Tom- Presenting my work

The way I am going to present my work, Person X, is in a book. The way I have created the book was through the online bookmaker blurb.com. 
I thought this was the best way to present my work as it easily presents the narrative. The way I ordered my images also contributes to the clear narrative. The way I ordered my images was I started with objects related to the person, I then moved on to show her dancing and images of dancing, then finally I showed her looking at the past and remembrance. Throughout this sequence I included images of her everyday life to show the difference between her past and present.
I am happy with how my book turned out, however I wish I would have added text to accompany the images. 

Tom-Evaluation. Person X.

This evaluation is about the project Person X. For this assignment, I chose to photograph my mother, who was a dancer in the 60's and 70's. She appeared on shows such as Junior show time were she regularly performed. When she was 16, she quit her dancing career to focus on other studies. A decision which she admitted she sometimes regrets. 
The images also include black and white pictures of my grandmother, who was a famous singer, actress and dancer in the 1930's and 40's. This shows the family connection through the generations. 
I chose to do this project on my mother as I think she has had a very interesting life and the images would make a clear and interesting narrative.
When I started shooting this project, I thought of the idea of making the staged images colour, and the upstaged black and white. Although, after I did this I found that the images then did not mix well together and it made the narrative much more difficult to understand due to the distracting colour changes. After this, I decided to keep the images all in colour to edit the tones of colour to distinguish which were natural and which were staged. I found this worked effectively while still making the images flow effortlessly.
I chose to order my images so it started with images of dancing objects that would appear in the following images. I also mixed staged and natural images together to show how in her everyday life, she still thinks about dancing.
If I could do anything differently with my project, I would have shot an image of my mothers ordinary shoes, to go along side the images of her tap shoes. I think this would have made an interesting contrasting shot.
I am happy with my shoot as I think it successfully communciated my narrative in a creative and innervating way.    
The way I am going to present my work is in a book. I am going to keep the same order as in my book and I will have no words to accompany them.

Tim-Student life. Task 10

Using Gaussian blur on photoshop, I created this set of promotional material for collage which highlight my view on student life. This includes smoking, junk food and graffiti. This represents young people as lazy who vandalize the streets, which I think is what society views young people as. I chose to photograph these pieces as I thought they were an abstract way of looking at student life, contrary to images of a collage or university. 

Some images are in the home, while some are in the streets. I also chose to photograph quite childish objects, such as a doll, to show students childish and vulnerable side.

I ordered my images so that a portrait of a student was the beginning, and then it follows there home life while still incorporating street pictures. I am happy with this project as I think it communicated my message and view of students clearly in a light hearted and colourful way.

This image shows colour in a boring place, this could symbolize a students mind. The colour is social life while the cream is school work and studies. 

Lens based imagery and research-Tim

Lens based image making is the use of a specific lens to manipulate the appearance of a photograph to make the object/person appear bigger/smaller then in reality. Techniques with lenses are most commonly used in fashion shoots; to make models appear slimmer. Lenses include 35 mm camera, large format, point and shoot, telephoto, wide angle, zoom, enlarger. The characteristics associated with these lenses; speed, depth of field , etc. I first started to experiment with camera angle elusions using a 35-50mm lens. These angles included above the subject to make them appear smaller, below to make them appear taller and middle to get the realistic view of their body. These angles are commonly used in shoots to manipulate the shape and size of the human body to make it more 'desirable.' These images are then used in magazines and for advertising purposes.

After this, I used a lens baby lens. This lens is a manually operated tilt-shift lens with very limited depth of field that produces selective-focus images. Because of this, the images created are very unique. To operate the lens, you can bend, push and pull the lens to focus on one subject and make the outlining areas out of focus. This creates a dream like, hazy effect. This lens is most commonly used in music videos and dramatic images to create a modern and sometimes drug-reaction state.

