Image Set for Work

So for the theme work I wanted to still work in a category that I am interested in which is fashion and I really love disney to so I wanted to combine these together as it still fits with the idea of fantasy. However I wanted to bring the idea of it to make it a modern,  wanted to make a modern day Belle. The setting a coffee shop as that is where most people go to read and that is what Belle is most famous for!

So her casual clothes look like this in the disney film, and I wanted to have my model wearing something similar but making it a bit more modern, and rather then reading a book, I would have her reading off a kindle because this is more modern and fits with digital media, showing how technology has evolved and its the reading where I can base the work side of theme into this shoot. Here are my final 3 images from this shoot.

In all these images I feel that the work theme fits with the reading but you can see it is not the focus of the images. You can see the clear influence from Belles disney style but also that she is in a modern setting, the blue bow is a link to the character as it the pinafore dress. Black is a more modern colour for girls to wear nowadays and fits with a minimalistic style. Overall I am happy with this shoot however with more time, I would have her changing outfits and maybe have her shopping on a tablet for a ball gown.

Video for Play

A Day in the Life of Ozzy

Here is the video I made for the theme play. To create this I strapped a go pro to my dog Ozzy and created a video in the day in the life of him. To show what he gets up to during the day, using the go pro I was able to get a different perspective to if I had just recorded his daily activities, you are literally on his level, looking at his viewpoint. I had edited 3-4 hours of footage and condensed it down to 6 minutes. I chose the highlights from his day and then had to find music that was playful and suited to this theme and I think searching the internet I ended up finding the perfect music which  really fits to the theme of play. I’m no film editing pro but I am happy with how I did and created a video that when showing others loved it and found it cute! I feel look back at other videos from go pros on dogs helped as I had an idea what I wanted but I could only do so much because once the camera was on the dog it was Ozzy’s choice what he wanted to do but it worked well.

I feel this fits well with digital media and looking back through previous lectures I feel this fits quite well to the Traditional vs New media one because if it wash;t for technology like the GoPro camera I would not have been able to achieve this concept, it shows how much technology has evolved to allow to create and even connect with our animals to help us understand what it is they do in a day. And things like this can help with research into animals daily habits and lifestyles. The power of the internet is what has allowed me as a media professional to share this piece of work online and hopefully connect with other users on a global scale!

I am over ally happy about this project and feel it shows the playfulness and daily activities of a beloved pet.

Future Digital – Future Semantic

Earlier in the module we looked at immersive environments and networking, but where is it all going?

It seems to be that retail is the direction where immersive and reactive wars will be raged. The next generation will be :

Sense and respond environments that morph themselves to meet the temporal demands of customers immediate shopping objectives.

What does that mean? The IBM (International Business Machines) report talks about the immersive retailing experience being delivered via microenvironments that narrow the focus of shoppers’ experiences to “I” and “me.” Tailormade. Customised buying experiences that will be:

A dynamic aggregation of flexible technology, realtime sales, and rich customer data … driven by the ability to evaluate inventory and business conditions, along with specific customer preferences, on the fly. An array of technologies will combine to create these environments, revolutionizing the shopping experience in stores and online.

Retailers will use integrated digital media technologies including

• radio frequency identification (RFID)
• kiosks
• electronic shelf labels
• biometrics
• shopping cart companions

Films like the minority report will not be a thing of science fiction, these technologies will soon be connected to consumers personal devices.

We looked at a video advert for Estomote Bluetooth Smart Beacon.

http://youtu.be/sUIqfjpInxY

• which shows how through bluetooth consumers data can be targeted by advertising agencies who would previously by their products. Its scary how much the internet and networking and technology has grown but with this if you switch your bluetooth off you can’t be targeted.

Soon many if us will be using wearable technology such as google glasses and especially for people who have health conditions such as diabetes and heart conditions so doctors can keep an eye on said condition.

Ubiquitous computing is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. As opposed to the desktop paradigm, in which a single user consciously engages a single device for a specialised purpose, someone “using” ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, in the course of ordinary activities, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so.

Mark Weiser coined this phrase. He believed technology would have a calming influence as it would make our lives easier. But what do we think?

I think its made our lives easier, I agree with that but were becoming lazy and losing touch to what life means and in some senses it can be stressful if it doesn’t work or your forget t charge something, especially if the internet is down, because we rely so much on it it stresses us out and we act as if the world is over. For a photographer technology has made it easier to take an image rather then having to go through the darkroom process (even though me personally I like this traditional technique) but its been made more accessible and easier for anyone to become a photographer, however networking has made it easier for us to showcase our work globally.

