Season Brief - More Photo's

Yesterday I went to Dunham Massey park near where i live hoping to photograph the deer they usually have pondering around although when i got there i was dissapointed to find that they were not there. Even though what id planned hadnt worked i decided to take the trip as an oppourtinity and capture any glimpse of spring that i could.

Thankfully the sun was shining as this was a key part to the spring idea as the sun makes a come back and makes everything grow, i captured a couple of images and when looking back over them i realise they represent autumn which couldn't be helped as the season we are in at the moment is autumn and there are leaves all over the floor and hardly any on the tree's.

After searching the grounds i found a few trees which had green leaves left on them which i thought looked mostly like the ones we see in spring.

Here are a few images i picked out...

I felt this image represented spring as you can see the remains of winter turning into spring as the branch in front has no leaves, but buds, and the tree behind has full of green healthy leaves. Although i felt the image lacked interest to it.



I love this image below although i know it represents autumn a lot more than spring.



This image is one of my favourites of the bunch, i like this image because of its depth, it has shadows and silhouettes and then the sun beaming behind lights up the background. i feel it represents spring well as you can see the sun is shining and the trees are in full bloom and healthy.

These two images below are both the same image although the top one is lighter and the bottom is darker, i experimented with this image as i wanted to see whether it made a massive difference to the end outcome of the shot.

Season Brief: Further inital photos

After struggling to get the right sort of image by overlaying images on photoshop i decided to scan in the feathers layered on top of each other, it is still not perfect and i doubt i will use these images as my final image but they are just starting points and experimentation...


This image below is my favourite of the three, i like the bright tones in the image and the different textures, i do feel it doesnt represent spring as much as i would like it too though. I would like to capture a sunset and maybe layer this image on top of it for my final image.

I produced this image by moving the feathers while it was scanning, i like how it portrays movement,

Spring: Initial images and editing

I have started to experiment around with some of my ideas, for example feathers : as they are associated with ducks and new born life of other birds which  links to spring, water : which Brian Valentine uses a lot in his Spring work and also weather and foliage outside.

Here are some of my initial shots, i am beggining to edit some images by using layers on Photoshop, i think this can be really effective to bring more than one idea into an image.

I started experimenting around with these two images below, i liked the tones within the two images that represneted Spring, in the top one a pinky orangey haze and the second image has a bluey tint to it. To start off i simply layered the images ontop of each other and changed the opacity so that both images could be seen.

The image i produced had a weird aura about it, with the movement of the feather and the stillness of the sky behind, I really like this image and the colours are just how i wanted them with the pinky bluey oranges. This is not a perfect image atall and i wont be using it as a final image but i feel it is a start on my experimenting and on Wednesday we have to show our initial ideas in our group tutorials so that we can be given feedback on how to improve our images.

Colour Assignment 2 (Research)

For this assignment we were put into 3 groups, one for each season:

Spring
Autumn
Winter

I was given Spring, and as it is now only approaching winter i was finding it a little difficult to come up with ideas. Therefore i decided i needed to do a lot of research to find out what people think when they hear the word Spring. I decided to start off my research i would produce a questionnaire to hand out to friends and family to see how they portray Spring.

Here is a copy of my questionnaire :

What is spring?

1.    When you hear the word spring what do you automatically think of?

2.    What colours do you associate with spring?

3.      If you were to think out of the box can you think of anything less obvious that is associated with spring?

4.      What sort of weather do you associate with spring?

5.      Are there any animals you associate with spring?

6.      Are there any flowers you associate with spring?

The response that i got back had only a little variety, here are the common answers i recieved :

Question 1 : Flowers, birds singing

Question 2: Light pinks, blues, greens, yellows, oranges

Question 3: Rebirth,a slinky, spring cleaning

Question 4: Warm, crisp but sunny, dewwy mornings

Question 5: Rabbits, lambs, ducks

Question 6: Blossom, daffodills

So this has set me off with a wealth of information to photograph!

There is one particular image i found that i loved, you can see it below :

I love the colours within the image and the not so obvious link to spring, i feel the colour yellow really represents spring well and would like to use yellow tones in my image, i also feel the lighting represents the crisp sunny morning that was described in my questionnaire answers.