The last lens I used was the telephoto lens. A telephoto lens is a specific type of a long-focus, wide-angle lens. This lens is most commonly used in fashion shoots as photographers prefer to shoot models form far away to make them appear slimmer. I found this the most difficult to use as the zoom is so extreme, its hard to focus freehand, although I think this would work most effectively with a tripod. I shot my subject from quite far away but it is almost impossible to tell this looking at the images.

These shots were all taken in natural light without flash and I did not edit them in anyway.

The lens I most enjoyed using was the lens baby. This is because I found it easy to use but it also produced, in my opinion, the most effective looking images. I would use this lens in the future for projects associated with young, modern techniques.

I think I need to improve on my use of the telephoto lens. This is because the images were not in focus as my hands were shaky. I could improve on this by using a tripod. I would use this lens for studio fashion shoots and landscape photography.

Lens baby.

Telephoto Lens.

Research

fish eye lens

A fisheye lens is a wide-angle lens that takes in a broad, panoramic and hemispherical image. Originally developed for use in meteorology  to study cloud formation and called "whole-sky lenses", fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted appearance. They are often used by photographers shooting broad landscapes to suggest the curve of the Earth. Hemispherical photography is used for various scientific purposes to study plant canopy geometry and to calculate near-ground solar radiation.

Telephoto lens

In photography and cinematography, a telephoto lens is a specific type of a long-focus lens in which the physical length of the lens is shorter than the focal length. This is achieved by incorporating a special lens group known as a telephoto group that extends the light path to create a long-focus lens in a much shorter overall design. The angle of view and other effects of long-focus lenses are the same for telephoto lenses of the same specified focal length. Long-focal-length lenses are often informally referred to astelephoto lenses although this is technically incorrect: a telephoto lens specifically incorporates the telephoto group.

Lens Baby

Lensbaby is a line of camera lenses for SLR cameras that combine a simple lens with a bellows or ball and socket mechanism for use in special-effect photography. A lensbaby can give effects normally associated with view cameras. The lenses are popular with photographers for the creative possibilities of the selective focus andbokeh effects.

Maria- Home Task 3.

These images are for my final piece for the project 'home'. They focus on my home life in the present, and also represent images form my childhood. The images also include precious items in my home, such as a childhood toy and various ornaments. Also, memories, such as a chair table were my dog chewed when he was a puppy, and the fridge which includes trinkets from holidays and pictures from family events. I chose to shoot these images as I think they effectively show my idea of home, which is family and memories. 

All the images are in colour as I wanted to portray an atmosphere of happiness and the warm, pleasant colours give the effect of togetherness and the soft lines also connote this. I used natural light on all the images except the 15th image. I chose to do this as it creates softer lines and warmer colors, contrary to harsh lines and sharp colors, which would represent a different emotion to the image.

I am happy with the end result of all the images as I think they tell a story of a happy home and connote emotions that I wanted to connote. 

The following images show four pillows. The pillows represent each member of my family with two identical pillows to show my parents. I chose to represent them in this way as it is subtle yet still shows a powerful message of a close family.

Toms final piece.- Person X

These images are the shots I have chosen for my final production of 'Person X'. They focus on my mother and her dancing background. The images also show my grandmother, who was a very successful dancer, actress and singer in the 1930's and 40's. My narrative to communicate was the difference between my Mother's life now and when she was a successful dancer. I also wanted to show her emotions when remembering the past and how her life would be different if she carried on her dancing career. I chose to shoot the images in colour as I thought this would show the colour in her life and although she misses the past, she would not change her life in the present. I also thought that colour shows more depth in the image. Throughout my images, I used colour tones to show which images had been staged and which were natural. The images with orangy tones are staged, and the images with red tones are natural.
I am happy with how my images turned out as I think they communicate the narrative effectively and communicate it uniquely. 
I am going to present my images through the format of a book as I feel this would represent my narrative most effectively. I think I could have improved this project by shooting less repetitive images.