The semantic web is only 25 years old and its all free. Wikipedia is a model that shouldn’t be possible but it is! It is about publishing pages to be understood by computers so they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web by reading these ontological connections.

The future, this thing we are making, which we are making together by feeding databases, its accessed by computers, handhelds, laptops, mobiles, all these connections are made by one machine! Its the most relaible machine ever made, uninterrupted since it began.

• 120 billion clicks per day.
• 65 trillion links between all the Web pages of the world.
• 2.5 million emails per second
• 170 quadrillion transistors
• 246 exabyte storage.
• 10 terabytes per second total traffic (the Library of Congress is about twenty terabytes. So every second, half the Library of Congress is swooshing around the world)
• It uses five percent of the global electricity on the planet.

 

The size and complexity of this machine, like we discussed in last weeks lecture is the size and complexity of our brains, it is a kind of artificial intelligence because the more you feed it the more it learns. By 2040 the power of this machine will exceed the processing power of humanity.

Looked at an advert for Mircrosft HoloLens:

http://youtu.be/Qm2gnnyyvEg

– which is a headpiece which infuses technology with our real life spaces, its taking immersive technology to a whole new level bringing it to our homes.

The internet today helps us carry out everyday task such as booking tickets, checking times of a gig etc but a machine wouldn’t be able to tell it to do this, it is designed for people to read it.

We watched a video from a talk by someone called Tim – Bernes- Lee where he talks about how all of our searches will be different because the network has learnt what we search the most and it means that it could be hard for us to see something that hasn’t been tailored to us, meaning we could miss things. Were getting what we want to see, so if we constantly click on animal videos thats all we are going to get. As one classmate mentioned its dangerous to just rely on one source of information, again this could link back to the hoax lecture but also the key reading of bullshit, we shouldn’t always believe what we first see, we should back it up.

Machines decide what we want through our online profile, so in a sense its a bit like surveillance.

There are filmmakers and writers who speculate about the catastrophic future that technology could bring like Black Mirror and Utopia. What will it really be like though?

As a professional how can we stand out in a time of pervasive, machine readable, technology? How can we exploit this global graph and make the connections you need in order to make a career in the area we love?

Network: Use all your connections (community)
Relevance: Know your audience/customers/readers/users.
Profile: Always be professional and make sure your digital brand is the best it can be.
USP: Even if you’re doing what other people do find the thing you do best and bang on about it.
Exploit: All the tech you can to make sure you are ahead of the competition and have a joined up online persona/brand.
Learn: About each new marketing/networking development.

More Picbod Research

Because I am doing a collaboration project with my subject I feel I need to do more research into photographers who collaborate with their subjects and tell their stories.

In my researching I came across a photographer called Eugene Richards and his series Exploding into Life, which is a project where his partner Dorothea Lynch found out she had breast cancer and asked Eugene to visually document her experiences and struggles whilst she kept a visual diary, she was co author of this book and they worked together to create this series. It shows both their experiences through her breast cancer but also shows what it means to be alive but also the acceptance of death. Here are some images from the series:


To create a project like this you must have your subjects full trust because you’re capturing such personal and intimate moments and the fact that they’re a couple works because they’re able to create that level of intimacy and trust within this book. Its interesting to see her battle with cancer and how she is allowing the viewer in on such a personal thing, but the viewer relates to it because we all know someone who is ill, or are ill ourselves and it does make you think how important life is. I really like how some of the images are of her treatment because it really shows the full experience of cancer. Its a very powerful project and I think if I were to link it with mine it would be to create that trust with chris so that when I am image making and video shooting that I am getting natural reactions and responses to my interviews. She wrote a diary, I won’t be getting chris to do that but I will be including his personal artefacts and quotes from him and his family.
http://www.eugenerichards.com

Jim Goldberg was a photographer who was bought up in our Identity lecture. His series rich and poor was a collaboration portraiture project with both ends of the social ladder with people from San Francisco, he would take these peoples portraits in their homes but would get them to handwrite something about themselves under their portraits, so he is allowing them to create the narrative because the text will give the portrait context. Here are some images from the series:

Its interesting to see how text can give an image context and change the meaning of said piece. It also gives you more of an idea of their story and it his him a photographer choosing to let his subjects write something about themselves, letting them add context to their own images. This is interesting, I mean I am allowing Chris to speak on his behalf and will be including quotes from him from his interviews, but allowing him to handwrite them would be really interesting, and adds another level of intimacy and personalise it a bit.
https://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2K7O3RB0TS0F

