#furbexs | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

stp-fmp-blog · 7 years ago

Text

Final Evaluation

For my final major project, the initial brief was ‘A day in the life of …’ I decided to focus on Urbex photography, which is short for urban exploration. This type of photography involves taking photos of desolate or abandoned places and items such as cars and houses. I felt this would be a snapshot of the life of the buildings, locations and items and the effects that time, weather and the environment has on them.

I initially started to research photographers who have taken pictures in this style. The main photographers who interested me were Jeremy Gibbs (aka Romany WG) who concentrated on taking photos of derelict buildings in both the UK and abroad. The other photographer is Alice Van Kempen, She takes her dog around to abandoned locations and includes the dog in her photographs. She has nicknamed her style of photography as ‘Furbex’. Reading about these artists and looking at their photos gave me ideas and inspiration as to what type of photograph I would like like to take for my project.

Initially I was thinking of taking photographs of derelict places, but when I researched and visited various locations, I found I was more interested in the objects in the places than the actual places themselves. For example I went to Davidstow and was originally going to take photos of the abandoned buildings, but I found an old World War 2 hanger which had two decaying cars and I found these more interesting and eye catching to photograph than the building and one of the cars actually ended up being one of my final photographs.

The main problem I encountered in carrying out my chosen style was location. I did not know of many derelict or abandoned places that I could safely visit. I thought about possibly going to photograph the rejuvenation of Derry’s Shopping Centre in Plymouth, but could not find the relevant contacts. I had however been to Davidstow before and knew about the buildings there so decided to take another look. The next problem was finding a decent, dry day to visit, along with arranging available transport. I finally managed to go on a cloudy, but dry day. The other location was at Clappa Bridge which is not far from where I live, so was able to go there on short notice when there was a break in the weather.

Before visiting each of my locations, I had to take into consideration journey times, the actual time that it would take to photograph the areas/items as this would affect the daylight, what equipment would be needed (lenses, filters, flash, camera and tripod), what format I would shoot in and what style of editing technique I would use for my photographs. I found I was using my maths (core skill) whilst working out my time plan. Due to my autism, I found it very difficult to organise myself, but thanks to my parents and assistant at College I managed to stay on task and reach the majority of my deadlines.

The technique I chose for editing my photographs was HDR (high dynamic range). HDR involves taking bracketed photograph (photos with different light exposures) and combining them to get the best light level throughout the photo. I have used this technique before and decided to experiment with the style.

I evaluated my photographs regularly on contact sheets. This enabled me to pick out the best photographs, how I could edit them to give the photograph a better result and give me some idea as to the potential of the photograph. Whilst my evaluation was done to the best of my ability, I felt there was some invalid points that were not eventually needed and did not form part of the final product.

I felt my final images captured what I wanted and I am very pleased with them and how they have turned out. They showed the desolate, overgrown, destroyed, unseen and forgotten areas of the world all around that the majority of people do not, or choose not to, see. I do not feel that anything was missing from the final photograph and that I achieved my final goal. However I feel that I could possibly have reached this goal more easily if I had more locations to visit and photograph.

I enjoyed working on my blog, as I have used Tumblr before. I updated my blog approximately once a week, but in hindsight I feel that I could have done this more regularly and put in more information about the project I was working on. During the writing of my blog, evaluating my photographs and writing this evaluation, I have been using my English (core skill). It has made me have to think of alternative words that I could use to express myself.

For the final summer show, our remit was to present the photographs on a website. If I had the choice, I would have personally preferred to print my photographs on matt paper, then mount them onto a canvas box frame and have physical copies displayed on a wall. I feel that this adds more depth to the photographs, they have a different feel actually viewing them in person and you can appreciate them more.

Overall, I have enjoyed this first year at College and hope to achieve and learn more skills in the second year of the course.

0 notes