.
Thinking about this idea I went home and as I have a hobby of gaming over the weekend played a newly released apocolypse based game called "the last of us" which with the idea from my tutor in my mind has sparked even more exploration and development for my FMP. The last of us shows very strong colourful visuals depicting deserted buildings absent of human life but showing where it once was.
The last of us visuals and trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLGxubfC1Ik
so from this I have come up with an entirely new idea. To photograph abandoned and wrecked buildings/locations absent of people or animals to show the hidden apocalypse. I would like to experiement with lighting and angles similar to the ones used in the last of us and other apocalypse movies such as 28 days later, dawn of the dead etc, to create movie like stills for my images.
I have chosen to do my test shoot experimenting with a 20mm lens as after research on urban exploration forums I have found the the wider the angle the better your images!
Movie stills from 28 days later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE_C5vSv8qg
Flickr huncoat power station: https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=huncoat%20power%20station
Urban Exploration Photography Forum: http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/
My plan of action from here is to do a test shoot at Huncoat power station in lancashire. From here after assessing the area and researching for other buildings to photograph.
First a little bit of history.
Huncoat Power station
Construction of Huncoat Power Station began in 1950 and it was opened in 1956. Situated on the Burnley coalfield meant that the power station had a ready supply of local coal, and until 1968 was served by a half mile railway line to Huncoat Colliery.The Power Station had a fairly short life, closure coming in 1984. The cooling towers were brought down in 1988 and the main buildings were demolished in 1990, apart from this one building. Not totally sure why this was left - my guess is that it contained transformers or switch gear, and was only closed when the relatively new transformer buildings (adjacent to the site) were brought on line.
http://www.theviewfromthenorth.org/huncoat-power-station
some of my images
These images were taken on a Nikon D3000 some one tripod with a combination of prime 20mm lens and 70-300mm zoom lens.
I like the grungy feel of these images because it gives a lot of texture.
However this image is not as strong because I feel the view out of the windows lets the image down, had a been on a clearer day it may have been nicer.
I tried to combat the bleached out windows by burning in the image a little around the windows however this did not work.
Some areas are so dark that I could not properly expose the image even on tripod it added too much grain, so I had someone shine a torch on these electrical boxes creating a nice shadow
This is my favourite image of all the shoot as I feel it really shows the abandonment concept.
Long corridors with rooms either side created interesting shadows.
one of the many pieces of rubble and trash, part of the few remaining human elements of the place.
Its hard to see this place as a working power station, it now has been consumed by nature and become a haven to graffiti artists.
Rusty.
I defiantly enjoyed shooting this location, it was great fun to explore the area as well as presenting so many varying shapes colors and textures that caught my eye!.
after thsi shoot i have decided to continue with the idea of abandonment but after speaking to a tutor decided that more human elements are required to make the images stronger, I.e a cup/plate on the side, suitcases, wheel chairs. Boots in the case of huncoat, to convey they idea that humans used to populate the area. after this chat I began to think of these abandoned places as "time capsules" once a building is abandoned it remains in the time and era going unchanged as the rest of the world moves on without it.
I now plan to find more places to suit my time capsule idea.
Oswaldtwistle Holdings Pottery.
History
Holding's Country Pottery was founded in 1842 by James Holding, but it was not originally located on Haslingden Old Road where it is now. The original pottery was built a short distance away in Gaulkthorn, another outlying area of Oswaldtwistle. In 1860 James Holding moved his business to Broadfield, then in 1900 his son Grimshaw Holding set up the pottery on the present site. From then on the pottery stayed put and the business passed down from father to son until it's decline very recently - the last mandatory accounts, made up to 3rd. May, were submitted to Companies House in 2010, with the comment, "Nature of business, dormant company". The reason for the decline of the business we do not know, and we saw nothing to give any hint whilst wandering around the site. I must say though that for a business that wound up so recently the buildings must already have been in a sorry state of repair to have deteriorated so rapidly subsequently - the impression is not of a building abandoned recently
And the adventure begins.