Through some research I came across a photographer called Carolyn Drake, a documentary photographer and I am looking into her photobook called Wild Pigeons, which is a project where she basically went around China with a box of prints, scissors, glue, sketchbooks and pencils, and asked her subjects to play around with her prints, this is a really different kind of collaboration to what I have previously looked at because even though she is working with her subjects to create this piece and giving them control to create a new context and meaning, giving her images a new dialogue but she is allowing them to change the meanings of her images which is really clever, here are some images from this piece:

The images remind me of montages, because its using images but adding more to them to give them more information, more of a narrative. I mean with any images Chris has given me I will not be changing the context because their his and I am telling his story and images I take I will be fully working with him to create this book and the context of how he deals and carries on with normal life with the obstacle of his cystic fibrosis. However it would be interesting to give him more control on how things would look, after all he will my co author.
http://time.com/3594815/the-art-of-storytelling-using-collaboration-to-enhance-the-message/

When speaking to lecturer Anthony Luvera, a well known photographer for collaboration with his subjects I asked if he knew of any other photographers who used collaboration and he mentioned Gemma Rose Turnbull and I am looking at her series called My Norma, Your Norma which this is a different kind of collaboration, it a collaboration between two photographers, Turnbull and Emily Fitzgerald, it is a project showing visual stories of both their grandmothers who funnily enough are both called Norma. So even though this is a collaboration between photographers its the project itself I like, I like the use of artefacts to help their stories. I also really like the vivid colours too! Here are some images from this series:

http://www.gemmarose.com.au/my-norma-your-norma

Speaking; from the local to the universal – The Artefact and Digital Exhibition

Reminds us how our submission must be exhibition ready. – ensure our artefacts reflect and utilise the world they occupy.

We are going to look at:

The weight of objects 
A physical object occupies a physical space. Often the digital age we look at its flaws. It is bulky, it is expensive, it takes time to produce and money to distribute, it only performs one function and cannot be updated. The physical artefact can do a thing that the digital artefact can’t and thats embodiment, it involves the viewers and their thoughts and reactions and that is something that cannot be replicated into the digital. We don’t want to nosgaltic things or romanticise them either because we are suggesting that they are on there way out and also because were also being thin on critical thinking, to be taken seriously we need much more context behind it. Embrace the weight, its a souvenir and can jog our memories.

We looked at Jon Levy – Poppy – a photobook.

-Poppy charts a 20 year journey along the highways and byways of the Afghan heroin trade.

We also looked at gallery space because as great as books are sometimes are concepts aren’t suited to a small 8×10 inch spread. When you are used to publishing on lie for free at the click of a button but then your work is given a physical space it makes you feel like your work is worthy because someone is willing to put the time behind it to make its physical artefact.

A physical artefact can carry with it provenance, a story, a narrative which is something the digital has yet to do. Live experience has more value. Working with physical artefacts (book and the gallery) gives us space to think and pause and to break the flow of images.

The craftsman
Photographers as alchemists. On instagram we can create faux vintage images.
We looked at Ian Ruhther – Silver and Light

– he creates his own film and cameras as he wants to be unique and original and to create something thats never been done before, he’s a craftsman.

The digital repri(can’t)
Skeuomorphism (A digital representation of something, to resemble something we recognise, having something like an E-Book with something that has what seems to be pages makes you feel more comfortable, it tricks the viewer, similar to virtual reality representing something in real life but its all data and not real, its given you real life experiences digitally.)

We discussed it being valentines day this saturday and looked at a rose and discussed how much we price the object at, how much we would price the digital copy and how much we would price work prints of the object. It was discussed how the prints would mean more because it captures a moment and the rose won’t live forever, its the memory. We discussed how important it is for it to be the same rose, if its a memory I think it is because it would mean something to someone. The more editions there are of something the less important they feel because it means anyone has access to them. We collect things as photographers – why is the 1 of 1 more valuable then the 1 of 3, why do we want something thats original and unique?

We need to consider for our production:

What are my desired outcomes?

What am I looked to achieve by the production of this artefact?

How can my method of presentation help me to accomplish this?
Who do I want to experience this?
How can I best reach these people
When do I want them to experience it?
What are my resources?
How can I use these efficiently?

We also need to consider:
What could I do for the exhibition?

Prints Mounted, Box of Prints, Photobook, Framed but remember a print on its own is not exhibition ready, also think about the quality of the paper you are using.

Ask, How will this inhabit an exhibition space?

A photofilm is not exhibition ready – is it going to be in a black room, will it be played on a loop?
What happens if the work isn’t shown?
Is it beautiful?
Does it hold a mirror?
Does it shine light?
It is speaking directly to us?
Is it apparent?
Does it ask for reflection?
Is it even interesting?

