Re-Creating fashion photography

Kirkstall Abbey

We went to Kirstall Abbey whilst it was dark. We set out cameras to a shutter speed of 30" and took the photos so they looked like it was during the day.

Documentary, Part 2 - Task 1

For my project I have to decided to choose the theme of Leeds 2011. Within this theme I have chosen to photograph the different types of people that are seen around Leeds everyday. There are many different types of social groups around the city centre so I have chose to photograph those. I am going to shoot these images in the style of street photography. The people who I will be photographing will not be asked to pose for me they will taken as the people are just passing by. These images will not all have one certain style, they will all be different as the style of the image will reflect the type of person that I am photographing in each image. One photographers work that inspired me and is like the work I am going to be shooting is Philip Lorca Dicorcia's heads. Here are examples of his work.

I have been around Leeds City Centre taking photographs of people that I think are of different social groups and are different from each other. Here are the test shots from my shoot.

Some of the images that I short a bit out of focus and blurred, this is because I took the photos as the people were walking/moving so I need to make sure that my shutter speed is fast enough so that I do no get any motion blur in my images. 

re-creating student life images test shots

There are just some practice shots that I have taken around the theme of student life. I have tried to re-create some images I found online that I think are based on student life. These are just a couple of test shots and not my final images.

This doesn't really look the original image because it was dark where I took the image so I had to use flash. This ash tray also doesn't look like the one in the photo I am trying to re-create but this is the only chance I got to take a photo of an ash tray.

This is image also isn't like the on i was trying to re-create. The cigarette is facing the opposite way but I am glad that I achieved the shallow depth of field like the original image.

This image isn't a picture of a bar in a pub, instead I took a picture of my friends in the pub. Instead of showing just a pub this also shows socialising which is another part of student life.

Documentary, Task 3 - Re-creating images

These images I tried to re-create are the love me images by Zed Nelson. Some of his images show billboards and advertisments of models which some people think is the idea of beauty. I took some photos of adverts as my re-creations. Here are his original images.

Here are my images

Documentary, Bibliography - Task 6

Zed Nelson
Love Me reveiw - http://kiwigirlskiwiblog.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/review-zed-nelson-love-me/
Love Me images - http://www.zednelson.com/?LoveMe


Indu Antony
Broken Strings images - http://www.photojournale.com/categories.phpcat_id=221&sessionid=aa417df74626051881a3439200f0862e 


Richard Dru
9/11 images - http://news.yahoo.com/photos/photographer-richard-drew-captures-9-11-1314681196-slideshow/ap01091107750-photo-1314680785.html
9/11 video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Mz0_x7313I

Documentary, Evaluation - Task 5

Evaluation

I have enojoyed this project to some extent. I have liked some of the images I have looked at and found them interesting but some others I didn't like as much. I enojyed looking at the word of Zed Nelson and Richard Drew, I think their images were really interesting to see what was the story behind them. I didn't find Indu Antony's work very interesting to look at, as it was a little boring and sort of repetative. The message that his images gave were nice but the images themselves weren't what I like. I tried to copy the fact that Zed Nelson takes pictures of some advertisments in places such as cities that people see all the time. I am not too happy with the Zed Nelson images I recreated because they do not really look like his work, it was hard to recreate his work though. Both his images and mine use adverts which are linked with things trying to make people look beautiful. The story that this tells is that people see adverts everyday with people who have been made to look their best so they want to look the same and this influences them. People who see this images may realise that people see this everyday and are becoming obsessed with wanting to look like these people. I tried to copy the style of the images that Indu Antony has taken in the destitute home. My images are not too similar to his because they are not based on the same subject but they are the same style and colour scheme. When people look at dark black and white images they are normally not happy images, and are trying to get a serious message across, which is what Indu Antony is trying to do. My images are not about a serious matter but just are the same style. The Richard Drew images that I have re-created are nothing like his images, but I tried to copy the colours that are used in his images. My images include buildings and vertical lines which are also included in Richard Drew's work. 

Documentary, Task 3 - Re-creating images

The second of images I tried re-creating were the broken strings by Indu Antony. These images are of destitutes in India. I couldn't take any images like this so I decided to just document a day with one of the my friends in the same style as Indu Antony which is basically black and white. Here are the original images.

Here are my images

Documentary, Task 3 - Re-creating images

The first set of images I tried to have a go at re-creating were the 9/11 shots that Richard Drew took. I obviously I couldn't go take photos of an event the same as this so I looked at the colours used in his images and tried to include them in my photos I would take. Here are the original photos taken at 9/11.

Here are my images.

