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[631janella]

Week 10 Feedback

Editing Process

I've decided to use Lightroom to edit as it's the easiest program to best edit all of my photos together. I found it quite easy to figure out even though I had never used it before as it's a pretty straightforward program.

So to see how my photos all looked together, I put them in a folder and arranged them in the sequence that I thought followed the day to night sequence well. This way I was also able to edit them properly with the right kind of lighting/colouring.

Like I said previously, I did have to change the temperature of some of the photos to follow the sequence properly. Notably, the washing machine photo was much cooler than I wanted it to be so I adjusted the temp to be slightly warmer to fit in the sequence more.

[631janella]

Week 10 Reel

These are the last round of photos I took this week for the project. I decided to take more photos of unique things around the house as well as more close-up photos of my family.

This week had super cloudy/rainy weather so these photos came out a lot cooler in tone than some of my other photos. I'll probably end up editing these to be warmer than they are just to fit in the sequence I already have set up since a lot of my photos depend on the lighting to represent the time of day.

[631janella]

Research

Larry Sultan - Pictures from Home/Photobook

This is a really great photobook and follows a similar feeling that I want to portray with my photobook. It's definitely a deeper deep dive into his family and mine is way more like an outsider taking photos throughout the day.

I really like how it feels really candid because that's exactly how I wanted to capture my family. I never wanted the photos to look "staged" or "doctored" because I wanted them to be almost journalistic.

Rahim Fortune - I can't stand to see you cry

I found this photobook and I love how it captures identity. It's got a mix of portraits of both faces and objects which together were able to paint a pretty vivid picture of his surroundings.

I especially love the photos of the objects, they really brought a lot of personality which is something I want to try to bring to my photobook.

Tim Richmond - Love Bites

Finding this photobook was an absolute jackpot. I think a lot of these photos follow the same photojournalist vibe I was going for in my photos. His photos seem to capture the simple things in life or those things that you just sort of pass by but these things actually make up who you are and can show your quirks and personality through them.

The photobook itself stays pretty consistent and keeps each photo in the middle of the page with some border.

I also looked through the Kassel Dummy Award photobooks and found a lot of interesting work.

The Bliss Point Florian Dürkopp

This photobook has a mixture of different photo sizes. Some photos take up the whole spread, one page or there are multiple photos on one page. I think it makes the photobook quite visually interesting. I think I want to have a mix in my own photobook as well to create interest as well as tell the story.

[631janella]

Photobook draft

I made a draft of the photobook and these were some of the photos and layouts I tried out. Obviously, there's still some work to do but I quite like the third layout especially.

There are some photos I want to retake from this draft but I want to try to edit some photos to hopefully get the tone correct.

Text?

I've decided on adding some captions to the pages to add some humour to the photobook. I was inspired a bit by one of the photobooks I had found in the library, "Life Smiles Back" by Philip Kunhardt which contained captions for each photo that added context as well as humour to the photos. I wanted to do something similar but also didn't want to overdo it on the text as I wanted it to stay pretty minimalistic.

Possible Introduction

Daily routines. We all have them. Wake up. Brush your teeth. Eat breakfast. And so on with the rest of your day. I wondered about how and who I could explore with something as mundane as this idea — I then realised who was more perfect than my own family. I became their own personal paparazzi, following them around and trying to capture them during their best and also not so best moments. I know them pretty well, I live with them. But to you they’re strangers, so I hope you learn something about them through these little fragments. 

[631janella]

Essay Ideas

These are my initial ideas for the 800-word essay and what I'll be talking about.

[631janella]

Week 9(1) Reel

After some advice to take more fragments, I took some more close-ups and focused less on showing "the whole picture". I did try to experiment with how I could show a daily routine through objects.

[631janella]

Week 9 Learning Outcomes

Themes & Ideas:

I think my main theme is family. I want to keep it kind of intimate and close to that idea. So I want to keep the photos inside the house.

Statement:

I want the photos to remain pretty candid and almost like I'm a journalist following my family's daily routine.

