Diptychs and triptychs
Before sorting my pictures into different diptychs and triptychs I laid them out onto the table to get a better view of each one. Doing this helped me decide what pictures would work better with each other as I could see them all at the same time. Putting all of my photos onto the table also made it easier to put them into diptychs and triptychs as I could easily move them around and test out different pairings. |
My Favourite diptych and triptych
I like this diptych because it shows how art can be used as a form of expression across different cultures and groups of people. I also like it because while they are both making a piece of art they are doing it in different ways and making different things. This means that the photos have both similarities and differences which makes them work together well in multiple ways.
I think that this triptych works well because it follows a line of sight in a way. The first photo is of the ground and of the lower level of the skate park while the next photo is taken of something a bit higher. The final photo is taken at a higher angle and is of the roof of the skatepark. Putting the photos in this order allows the photos to tell a kind of story as you are following the design of the skatepark from the floor to the roof.
These are my most recent photos that link to skateboarding. I took them at a skatepark just next to London Bridge station, which is an area that I think I might start to focus more on as I think it will be interesting to document a certain place and the people that skate there. I think that these photos work well, although using a flash could have improved them a little bit as it was quite dark which meant that I had to use a fairly low shutter speed. |
Editing experiments
The first type of experiment I did was double exposures. I chose to do double exposures because I thought that it would be a good way to show the connection between the skaters and the skateparks/skate culture. I think that these photos turned out well, although I do think that some of the blending could be improved in some areas of the photos. To further build upon this experiment I plan on trying to do double exposures in the darkroom by printing two negatives onto one piece of paper. |
The next type of experiment that I did was editing some of my previous photos to look like they had been taken with a fisheye lens. I did this because I think that it makes the photos more unique and interesting to look at. However, I am not sure if this type of photo would link with the rest of my project as it is drastically different and presents a different type of theme to my photos, a highly distorted and edited one, which is not exactly what I aim to present with my photos. |
Saatchi Gallery and V&A Museum visit
These are some of my favourite photos that I saw when visiting these two galleries. I really liked the colours and compositions of the landscape photos, and even though they are fairly simple in subject, the way that they are taken allows them to come across as so much more detailed. The collection of portrait photos stood out to me as a large part of my personal investigation is portraiture. I felt that I could learn a lot about lighting and framing from these photos and I began to think about how I could use them as inspiration for some of my portraits. These portraits don't just focus on the subjects face but also on their clothes and how they choose to present themselves. I thought that this was a really interesting way of providing a deeper look into who they are as a person and how they choose to be perceived. |
Darkroom Prints
I started by making some contact sheets of the photos that I had taken. Doing this meant that I was able to see which photos I would like to print as well as how they may need to be printed, for example some of the photos may need one area of them to be exposed for longer than another. I then used a pen to circle the photos that I would like to use and the photos that I think would not work as well, either because the subject of the photos was wrong or because the exposure of them was wrong. This meant that it would be easier to print the photos that I needed as I already knew what they would look like.
These are some examples of the test strips that I made of the photos before I made a full size print of them. My main reason for doing this was so that I knew how long I would have to expose the negatives in the enlarger for, as well as knowing what areas would need more attention than others. I found that exposing the photos for about 3-4 seconds was the best way of gauging an understanding of how long they would really need as it would make it clearer as to if they would need a longer or shorter amount of time. I used strips of paper for the test prints because I did not want to waste a whole sheet of paper for each test.
These are the final prints that I made and I think that they mostly came out well. Some of the photos are slightly foggy, however I believe that this is mainly due to the fact that this is what the photos looked like when they were taken. I chose to keep the sprockets and writing of the film on the prints as I believe that it makes the photos fit the style of their subjects better as it gives them more of a 'street' style due to the fact that they don't look like they were taken to be used as professional photos.
Print Exhibitions
This is a digital exhibition that I made as a way of presenting some of the prints that I made in the darkroom. I chose to create an exhibition with these photos as I believe that it is the best way of showing off the style of prints that they are as well as the fact that it allows people to see a closer relation between them as they are able to take in all the photos at once, instead of just a few at a time such as if they were in a book.
Alongside this I also made a small physical version of the exhibition. I believe that it could have been improved in a number of ways. However, I also think that having a physical exhibition is a better way of presenting the photos than a digital one. This is due to the fact that the prints being seen as an actual physical object that is being shown instead of just a scan of them allows people to connect a lot more with them as they are seeing the actual photos that were taken, instead of just copies. I also think that the physical exhibition works better with the use of film and darkroom prints as it continues the theme and style of the photos being physical things, instead of just digital copies.