Picbod Photographers Research and Feedback

Laia Abril is my mine main inspiration for this project however I feel I need to do some more research, as it could help me develop my ideas for my image taking and what I wish to include in my book. Also when I had feedback with my group last week I mentioned my idea again, and it was said how my idea is potentially focusing too much on his health and how my book would be preferred to be seen as more of a focus on who he  is as a person and his interests rather then looking at his Cystic Fibrosis because they do not wish to pity him, however my point was that if I do that it would become more of a book on someones interests and I wish to show my viewers what its like for someone dealing with respiratory conditions. I feel I have already developed my idea quite a bit from the conversations task. The whole basis of my concept is respiratory problems so I do wish to incorporate this within my piece, however I will take on board some of the feedback by putting more of a focus on hi interests to show how he pushes through his problems, but I will still be including artefacts and information on cystic fibrosis. I feel this will still keep the viewer involved and if I am careful with my planning and structure of book then it won’t make people pity him. One of the people in my group told me to look at her blog as her last project is similar so I could get some inspiration.

I came across a project called The Battle We Didn’t Chose by Angelo Merendino. A project showing his wife’s journey and battle with cancer and this project was originally started as a way of reaching out to the couples daily and friends for support as they felt like they were losing it but then a friend suggested they put it online and their story helped others. Sadly his wife passed away. This is a very strong series and even though it was personal to them, it engages the viewer emotionally because in some way or another we all know someone who has either had this or had a friend or family member with it. Here are some images from the series:

Its a very moving piece, as it even had me in tears, and it really documents her personal journey through her battle with cancer but also highlights their relationship. Its very sad but relatable, the images are very intimate and she is allowing you into a lot of her life and at times when she is probably feeling at her work. The purpose and focus is on her cancer but also shows how she still carries on through it which is similar to what I want to show within my project with Chris, I wish to show his interests and things he has achieved through life despite his condition.
http://mywifesfightwithbreastcancer.com/photographs/#.VOOkoN6–0s

Another good photographer to look at for my project as well is Ben Krewinkel and his project A Possible Life: Conversations with Gaulbert. And I found out about him through our conversations lecture and the Skype chat Matt had with him. Krewinkel referred to Gaulbert as a co-author in the project because the project is telling the story of an undocumented immigrant, and he felt the best approach was collaboration. I completely agree if you’re telling someones story, collaborating with the subject is best because it is their story after all and this is what I wish to do with Chris. Here are some images from this project:

When looking at these images, it was obviously a choice of both photographer and subject to chose to not show Gaulbert’s identity, because his face is either scratched out or covered in darkness. The images aren’t my inspiration as the context of this project is very different to mine, however it is Krewinkles approach to the story telling which I can relate too as I am collaborating with chris, and like Laia Abril will be using documents and artefacts to help tell his story and like Krewinkle will be getting chris to help me make my book. Krewinkle said in his Skype chat to Matt how it was the use of Gaulbert’s personal documents and artefacts that made the project as it was the missing layer. It seemed that trust with the subject was a key thing because it was the subject opening up and trusting him which allowed Krewinkle to follow him around with his camera. This is key information for me to remember as I never want to make chris feel uncomfortable.
http://conversationswithgualbert.blogspot.co.uk/p/about_2.html

The Power of the Network

Before the internet things like maps and plans were used to systematise knowledge and information. Ludwig von Bertalanffy created something called the General Systems Theory which is a interdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research, a way of documenting and mapping hard sciences, social sciences and humanities. He created these descriptive notions:

• System – the way it works
• Network – the structure it takes
• Metabolism – its evolution/organic nature
• Openness/closure – can it be impinged on from the outside?

This then evolved into the chaos theory, which is the butterfly effect – small difference in initial stimuli can have global effects. This then developed into cybernetics the study of systems that have ‘goals’ and achieve them through feedback.

Then we move onto Network Theory, which is where in the 20th century it was realised that networks can take different shapes/ forms, and the types are Scale- Free Networks (its degree distribution which follows a power law, its the most pervasive) and there are also Random Networks (which are less common and stable). It is said that networks are alive because they are constantly changing. Scale-free networks contain components with a highly diverse level of connectivity. Some components form highly interconnected hubs, while other components have few connections, and there are many levels of interconnectivity in between.

As a photographer it is interesting to learn about how networks work because we use ‘networking’ all the time to promote our work, whether its advertising it through friends and family, using social networking sites or creating our own websites. We as artists are growing so in a sense we are a network ourself. We make links to inspiration, research and create something new from this information.