I looked closely at the work of Kevin Pieper, Kevin bases a lot of his work around seasons, i found one image (seen below) that i really liked, it was titled 'Spring is in the air' and he has used tulips which do flower during spring.

The colours Pieper has used in the image relate to the feedback i got from my questionnaire, he has used greens, pinks and blues, which to me at first didnt represent spring, i thought of spring as yellow and orangey tones although after seeing this image i now see how those colours can represent spring.

I also had a look at Brian Valentines work which is strictly based around Macro, some of his images have amazing intricate detail, below are some of my favourite images of his :

I really like the work of Valentine, i feel these images represent spring because of the water droplets, as i said before when i wake up on a spring morning i expect to see a dew on the grass. i feel this imagery is amazing, and would like to recreate some of these images and experiment arond with water on items such as flowers, feathers, outdoor benches etc.

An interesting factor that fits with the Spring theme, is the equinox. The Equinox is understood as 'equal day and night', it occurs twice a year once in September and once around the 20th March which is of course the start of spring. I want to research further into how i could portray equinox into my images for spring. I struggled to find images that represented the Equinox but i was quite pleased because i want my work to be new, innovative and exciting!

I aim to create an image that is a little out of the box instead of the obvious images of flowers and lambs etc.

Colour Assignment

Combining both colours and chosen words...

For this assignment we each were given an envelope at random, inside this envelope was a colour swatch and a key word. With these we were expected to produce 8 images in total, 5 images using key words (one that we were given and four others from a list) and 3 images combining the words we had chosen and the colour we were given.

My colour swatch was...

and my key word is saturated.

So after doing my research and taking lots of shots i came up with my ideas for each image...

For my three images relating to my colour and word i chose:

1.Vibrant and Yellow

2.Saturated and Yellow

3.Natural and Yellow

  WORDS AND COLOUR

Here are my final images...

1.

I chose this image to represent Vibrant, i feel this does this very well and i have canceled out all the other colours within the photograph and left the vibrant yellow. When showing this to the others in my group they guessed straight away that this was vibrant so i feel that i suceeded on this image.

2.

This image was to represent Saturated, the reasoning behind this was that the image is actually of a bottle of oil which is saturated fat, but i realised when showing this to my group that they automatically thought the image was representing movement, i will have to redo and tweak this image to make sure i am representing saturated.

3.

  This image is to represent Natural, i feel that this represents natural quite well although my group thought of this image as vibrant from their first look. After telling them that this was my image to represent natural they understood but i feel i need to explore the word 'natural' more instead of instantly thinking either animals or plants.

KEY WORDS



Now i have 5 images left that i had to base on a word, i used Saturated for one word as this was my given word and my other four words were :

1.Decay

2.Light

3.Reflection

4.Saturated

5.Texture

1.

This image was to represent Decay, i feel i have portrayed this word correctly within this image as my group automatically knew what word this was meant to represent. To create this image i used a cast of my teeth that i found from a 5 years ago and painted it with coffee to create the decaying look.

2.

This image is to represent Light, i feel i have represented this correctly although when showing my group their first thoughts were shape. I can see where they got their ideas from as their is a distinct sphereical shape in this image although i thought that light is more fitting to the image. To produce this image i used a glass ball placed onto of a light source and poured oil over it.

3.

This image is to represent Reflection, my group guessed this correctly straight away. For this image i used a glass candel holder and a mirror and i used an orange filtered light to create this lovely warming colour.

4.

This image was to represent Saturated, i think that i thought a little to deeply about this word as my previous image with the saturated fats meaning was too hard for my group to guess and again with this image they didnt get it. The reasoning behind this image was that the feathers were saturated in water but when the image was placed on a large screen i realised that you cannot actually see the water inside the glass jar so the meaning was lost. I feel i need to think a little more literally about the word Saturated and redo both my images for this word.

5.

This image was to represent Texture and i feel i have portrayed texture really well, this is actually a pumpkin for halloween made out of tiny glass balls. Throughout our group tutorial we discussed how the use of light is so important when trying to capture texture and i feel i used my light really well to make sure you could see every detail of those glass balls.