Object & Body

Dan Paul

Body
For my body project I started looking at migration in the area and where people came from. After I realised that for some people it is a tricky subject to talk about I went on to look at the Medway area it self and the heritage that surrounds it. Looking at the people in the Medway areas, I want to show the people that still keep the heritage alive and well.

 The Medway area is steeped in history and can be traced back to as far 604 when the first cathedral was built. There are various sites in Medway that still hold the history of the area such as Fort Amherst, the Historic Dockyard and the Castle still stands today. I wanted t look at the varying history of the area and the people that still keep it alive today.

The Medway Area

Artist reference
I looked at various artists that used a lot of portraiture in their work. Anton Corbijn
Richard Avedon

Avdeon would often interact with his subjects and often provoke them to get a natural interaction with them. Used high contrasting black and white images.

Corbijn also used very high contrasting black and white images to really make the person stand out. Where as Avedon used an interaction with person, Corbijn looked more into the gaze of that person. Often showing the subject staring directly into the lens.

Artist referemnce
I looked at various artists that used a lot of portraiture in their work. Victorian Painting
Eugene Atget

Atget was famous for his street work shot in Paris. He photographed various people that were on the streets trying to make a living.

I also looked at various Victorian paintings to gain an understanding of the how the subject sat and portrayed in those times.

Task 1 Study

We was asked to shoot two portraits of someone on a neutral background. One of a front facing view and another of the profile. I shot this man because he was once in the Navy and was based at the Naval dockyard before it shut in the 80s. I really liked the characteristics of his face however I am really not happy with the images. Where there was very little light in the room I was working with longer exposures and my tripod was not as steady as I thought, resulting in ever so slight camera shake.

Task 2 The Envrionment

After shooting at the dockyard I wanted something a little different. I went to the castle on spoke to this lady behind the counter. After thinking she was just a shop assistant it turned she knew a great deal about the castle and was in fact the historian for the castle. This fascinated me because she looked like an ordinary person serving people behind a counter, but she had this great knowledge. I am happy with the colours how ever it was very hard to print and colour correct where the lighting was yellow in the building.

Task 3 The Studio

After searching for someone to shoot in the studio I found this young lady at the Historic dockyard in Georgian dress. I was fascianted by this and wanted to show her off as she was one of the ones still keeping the history a live and showing people how they dressed. She was more then willing to come to the studios to shoot some pictures. I chose this photograph because I referenced the way they stood and sat in the painting. For me it is the most natural pose. I am happy with the colour correcting and the way it came out.

The object
My first thought for an idea for this project came to me while i was at work. I work in Tesco, on the fruit and vegetable section and it amazes me at how much gets wasted every single day. Every day the items that are on the days date gets reduced to silly money and if it isn't sold, its wasted and put in the compactor. So my idea was to try and show that this food is being wasted when really the food is still okay to be eaten.

Artist reference
I looked at various artists that have either worked with waste particularly or used food in there images.
Roger Fenton Klaus Pichler

I looked at Fentons Still life with fruit. He shot these fruit to show that you can get a better representation of something better with photography than you do painting.

This work is a lot more contemporary and he used decaying food. Some of him images I do not like as they seem to fake however I like the setting they are placed in the studio and often placed in ornate, luxurious dishes which then have this rotting food.

Artist reference
I also looked quite heavily at painting and how artists represented the food
Frans Snyder Juan Sanchez Cotan

When looking at still-life, you cannot ignore painting as it was the starting ground for many photographers Painters such as Juan and Frans painted with such detail and both used food in their work. Frans work often involved hunted game and animals.

Artist reference
David Bate

I really liked the look of David's work. It was simple yet so effective. It was the broken objects that influenced me the most especially with the bowl and the liquid spilling from it.

Final Image

This is my final image and composition that I have used for my object. The reason I chose this was because visually it looked good. I used the reflective surface because if you look at the reflection the waste is almost being protected and cant spill out, where as the waste is falling out of this beautiful broken glass bowl. I was trying to show that the food here is waste but does not appear to be wasted food, showing that it can still be eaten but with the broken bowl it gives it this other side that it actually is waste and this is the kind of food that is being wasted.

Evaluation
Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed this assignment how ever portraiture is not my chosen style of photography so there were certain elements that I found difficult. These things were interacting with the sitter and approaching people that I could shoot photographs of. I think that my research could be stronger especially on the object side. The contextual research lacks with the wasted food issue and this could have been a lot better. I have had certain issues with the body unit which pushed me back quite a bit. As my sitter never showed up to the studios on the day of the shoot, it forced me to go out and find someone to shoot on a different day. This meant that I was pushed back by two weeks with shooting my studio shot. I think that this knocked some of my confidence when approaching people to shoot. I think in the future I need to be a lot more confident with my self and talk to people more openly. I also think that for my body project to be stronger, I shot have shot more images. This then would have given me a wider selection of shots to choose from resulting in better quality images and prints. I think that from my lack of confidence of talking to people this resulted me in shooting as little as possible. I will reflect on this and use it to produce better images in the future.