[631janella]

Peer Feedback

Feedback from Jordan Leary

Very fun, personable idea on a day in the life of one’s family. Research book chosen shows that there was a genuine decision making process into which book was picked for research and how ideas can be replicated when own photo book is made. Has potential to be a very fun project and I think that if people feel that they can resonate with similar ‘familial’ ideas that can be seen in the images of this family, they would be happy to pick up a copy of this photo book. Series might benefit from being portrayed in black and white? Would mean that the theme of the series can shine through beyond the photographic function of colour. May or may not work but could be worth trying.

[631janella]

Week 8

These are some of the photos I took this week. I edited these specific photos just to play around with what I could do in post to make the images look better or change the tone to fit my story a little better.

Lighting was a big thing for me this week as I had a lot of trouble figuring out good lighting during darker times. I really liked taking photos in the morning as my house gets hit with the sunlight really well and the images end up looking really interesting. I do need to figure out some ways how to improve the lighting for my nighttime photos. I tried taking similar photos at different times of the day to compare what looks better.

Because I'm not at home typically in the afternoon because of uni and work, I'll have to find some time to be home to take these photos. It also doesn't help that the sun sets way earlier now so I can't beat the time.

[631janella]

Family album

Tsiaras, Philip

Roma : Contrasto, [2002]

This photobook I think is the closest to the sort of style of photographs I want to take and add to my photobook. Sort of candid photos of my family minding their own business and doing their thing.

In this photobook, the photographer included not only a title but also a background into the photos. They included stories about the people in the photographs and sometimes context as to what was happening in the photo. I thought it was really interesting and added more to the photos as we find out who these people are and his family life.

[631janella]

Life smiles back

Kunhardt, Philip B.

New York : Simon & Schuster, 1988.

I quite enjoyed flipping through this photobook as it had a range of photos and the tone throughout it was very silly and lighthearted which I loved.

For this particular photobook, the text really impacted the tone of the whole thing as it added humour to the photos and almost changed your perception of what the image is about. It also included individual titles for each of the images which I thought was interesting and once again added to the humour.

[631janella]

Street life and home stories : photographs from the Goetz Collection

Buhrs, Michael, (Editor)

Ostfildern : München : Hatje Cantz ; Villa Stuck, [2011]

I thought this was such an interesting collection of photos of different families and individuals which explained a lot of who those people were. I love how the photos ranged in experience and intimacy. Some felt very personal while others were more distant, it made me want to turn the pages and see what else was published in the book.

This book portrayed a whole range of people and focused on their home lives for the most part. There was also some street photography. It varied but some of the photos included notes (synopsis) on who is in the photo and gave us background while others were a bit more mysterious and didn't provide too much information on who was being photographed. For example, the third photo actually had a page beside it with a handwritten note on the person being portrayed in the photos.

[631janella]

Week 8: Work in Progress

What and who will you portray?

My main concept is going to be based on my family - daily life. I want to mainly take candid-ish photos.

What might you communicate visually through the concept of portrayal?

I want to visually communicate my family's daily life and what they do on the regular.

What is your position on your subject matter?

Since I will be taking photos of my family, it will be a bit more of an intimate and sympathetic portrayal of who they are.

What is your voice? What is unique about your subject or your approach to it?

I want my photos to show movement so I don't want my photos to be too "made-up". I'm heavily interested in street photography so I wanted to implement that kind-of style into my photos of my family.

What do you have unique access to? A group of people, a place, a situation…?

I guess my house and my family -> possibly my neighbourhood too

Consider the important role the title takes in communicating your intention and how audiences might ‘read’ the book. What is your working title? 

What would you like readers to think and feel?

I think I want my readers to feel some kind of relatability to the photos and maybe become reminded of their own experiences.

What is the role of the text within the book? How does the text relate to the story the images tell? How do they work together?

I think I want to keep my text very minimal because I kind of want to let the audience interpret the story behind the images themselves. BUT at the same time, I would like the text to depict (if there is a person in the photo) who they are.

