Pishiorbury

Pishiobury Park
For this shoot, I wanted to document the changing of the season by focusing on the natural phenomenon that happens mainly during Autumn, ex. leaves, acorns, pinecones etc. 

Image Bank:

Photographer's Research: Janek Sedlar
Sedlar is a Czech photographer that wanders the forests near his home during the Autumn taking beautiful shots of the changing scenery from summer's green to vivid reds, umbers and orange. 
He originally attained degrees from secondary art school with a focus on ceramics but later went on to borrow his fathers camera that sparked his passion for photography. He has spent an average of about 4,520 hours in nature and an average of about 192 days away from civilisation.





In this image there is a large bend in the trail which creates an air of mystery to the image. Janek Sedlar then paired this with a yellow filter which makes the image look other-worldly or some kind of toxic fog has floated into the White Carpathians which he frequents. 




In this image the scarlet and gold leaves take the foreground and the small green bushes that line an old untravelled road are the denotations. The connotations of this are some kind of mystical world where dragons and fairies exist, it wouldn't seem out of place to see a horse drawn carriage rolling through. Sedlar is excellent at manufacturing an ethereal atmosphere which forces the viewer to widen their field of belief; he does this via the mist in the background of his images as this mist could be hiding anything. This transports the viewer back to their childhood when they believed in monsters and hero's. 


Contact Sheets:

Images That Need Improvement:

DS7_5070.JPG:

In this image the tree isn't in the centre of the frame and so it looks like part of an image instead of the whole. This is mainly  due to the branch being out of my reach and the weather being very windy; these conditions made it very difficult to take photographs. Due to the wind being so strong, the cloud coverage kept fluctuating which meant I has to be malleable with my own camera settings as the lighting was changing and my main subject (trees) kept moving which meant I needed a fast shutter speed. 

DS7_5083.JPG:

This is an image of a twig with lichens growing on it lying in the grass. I wanted to have the twig in it's natural habitat so I had to perform an awkward crouch/squat to get anywhere close to the ground, consequently I wasn't very stable and so the camera shoot. To improve this I changed my footing so that I would be more steady, unfortunately this meant I was further away from the ground again. To try and compensate for my increased distance from the ground I used live view, this allowed me to have a better view of the shot I was taking but meant I sacrificed the focusing in my images. This image is a victim of this poor focus as I wanted to bring the viewers attention to the lichen growing on the twig but the end result has resulted in a very 2D image devoid of depth. I did review my images at the location and corrected my image by crouching/squatting and using the viewfinder instead of live view as it wasn't creating the effect I wanted. 

Best Images:

For this shoot there was such a large quantity of images I had a lot of images that I like and so I have arranged them into a contact sheet and will then refine them further. 

DS7_5127.JPG:

DS7_5138.JPG:

DS7_5147.JPG:

DS7_5175.JPG:

DS7_5208.JPG:

DS7_5229.JPG:

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

For this shoot my main idea was to photograph the early changes in the seasons such as the leaves turning claret and the squirrels foraging for foods to stash away. To do this I went to Pishiobury Park around two pm so that the sun would be relatively low and I've be able to take shots with the setting sun in the background. This didn't work out as well as I would have liked because there was a large ride of trees blocking the light so I didn't reach where I was shooting. There was also not as many trees as I would have liked however it is a park and not a forrest so that was to be expected.

My worst images were so because of the challenging weather and my need to constantly change my camera settings. I did take some landscape shots during this shoot, however the leaves are only just turning so there wasn't a large array of colours which would interest a viewer. I may further this investigation into documenting the same tree or area of trees so that I can see the gradual change in the leaves as the season changes from Autumn to Winter.  

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

The weather was also against me. It was windy and because of this wind the clouds kept moving in front of the sun which meant there were long periods of darkness then a brief moment of light. This meant that I had to keep changing the exposure and ISO to match the current weather. I also had to factor in the F-stop that I was using as some images I wanted as landscapes and some I wanted to be almost macro shots. 