Documentary, Zed Nelson - Task 2/4

Zed Nelson - Love Me

These images that have been photographed by Zed Nelson are about beauty, what people think beauty is and  the extremes people will go to, to be what they think is beautiful. He has chosen to photograph the things people will do the become their own idea of beauty. He's is trying to show people will do anything to become 'beautiful'. People normally influenced by things such as the media and celebrities and become obsessed with looking like them because thats what they think beauty is. 2 of the photos or high key images which are just the one person stood against a white background so it focuses on them and nothing else, they are the focal point. The other image of the tummy tuck is a very graphic image to show what things people put themselves through the look how they want to. I think that the images are rather bizarre because on one there is a 9 year old girl dressed up and wearing make-up ready for a beauty pagent which isn't normal in my opinion, but her parents could have had some impact on this. In this picture she is not smiling so this could show she is not happy about what she is wearing and is also not happy about the pagent. In another image it shows a women who has become anorexic because she is so obsessed with being thin she doesn't eat enough because she is scared to gain weight. This would really show people how badly some people want to look 'beautiful'. In the remaining image of the surgery people will see this and some people will probably will be shocked that some people will go through so much surgery and pain, and mostly likely spend a huge amount of money, just so they can have a flat stomach that they want so quickly, even though they could just eat healthy and excercise. All the images are based on the same content of wanting to be beautiful. These images are good at telling people a story because they are showing what people are actually doing to become the way that they want to look. These images are objective because they are stating facts because they are showing real life people and the photographer doesn't give any opinion on them he just says what they are, it is all just factual. These images do not have an order as they all different people but they are wanting to achieve the same thing, which is looking how they want to look and achieving what they think is beautiful. These images are used online and in a gallery for people to view. 

Task 4

Zed Nelson has a book which his Love Me images are published in. A reveiw of this book that I found on the internet backs up what I have said about the images. The reveiw quotes "The first picture you will see is a nine-year-old girl. She is dressed up for a beauty pageant. She wears make up, a tiara, heavy earrings. But perhaps the most striking thing of this photograph is this little girl’s lack of smile." I said in my research that the girl does not look happy and this backs up what I said because other people think the same thing about the images they have seen. The reveiw also says "A recent scientific study reported that we make decisions about the attractiveness of people we meet in the space of 150 milliseconds. Beauty is a $160 billion-a-year global industry. Americans spend more each year on beauty than they do on education." This shows us that many people are obsessed with how they looks because they judge people as soon as they meet them and thety spend so much money on ways to change their appearance. This also shows some people in America are more bothered about their own appearance than their childrens education because they would rather spend more of their own money on making themselves look 'perfect' and how they want to look than spend their money on making sure their children have a good education.

Documentary, Indu Antony - Task 2/4

Indu Antony - Broken Strings

These images are taken of destitutes who are living in a home in India. The people here have no family because they have been abandoned by family and most of the patients here are mentally ill. The photographer is documenting the life of one patient living here in this home. I think the photographer is trying to tell people looking at the photos about how bad life is here for patients. I think he is also trying to show people how bad the conditions are here and that it would be really hard living here. These photographs are really hard hitting black and white images. They show the harsh reality of how some people have to live and not everyone has a nice place and that these people are struggling. People reading these images are made to think about how bad it would be for the poor people who have to live here. They would maybe make people stop and think for a minute about what they have and how they just take what they have got for granted, but they might realise that they shouldn't because some people have much worse than them and are even struggling to survive. All the images are the same style and content. They are all in black and white and they are all of the same person in the same place, showing the same theme of how hard it is for her there. These images are successful at telling the story they are supposed to because they are supposed to show people how bad life is for people at this home and that it would be a struggle there. It also tells people they don't get much care because the people living there are extremely thin and look malnutrioned. The beds thats the people are laid on are also telling us about how bad the life there is and the lack of care for the people because they are solid with no pillows or covers so they could not be comfy or warm when they sleep. These images are mostly objective because they are photos of a real story, of a real home where real people are having to live. They are also slightly subjective  because the photographer is conveying his opinion on how awful the standards of living are there. These images so not have an order they are just showing how people have to live in this home. These images would be used for charity because it could be asking people to donate money to this place to help the people living there. It could also be used online and in the news to show how awful some places are in different countries and how hard some peoples way of life is.

Task 4

On this website http://www.photojournale.com/categories.php?cat_id=221&sessionid=aa417df74626051881a3439200f0862e there are more images that Indu Antony has taken during his time at the home. These show people living in the bad conditions and some even show how the people are ill living there. This backs up what I said about the home not being a very pleasant place and that the people living there don't get much care because all these people are sleeping on hard beds and are very thin. This means the care standard is low and isn't nice for the inmates who have to unfortuantly live their lives there.