When I first scouted this location I came across a lot of photographic problems that I needed to over come, firstly it was VERY dark inside of the building, the little light that was there came from small holes in the ceiling and walls. I needed to shoot on a very low shutter to get the correct exposure, I could have shot on a high ISO such as 1600 however I wanted to keep the sharpness and detail in my images so had to Tripod my camera to get the images I wanted.
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During post production I did a lot of playing around with clarity and grain, trying to find a particular style for the images I eventually decided with a slight amount of clarity as it adds a grungy feel and no grain because as much as the images looked nice old fashion they fit my idea of a decaying building more if they are clearly modern shots of an old building.
I kept reshooting this location on a total of 5 shoots at oswaldtwistle and 3 at huncoat.
For My final images I researched various papers and paper companies to find the best one for my images,
- Pinnacle
- Fotospeed
- Harman
- Marrutt
- PermaJet
Paper types
-Matte
-Lustre
-Glossy
-Pearl
-Metallic
-fine art
as my images contain a lot of metal and rust I decided to use a Fotospeed metallic pearl paper.
Evaluation.
I am very happy with my prints for this project the paper is very nice and the images are pin sharp, I will be investing in a larger pack of pro inkjet papers for my images next year. However the only problem I found with Fotospeed papers is that the correct color profiles they provided did not match with the epson printer and I had to improvise with a Harman PK Pearl color profile.
My final images for this project are strong as a set however I would have liked to shoot other locations, with more time I would have the time to ask permissions of other derelict and abandoned building owners around the UK to create a large collection to be possibly made into a photo-book.
I did not end up creating an artist book as I had intended for this project as when my idea changed and developed I felt that prints suited the new ideas more, however artist books is still something I will look into in the future.
I learn't a lot about printing, photography as a whole and honed my skills shooting in low light levels over this project, I feel it has been a successful learning curve for me as a photographer and I Look forward to developing it into the exhibition on June 18th.
Experimental image.
No matter which Idea I choose I would like to create an artist book of my own to support my exhibition based on an inspirational trip me and my fellow class mates took, to the Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections.
http://www.specialcollections.mmu.ac.uk/artists.php
Definition of Artist's book:
Artists' books or art books are works of art realized in the form of a book. They are often published in small editions, though sometimes they are produced as one-of-a-kind objects referred to as "uniques".
Artists' books have employed a wide range of forms, including scrolls, fold-outs, concertinas or loose items contained in a box as well as bound printed sheet. Artists have been active in printing and book production for centuries, but the artist's book is primarily a late 20th-century form.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_book"Artists' books are books or book-like objects over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself." Stephen Bury"
http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/jun/04/self-publish-photographers-photobooks
Sarah Bodman - Flowers in hotel rooms III
or perhaps create a professional portfolio book.
Morgan Silk
Morgan silk was born in 1970 in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, He started off his creative journey drawing and doodling as a child, and then went on to study at Blackpool college. He then discovered post production and photoshop techniques, taking up a career in editing and post production for top advertising photographers in London. He has a very particular
For post production technique similar to the dark grungyness of Morgan Silk's imagery and post
production style. : http://sidvasandani.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/case-study-shiny-and-grunge-look.html
"Zoo" series.
Morgan silks images could be seen as dramatic and powerful because of the context of the bars and enclosures around the animal restricting freedom, but at the same time it shows the true nature of zoos, when usually they are photographed in a positive happy way showing the animals and not actually the zoo itself.
Morgan's dark grungy post production style adds to the mood and context of the shoot. He makes the best of the available lighting and comes up with some very creative shots.
Shots like this that don't include the animals show the character of the zoo. The schedules on the door give the penguins an almost human like personality as they live by time and schedule just like the human condition.
After careful evaluation of my 3 ideas in class with my peers and tutors I have decided that I will be dropping idea 3 as it is the weakest of the 3. I cannot currently decide which idea out of 1 and 2 I would like to do so my plan is to progress developing both projects and see where it takes me. I will do a series of shoots for each and then narrow off onto 1 project once they have developed a little.
And the shooting begins!!!