I took my Nikon D7200 with a 200mm zoom lens. I chose not to take a macro lens as I wasn't taking a tripod and so most of the images would have been even more blurry. If I were to take a macro lens the I would have run the risk of getting the sensor in my camera dirty due to the debri being carried by the wind when changing the lenses. Not only would I risk damaging the camera I would also find framing and composition very difficult as the focal length on a macro lens cannot be moved, only the focal point. This meant that I would have to physically move in order to frame my images, this would have caused a large amount of effort for a small reward. 

Despite saying this I will take a tripod and macro lens out on my next shoot or the one after so that I can take in depth images of moss growing on rotten trees or other decaying matter. 

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

I had set my camera to take both NEF (RAW) and JPG images simultaneously so that I would have a duplicate of each image in a different file type. This meant that I am able to look at the JPG's for contact sheets and adding them directly to the blogger, and use the NEF (RAW) files for editing. I did this as JPG's are the only file that can be added to the blogger; another reason is that NEF (RAW) files have a much larger quantity of data. This means that I am able to edit NEF files before they have been opened as an image in photoshop, this allows more control over the exposure, contrast and curves than if I was editing a JPG. 


Editing:
First I opened all of my NEF/ RAW files in photoshop. Once this is done this screen will appear:


I then use the sliders to change the exposure, contrast, clarity etc. 


I edited all of my best images this way then I re-selected all of them and clicked open.


From this point I will choose how to edit each image individually. I may choose to leave the image as it is as I will do for the image above, or I may choose to use different filters on the images to create different effects. The filter gallery looks like this:


The filter I decided to apply to this image was Ink Outlines. 

Final Images:

• AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements.

Interim Evaluation

Interim Evaluation

The theme of my project so far has been organic decay. I chose this topic as we waste large amounts of food each day that could have been given to people in poverty, as currently in the world we have enough food to feed everyone - everyone, but the distribution is skewed. Another reason I chose this topic was because decay is rarely seen as it usually happens underground, either in landfill sites or normal compost bins in people's gardens; I wanted to highlight the waste that we produce and also the beauty in decay. 

My work in this project at the moment has consisted of macro photography and close-up photography. I have investigated seasonal changes in natural forms: rotting vegetables, dried flowers, acorns leaves, berries, moss and mould. I chose to look into these things as nature is ever changing due to global warming caused by pollution or on a smaller scale the changing of seasons. Trees are being hacked down for the land they've grown on to build houses or pastures and habitats are being destroyed.

Shoot One

For my first shoot in this project I too photographs of dried flowers with different coloured filters in front of the light source which then casted a tint onto the flowers I was shooting. I like this idea as we, as a species, must massacre billions of flowers a year just for the aesthetic purpose of having them inside our houses. When these flowers inevitably die we throw them away as they are no longer conventionally beautiful. I wanted to shoot some flowers that would have been thrown in the bin for their appearance and photograph them showing that their beauty may be a little aged by still present. My influence for this shoot was Billy Kidd, normally a fashion/ portrait photographer he was taken by a vase of decaying flowers one day decided to photograph them. Here are some of his image from this shoot. 

I liked the fact that he had used so much negative space because it reflects the negative views that society has on decay, then along side all of this darkness he has captured their rich colours and details. Here are my images in response to my brief and my my photographers research. 

This shoot was successful as I was turing something unwanted into something beautiful, this is similar to pressing flowers but shan't degrade anymore than it already has. I would like to continue my theme of photographing something that is unconventional in it's aesthetics. 

Shoot Two

Another photographer that influenced my work was Joe Buglewicz. For a year he photographed everything that 'went off' in his fridge to show how consumerism has become a significant problem in Western culture and has extended to the food we eat.

Above are some of his images from the aforementioned shoot.

