Self Evaluation

 

 ‘The City’ assignment – SELF EVALUATION
 

 

 

 

For this assignment I produced a series of six photographs presenting household items located in urban environment. Before I started producing my final outcome I researched photographers relevant to a given task. I created new blog which contains my written analysis of my work and others. In addition to this, I produced a sketchbook that includes information about my work and printed photographs that I took. Finally, I edited my final chosen photographs and uploaded them on my blog. This assignment helped me to improve my skills in terms of generating unconventional ideas and accomplishing them in public space. Beside this, I improved my compositional skills and developed my experience in terms of choosing suitable locations for photographing certain objects. I also developed my technical knowledge by using different lenses in different situations to get best perspective in my pictures.
 

 

In order to improve my work I would try to take my pictures in better weather conditions (unfortunately it has been difficult to achieve lately) to get a better lighting. Also to improve an overall appearance of my photographs I would interfere in ambient light by using light reflectors, diffusers or additional lighting such as speedlite or softbox.
 

I really enjoyed walking around the city and taking photographs of things which I took with me. It was very unusual experience for me and I’m sure that I will remember it for long. This assignment was also a good opportunity to improve on my self organization and ability to work under a pressure of time. This was another project which helped me to develop my skills of going through the whole process of implementation of university assignments.
 

I am quite satisfied with my final outcome and this project was a next step to draw further conclusion and make some progress for next assignments.
 

 

 

 

 

 

Patryk Zarzycki

Final Images

 These are my final images for this assignment. I think they are thematically related to each other and reflect my idea. In terms of post production I didn't do anything beyond enhancing colours and contrast with curves, adding vignette and cropping.

Penny Klepuszewska

The work of this photographer gave me an idea of photographing household items. But instead of taking things to a studio I've brought things with my to the certain locations and created various still live compositions consisting of things of every day use and open space/ urban surrounding.

lamp

Here is my another image relating to my theme.

I thought that photographing a lamp standing on it's own in the middle of the street would create a nice contrast between the public space and household item. I think that overall composition is interesting despite that there is no rationale for this lamp to be there.

Converting this image into black & white added more drama to this photograph. Also, strong vignette exposes the centre of an image. In the original image I thought that different colours of a cars and buildings in a background were distracting and dominated the main subject. By looking at this photograph I get the feeling of loneliness and the lamp (light) standing alone could symbolise a hope or play a role of a urban lighthouse for people lost in the streets.

Edited images

Out of all photographs that I took so far I've chosen the best ones and decided to enhance them in Photoshop to give them a little bit more dynamic, interesting appearance.

Public Phone/ reading room

Umbrella

Ironing Board

 Natural desk

Bathroom

Reading room

I think that placing ordinary, common objects such as: cosmetics, clock, computer, iron into an urban, public environment surely creates surreal atmosphere in terms of visual aspects. These photographs make me feel that these two parts (public space and household items) do not fit each other ideologically. This fact rises the statement in me that public space and our houses are two different dimensions/spaces which we exist in. In our mentality our houses are always going to be something personal and intimate.

Household items

I've decided to change my current theme for this project which was photographing hidden objects in urban environment and create new idea which is going to be about photographing household items in the City environment. Throughout this series I want to arouse in the viewer a feeling of  astonishment and confusion. I decided to photographs random household items in a places where normally they don't exist. By creating these unusual compositions I want to highlight the fact that we are all used to see our belongings in our houses, however the same objects photographed in open, public space give us a feeling of not only abstraction but also it can make us feel some kind of embarrassment because everyone can see it.

Here are some pictures that I took recently:

'The City' Assignment - brief proposal

‘The City’ Assignment Proposal

For this assignment I’m going to produce a series of photographs disclosing details of variety of unnoticed objects hidden in urban environment.

My aim for next few weeks is to improve my observational capabilities (picking out interesting objects/details from the whole landscape) and ability to construct considered compositions by focusing on the form of an object in relation to its surroundings. Also it will be a good chance for me to convince myself to start using my 70/300mm telephoto lens and develop my skills towards that. ( I always tended to use prime lenses with focal length around 50mm).

The main purpose for this project will be to show people that there are a lot of little objects in every City environment that are very often ignored or unnoticed, however they can be very significant in our lives or just simply beautiful and intriguing.

Wall paintings & graffitis

Wall paintings & graffitis are inherent elements in urban environment. Graffiti style became very significant subject in contemporary art and design.

I found this book quite interesting in terms of imagery which it contains.

The main photographer whose pictures were used in this book is called Kriebel. In his work he focuses on wall painting and murals.

You can find his work on his website: http://www.kriebel.tk/

Ludovic Zuili

Ludovic Zuili 

Life is in the Urban Details

I decided to add this photographer to my blog because his work turned out to be quite inspirational and similar to my concept in terms of theme and technique. 

The City Assignment- first photographs

Here I've uploaded my first photographs showing 'the City'. This series does not have any particular theme because my aim was to combine different themes (close ups, landscapes) to see which style will be more suitable for me.

I think that the background is a little bit distracting in this image. I should have set bigger aperture (f2) to blur the background and separate the main subject from the rest.

Strong vignette, a lot of dark tones and subtle  highlights give a quite cinematic look to this image.

One of my themes could be a 'movement'. By using slow shutter speed and creating motion blur I could produce a series of photographs showing dynamics and rush of the city.

Here I like the contrast between this blue pet bowl with little paws and dark, dull background.

My another concept is to produce a piece of imagery disclosing unnoticed details of the city. By using telephoto lenses or setting big apertures to create shallow depth of field we can isolate efficiently  details from the rest of environment.