First shoot for concept 1 zoo images taken in Blackpool Zoo 31/01/2014
I have picked out my favourite images from my first test shoot for this concept, I have been shooting in an alternate way to which I normally do when shooting animals, I have included the zoo environment in the imagery thus changing the feel and emotion of the images and giving them new meaning.
monkey enclsure including signage, I liked including the reflections in the glass as they give the viewer a preview into what is behind the enclosure and make the image feel more spacious.
I love the top lighting created by the enclosure florescent lights. it gives the subject a dark dramatic top light. However little light means shooting on the Highest ISO my camera can muster causing Grain and noise in my images.
shooting the animals including the environment especially the monkeys I found myself pitying the animals in captivity and looking at the expressions they had as being almost human like.
Similar to my usual shooting style it took patience to wait for interesting moments.
The enclosure lighting created some interesting highlights and shadows.
The next few images I played with white balance to give them a similar tonal feel to Morgan Silk's imagery without so much post production, seeing if i can achieve the affect in camera first
More white balance experimentation
The smudges on the glass and the monkeys paw have an interesting juxtaposition human finger prints and monkey paws.
The lighting and white balance experiments combined create a dark moody feel to the images that is really quite effective.
First shoot for concept 2 mini sets and miniature photography 03/02/2014
I did some experimenting in the studio with lego figures and lighting. Originally it was just to work out how to light a lego figure correctly , but then I remembered a link* a class mate had sent me about lego movie stills and decided to try some out myself, here are some of the results.
*http://petapixel.com/2014/01/30/awesome-miniature-movie-scenes-shot-using-legos-baking-powder/
First few shots were of a little skater I was just checking out lighting and scenarios with the character, I used 1 light from the left with a snoot to give hard movie like shadows and make the image deep and full of action!
I started using a mirror underneath my subjects during the shoot as I liked the effect it gave. Using 1 light ment that part of my subject was not lit properly so using paper as a reflector I got this split tone effect from the reflections in the mirror. I feel it represents the light and dark side in the star wars movies and fits well.
Dark shadows add mood
Increasing vibrance pops the colors.
Here I was going for an old western/black and white Indiana Jones style movie still so added grain and converted the image to black and white.
I have decided that I do not think my miniature set builds would make a strong enough project for my FMP at university level, however I do like the idea of my animals in cages. showing the zoos and the environments around them. After a chat with a tutor and some feedback on my images of the animals including the enclosures, my tutor suggested that I photograph the enclosures without the animals as the apparent lack of animals seems like an interesting idea.
Thinking about this idea I went home and as I have a hobby of gaming over the weekend played a newly released apocolypse based game called "the last of us" which with the idea from my tutor in my mind has sparked even more exploration and development for my FMP. The last of us shows very strong colourful visuals depicting deserted buildings absent of human life but showing where it once was.
The last of us visuals and trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLGxubfC1Ik
so from this I have come up with an entirely new idea. To photograph abandoned and wrecked buildings/locations absent of people or animals to show the hidden apocalypse. I would like to experiement with lighting and angles similar to the ones used in the last of us and other apocalypse movies such as 28 days later, dawn of the dead etc, to create movie like stills for my images.
I have chosen to do my test shoot experimenting with a 20mm lens as after research on urban exploration forums I have found the the wider the angle the better your images!
Movie stills from 28 days later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE_C5vSv8qg
Flickr huncoat power station: https://www.flickr.com/search/?q=huncoat%20power%20station
Urban Exploration Photography Forum: http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/
My plan of action from here is to do a test shoot at Huncoat power station in lancashire. From here after assessing the area and researching for other buildings to photograph.
First a little bit of history.
Huncoat Power station
Construction of Huncoat Power Station began in 1950 and it was opened in 1956. Situated on the Burnley coalfield meant that the power station had a ready supply of local coal, and until 1968 was served by a half mile railway line to Huncoat Colliery.The Power Station had a fairly short life, closure coming in 1984. The cooling towers were brought down in 1988 and the main buildings were demolished in 1990, apart from this one building. Not totally sure why this was left - my guess is that it contained transformers or switch gear, and was only closed when the relatively new transformer buildings (adjacent to the site) were brought on line.
http://www.theviewfromthenorth.org/huncoat-power-station
some of my images
These images were taken on a Nikon D3000 some one tripod with a combination of prime 20mm lens and 70-300mm zoom lens.