For this investigation I completed two shoots. I did this because the first shoot I completed was very sterile, the lighting stayed the same in all the images and so made it impossible for the viewer to make a connection with the images. These are the images from the first shoot: 

For the second shoot I used the same vegetables again and so they had 'fermented' a little more. Here are these images:

I think this shoot was successful as I accomplished what I set out to but the final outcome is considerably unpleasant to look at and so I failed in my respect of photographing it in such a way to make it seem beautiful. Despite having failed I think failure was inevitable with this specific subject matter as it is inherently ugly and I don't believe that it could be made appetising by even the most qualified photographers. Due to this I wanted to shift my attention from the decay of organic matter to subjects of a less repulsive variety while still keeping in line with my theme of nature and how it is ever-changing. I did this by looking into natural decay between the seasons. 

Shoot Three

For this shoot I was inspired by a photographer called Janek Sedlar - a Czech photographer that creates breath-taking landscapes in his work. 
EX. 

I completed this shoot in a place called Pishiobury Park. I wanted to focus on things that are only seen within a specific season, for example pine cones or mushrooms etc. 

Here are some of the images that I captured: 

I think this shoot was successful and so acted as a turning point in my project where I wanted to pursue different changes that occur in nature that often go unnoticed. To do this I wanted to shoot in a more heavily wooded area so that there would be a richer variant in subject matter. 

Shoot Four

Now that I had changed my theme slightly I wanted to investigate the different directions that I could take it. To do this I visited a Pine Forest in Tewin during Autumn, this would provide me with a plethora of different angles and subjects to take photographs of.

I mainly shot the trees and the warm sunshine in the forest to experiment with similar subject matter to my chosen photographer - Dimitriy Evdokimov. He is a Russian photographer that lives in Saint Petersburg and travels to different locations to take landscape and close-up shots, above are some examples of his images. I also shot multiple mushrooms that I found in the forest as they are a sign of bacterial decay underground and typically die off during winter and so combined my two areas that I'd investigated so far: seasonal changes and decay. Here are my final images:

I think this shoot was successful due to the fact that I am still developing my theme and this location allowed me to look into different subject matters without travelling long distances. This shoot also allowed me to take both landscape and close-up shots so that I can continue experimenting in both styles. 

Shoot Five

In my past shoots I had investigated decay and seasonal changes which have yielded some good images, however both of these subjects are the end result of a process that I have yet to document. For this shoot I wanted to experiment with looking at a decaying process sped up - rust and combustion. I looked at a photographer that uses matches and editing software in his work to create objects or animals. His name is Stanislav Aristov, another Russian national. Here are some of his images:

Both rust and combustion are the same chemical reaction at different speeds, so any bike left to rust also giving out heat just like a flame. To actively document this reaction I used matches which I ignited to produce a series of images that show the slow destruction of the matches. Here are my images:

I think this shoot was a success as it shows a physical progression that can be witnessed from image to image, instead of photographing mushrooms which are the passive aftermath of decay. This shoot feels like a turning point in my project as I am much more interested in physical reactions that can be seen as I believe they are more interesting to the viewer and the photographer alike. 

Shoot Six

For this shoot I wanted to investigate organic decay directly as I have only part-investigate this theme in previous shoots. To do this I wanted to take photographs of mouldy berries in a similar manner to my first shoot as they are similar themes - turning something ugly into something beautiful. 

The photographer I researched for this shoot was called John Berry; he is usually a sports or yearbook photographer by profession but has a passion for nature that he can further in America due to their diverse wildlife and nature reserves. 
Below is one of his impressive macro shots: 

Here are my images in response to his work:

I like this shoot as it shows the inevitability of decay and the beauty that is still present during the process. Despite thinking this shoot was successful I feel as thought I have taken a step backwards in my work, as I have moved from active destruction and decay back to the passive aftermath. I don't think I will be pursuing this route anymore as I wanted to keep the images as active as possible so that they capture the viewer. 

In conclusion I will be continuing my work into natural destruction rather than natural decay as I feel both topics have considerable overlap (decay is often a form of destruction), and destruction engages the viewer more. I will be further investigating fire and the damage it is able to inflict, and shall do this by completing physical experiments into burning images alongside the use of GIFs to document the movement of flames.