“The medium is the message” a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan who thought that the evolution of the internet would speed things up and take us away form the mundane that it is the mechanical of machines.  A medium is anything that mediates our interaction with the world or other humans, its all about interaction and connecting on a global level and he predicted the internet would do this.

For a photographer if the network is the message then I guess this means for us that it has changed the way we worked, we represent our work through sites such as flickr, Facebook pages, our own websites, and yes for these networks and that they need to the data to grow and expand so its not always about the content however we still have our fans and people who like our work, it has connected us more on a global level. However I feel with the evolution of the internet and how it has made everything a lot more accessible, when you do get accepted for our works to be put up in a gallery it is now more meaningful, because it means our work is good enough to be made as a physical artefact. I feel the evolution of the internet yes has meant its harder for photographers to stand out but its connected us, so its a double negative really.

We looked into six degrees of separation, a myth of how through 6 billion people in some way or another are connected through others. Six degrees of separation is the theory that everyone and everything is six or fewer steps away from each other. Google have realised that the way internet work are very similar to our brains. Evolution whether it is digital or biological happen in the same way.

Image Sets for Rest

For the theme rest I came up with the idea of creating still life fantasy images based on sleeping curds objects from fairytales. To fit it to digital media I have presented them through the Instagram accounts of the evil villains as social media is a way we all connect with each other and how I feel these villains if they were in modern times would reach out to their villain community as I also feel they would be very narcissistic too! So here are the final images:

The first is based on a fairytale called the Sleeping Prince who was put to sleep through a spell and I feel these objects really represent that, so the Username is The_Witch_of_Spells – “White and red and gold,  He shall sleep till time is old.”  quote from the story which I will used for the quote at the bottom. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/oct/13/fairytales-the-sleeping-prince I could not find any origins for this but it is about a prince who has been put under a sleeping spell and can only awaken on St John’s night, this was explained to a princess by a bird and she goes off on a quest to find him. For this one as not much was given away I presumed it was a witch who did this. So I just came up with a name that has witch and spells in it so it had some links to this story.

The second is based on Sleeping Beauty and I felt pricking my finger and using real blood was a very good representation of this classic story. The Username is Maleficent1812 – she was supposed to be one of the 13th wise women but as the king and queen only had 12 plates she had to stay at home from the princess’ birth celebration and for this she cursed the princess on her 15th to avenge herself. The username was derived from her name Maleficent with numbers at the end 1812 which was when the story was published and was actually called little briar- rose. This is where I came up with the quote I shall be avenged.

The last is Snowwhite and the apple is iconic, the black liquid represents the poison used to put her to sleep.  The Username is EvilQueen1857 – she was an evil queen and in the grimm fairytale her name is not given, so to come up with her instagram account as EvilQueen was already taken the 1857 at the end was when this Children’s and Household Tales — Grimms’ Fairy Tales, final edition was published. Within her instragm images I included the quote who’s the fairest of them all now, and I feel instgram has really helped in a modern digital way to give narrative to my still life sets. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm053.html

I feel all these images really fulfil my concept and using the Instagram accounts gives these classic fairytales a modern day twist and also adds narratives to the piece. I chose for each to have low key lighting and a black backdrop to make it sinister like and villainous and I feel it really works and shows my passion in fantasy photography.

Midterm Presentation Feedback

This week we had to present our websites so far, how we are doing on the WordPress blog and our image set concepts.

I had yet to come up with any test images for my ideas but I had the concept and my inspirations ready to talk about so this is what I discussed, I showed where I am with my current static page and explained what I had left to do, I described what plugins I have included on my WordPress and explained how I have linked my static page with my WordPress and how green is the colour I used because its my favourite. I showed them my posts and explained how Ive already read and evaluated one of the key readings. Then I discussed my concepts and showed them my influences and research.

I got some good feedback from the class who were shocked at how much I had done (I didn’t think I had done that much) and that they really liked it! In regards to my feedback from my research group (Natasha and Aneta) it was all positive they gave me 5’s in the categories and thats for things like creativity, blog post quality, image proposal, and technical skill.

Emma our other lecturer also gave us feedback and scored me mainly 4’s in the categories, however I received a 3 in the blog post quality and she mentioned how there isn’t enough evidence of responses to the lecture materials so this is something I will work on. She mentioned how I have covered each element of the assignment and how there is good research into my image sets.

I feel confident that I am heading in the right direction in terms of my website and everything to do with the assignment really, I just need to keep working at it.

Website Inspiration and Progression

Inspiration Home – Kirsty Mitchell’s website has been an inspiration for my website because well firstly she does a lot of fashion and fantasy photography which is something I am very interested in! But also I like how it is …