I like the grungy feel of these images because it gives a lot of texture.
However this image is not as strong because I feel the view out of the windows lets the image down, had a been on a clearer day it may have been nicer.
I tried to combat the bleached out windows by burning in the image a little around the windows however this did not work.
The walls are strewn with interesting graffiti
This image reminds me of my "the last of us" concept the most, the moss has started to take over the flooring.
Some areas are so dark that I could not properly expose the image even on tripod it added too much grain, so I had someone shine a torch on these electrical boxes creating a nice shadow
This is my favourite image of all the shoot as I feel it really shows the abandonment concept.
here I positioned the stairs diagonally in the frame to create zig zag shapes through the image.
Long corridors with rooms either side created interesting shadows.
Peeling paint textures.
one of the many pieces of rubble and trash, part of the few remaining human elements of the place.
Its hard to see this place as a working power station, it now has been consumed by nature and become a haven to graffiti artists.
Test shot of my partner tabs modelling as a graffiti artist.
I defiantly enjoyed shooting this location, it was great fun to explore the area as well as presenting so many varying shapes colors and textures that caught my eye!.
after thsi shoot i have decided to continue with the idea of abandonment but after speaking to a tutor decided that more human elements are required to make the images stronger, I.e a cup/plate on the side, suitcases, wheel chairs. Boots in the case of huncoat, to convey they idea that humans used to populate the area. after this chat I began to think of these abandoned places as "time capsules" once a building is abandoned it remains in the time and era going unchanged as the rest of the world moves on without it.
I now plan to find more places to suit my time capsule idea.
Oswaldtwistle Holdings Pottery.
History
Holding's Country Pottery was founded in 1842 by James Holding, but it was not originally located on Haslingden Old Road where it is now. The original pottery was built a short distance away in Gaulkthorn, another outlying area of Oswaldtwistle. In 1860 James Holding moved his business to Broadfield, then in 1900 his son Grimshaw Holding set up the pottery on the present site. From then on the pottery stayed put and the business passed down from father to son until it's decline very recently - the last mandatory accounts, made up to 3rd. May, were submitted to Companies House in 2010, with the comment, "Nature of business, dormant company". The reason for the decline of the business we do not know, and we saw nothing to give any hint whilst wandering around the site. I must say though that for a business that wound up so recently the buildings must already have been in a sorry state of repair to have deteriorated so rapidly subsequently - the impression is not of a building abandoned recently
And the adventure begins.
When I first scouted this location I came across a lot of photographic problems that I needed to over come, firstly it was VERY dark inside of the building, the little light that was there came from small holes in the ceiling and walls. I needed to shoot on a very low shutter to get the correct exposure, I could have shot on a high ISO such as 1600 however I wanted to keep the sharpness and detail in my images so had to Tripod my camera to get the images I wanted.
I kept reshooting this location on a total of 5 shoots at oswaldtwistle and 3 at huncoat.
For My final images I researched various papers and paper companies to find the best one for my images,
- Pinnacle
- Fotospeed
- Harman
- Marrutt
- PermaJet
Paper types
-Matte
-Lustre
-Glossy
-Pearl
-Metallic
-fine art
as my images contain a lot of metal and rust I decided to use a Fotospeed metallic pearl paper.
Evaluation.
I am very happy with my prints for this project the paper is very nice and the images are pin sharp, I will be investing in a larger pack of pro inkjet papers for my images next year. However the only problem I found with Fotospeed papers is that the correct color profiles they provided did not match with the epson printer and I had to improvise with a Harman PK Pearl color profile.
My final images for this project are strong as a set however I would have liked to shoot other locations, with more time I would have the time to ask permissions of other derelict and abandoned building owners around the UK to create a large collection to be possibly made into a photo-book.
I did not end up creating an artist book as I had intended for this project as when my idea changed and developed I felt that prints suited the new ideas more, however artist books is still something I will look into in the future.
I learn't a lot about printing, photography as a whole and honed my skills shooting in low light levels over this project, I feel it has been a successful learning curve for me as a photographer and I Look forward to developing it into the exhibition on June 18th.
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