How many shoots do you require to gain adequate coverage and successfully tell the story? 

I plan on having "photoshoot days" where my family will be aware that I'm taking photos throughout the day. And I do want to possibly implement weather into it to depict the changes based on weather eg. if it's raining we'll probably be inside way more

Do you need gear and support with your shoots? What is your plan?

I don't plan on using any crazy gear because I want my photos to be more candid and "real". I also want to use natural light as much as possible.

What software and workflow will you use to edit, process, collate and design your photobook PDF?

I'll definitely be using Photoshop to edit my photos and InDesign for the photobook PDF.

What is your research plan?

I follow some Instagram pages like @magnumphotos and @streephotographyinternational. I got a bunch of my inspiration from them and I was able to find a bunch of photographers that do some interesting stuff.

What other photobooks have you looked at? 

Are there decisions that have yet to be made? How will you resolve these?

I think maybe exactly what kind of situations I'll be taking photos of for eg. cooking, working, doing homework, chores etc.

[631janella]

April 28

For these photos, I wanted to capture my brother in his natural habitat, in front of his laptop. I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to play with lighting and try to figure out how I could use it to manipulate the tone of an image.

These images were really inspired by one of the photographers I've referenced, Julia Cameron. I really like how her portraits are candid and are taken in a more "authentic" way like she's just capturing people as they're going about their day.

For the first two photos, I only relied on the light from his laptop for the lighting which came out really interesting and way brighter than I thought it would be.

For the next two, I used my phone's flashlight to create shadows in the background. I actually thought these two came out really interestingly and added some depth to the images which I thought the first two lacked.

In the last photo I actually used the light from the lamp beside his desk (which you can see in previous photos) and I really liked how this one came out. I love seeing movement in a photo and you can see me do this in many of my other images. I love how the light hits him in this photo and how you can kind of see the change in how it hits him through his movement.

[631janella]

April 21-April 24

I think out of all these photos my favourite is the photo of the candles. I just love the way it came out. I really like how it's the only thing you can see in the photo and I loved experimenting with candlelight. I did have to work fast so there wasn't too much wax on the cake but I thought it looked really cool.

I was also really inspired by Vivian Meir's one photo where she took a photo in front of mirrors where she was able to capture multiple angles of herself. I thought that was such an interesting composition and wanted to try it myself which is what I was going for in the 4th photo.

[631janella]

April 16

These photos were taken during an impromptu photoshoot with my brother where I photographed him during his process of grabbing dinner. Since most of my photos have been taken with natural light I wanted to try more ways to incorporate artificial light.

I think the best lighting in the house is the kitchen so I wanted to use them and see how I could manipulate both my camera settings as well as where I was standing so I could learn how that affects the look of a photo.

I recently got a new camera and so I've been learning a lot about how to properly use manual settings and it's been really interesting. Some of these photos look a little too bright, like the first one.

I've really discovered some of my favourite things to do with the camera such as slightly blurry photos because I love the way it shows movement. The lighting can sometimes end up a bit dodgy but as I experiment more I think I'm getting better at changing the settings properly.

[631janella]

April 14-April 20

These were taken again around the house as I had family members who had covid and so I avoided going out in case I was spreading it. I wanted to capture a bit of what was happening around the house.

For example, my dad is currently adding more to the deck in the backyard. I specifically really like the 4th photo because you can see the movement. I also love how the light is hitting him. My favourite time of day is around sunset and this was just before that time so the lighting was absolutely perfect outside.

I think all these photos were taken around that time and I wanted to show how the natural sunset light hit different parts of the house.

One photo which I think needs extra context is the photo of the door. That door leads into my parent's room and during the time I had taken the photo was when my mum was quarantined inside. I wanted to show how during this time she was sort of separated and unseen (apart from facetime calls) by the rest of the family.

The contact sheet above has all the photos I took of my dad. I thought it would be interesting to show the whole sequence to show how the lighting changed as well as the different kinds of shots I took.