Having now researched, experimented and produced images in each of the assignment criteria is was time to finalise the 8 images for assessment. At the interim assessment I still was unsure which avenue to proceed. Although I had enjoyed working in each category I still was not getting that excited feeling. I also wanted to produce a piece of work that was gritty influenced by culture and modern life. At the time I was reading 'Road to Wigan Pier' by George Orwell, tale of working class life in the towns and cities of the 1930's Northern England. This helped in narrowing down the geographic area I wanted to capture - a Northern Town.
As with many of my experiments I had been heavily influenced by 'New Objectivity', the research area for the essay writing assignment. More research was called for. I increased my research on two of the Becher students - Gursky and Ruff, and by doing so combined some of their creative techniques in my own work.
I particularly liked Ruff's buildings that he took between 1987 and 1991. He had worked on a project taking room interiors and decided to take exteriors. He chose unspectacular, ordinary buildings in and around Dusseldorf. His main influence was the architecture photographs of the Bauhaus.
Thomas Ruff, Haus Nr.111, 1990
Gursky produces large scale colour images, observation of building and interiors. His choice of subject is the total opposite of Ruffs, where he looks for colour, shape and form amongst some of the most impressive building and interiors in the world.
Andre Gursky, Kamiokande, 2007
Refining Concept
My mind was made up to focus on colour, shape and form of unspectacular buildings.
I chose Blackburn as the town to capture this. Now some might see this a soft option as it is the town where I attend University. First and foremost I am not from Blackburn and originally came from Worcester. Up until I attended the University, Blackburn was a town I only came too when visiting relatives. I would say its a town I don't have full knowledge of. This kind of puts me in a good posititon, I carry no baggage when it come to looking objectively at this town. I see many fantastic creative elements that just need plucking.
The kind of building I was looking for shape and form were the building of 1970's to modern day. An easier option would be to go to Manchester where there is a plethora of buildings that meet this criteria. I wanted a hardworking, cultural diverse town that was still modernising, and one that I really had to search for unique buildings.
Planning
Although it took two days of actual photographing it was many more days in planning. Over the past month when refining my concept I knew I wanted to photograph Blackburn in some shape or form. Everytime I attended class I was making physical and mental notes of areas of interest. When I finalised the concept I researched further by login on to Google Earth searching for building that appeared to fit into the criteria, before visiting in situ. It was then a case of drawing up a short list and taking photographs:
1. Lark Hill High Rise Flats - Blue
2. Lark Hill High Rise Flats - Yellow
3. Lark Hill Health Centre
4. Thawaites Brewery
5. Blackburn Market
6. Government Building Ainsworth Street
7. NHS Building Stanley Street
8. Blackburn Town Hall
9. Blackburn College Old Building Duke Street
Learning Curve
On the first session I learnt a valuable lesson. Tall buildings are particular hard to capture without perspective distortion. As I was trying to capture images and then focus in on shape and form, it is imperative to get as parallel and central to subject to elevate these distortions. On the first session a large proportion of the images have been taken at street level causing a major headache.
To demonstrated this see the example below:
The bits that that I was after were the central boxes. However, due to shooting from the street the perspective was totally out as can be seen. To overcome this the image was exported to photoshop. Here the crop facility as a very useful tool that can help bring back the perspective.
The image below is the modified file with corrected perspective. There are still slight perspective issues, however, you can see the difference. Thanks to John for showing me this technique.
This learning outcome helped me for the second part of this session. When researching buildings I knew I had to gain as much height as possible to able to shoot from the center of any composition, thus nullifying perspective issues as much as possible.
The Final 8 Images (including above image)
Learning Outcomes
1. Creatively I am happy with these shots, technically I'm not. I think theses images are a 1st stab at things. What I mean by this is that I will return to take the same or similar images with a large format camera. This type of camera has the tilt and shift operation that control perspective variations.
2. There are some wonderful shapes and forms out there, you just need to keep looking for them.
3. This semester has been a whirl wind of activity, many of the students including myself have found these assignments challenging but enjoyable.
Contact Sheet
1. Lark Hill High Rise Flats - Blue
2. Lark Hill High Rise Flats - Yellow
3. Lark Hill Health Centre
4. Thawaites Brewery
5. Blackburn Market
6. Government Building Ainsworth Street
7. NHS Building Stanley Street
8. Blackburn Town Hall
9. Blackburn College Old Building Duke Street
Learning Curve
On the first session I learnt a valuable lesson. Tall buildings are particular hard to capture without perspective distortion. As I was trying to capture images and then focus in on shape and form, it is imperative to get as parallel and central to subject to elevate these distortions. On the first session a large proportion of the images have been taken at street level causing a major headache.
To demonstrated this see the example below:
The image below is the modified file with corrected perspective. There are still slight perspective issues, however, you can see the difference. Thanks to John for showing me this technique.
This learning outcome helped me for the second part of this session. When researching buildings I knew I had to gain as much height as possible to able to shoot from the center of any composition, thus nullifying perspective issues as much as possible.
Image Details:
Camera Nikon D300
f.stop f13
speed 50th Second
ISO 200
lens 18mm-70mm zoom - focal length 44mm
The Final 8 Images (including above image)
Image Details:
Camera Nikon D300
f.stop f14
speed 100th Second
ISO 200
lens 18mm-70mm zoom - focal length 44mm
Image Details:
Camera Nikon D300
f.stop f7.1
speed 100th Second
ISO 400
lens 18mm-70mm zoom - focal length 50mm
Image Details:
Camera Nikon D300
f.stop f13
speed 125th Second
ISO 400
lens 24mm-85mm zoom - focal length 85mm
Image Details:
Camera Nikon D300
f.stop f3.5
speed 320th Second
ISO 400
lens 24mm-85mm zoom - focal length 85mm
Image Details:
Camera Nikon D300
f.stop f13
speed 125th Second
ISO 280
lens 24mm-85mm zoom - focal length 85mm
Image Details:
Camera Nikon D300
f.stop f9
speed 80th Second
ISO 400
lens 24mm-85mm zoom - focal length 85mm
Image Details:
Camera Nikon D300
f.stop f10
speed 100th Second
ISO 200
lens 18mm-70mm zoom - focal length 70mm
Learning Outcomes
1. Creatively I am happy with these shots, technically I'm not. I think theses images are a 1st stab at things. What I mean by this is that I will return to take the same or similar images with a large format camera. This type of camera has the tilt and shift operation that control perspective variations.
2. There are some wonderful shapes and forms out there, you just need to keep looking for them.
3. This semester has been a whirl wind of activity, many of the students including myself have found these assignments challenging but enjoyable.
Contact Sheet
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