Evaluation

In the start of this project I was lost. I did not really know where to start and it was really hard for me to think of an idea. It is always easier for me if I know what I am doing. I started off with shooting some bits of video that I wanted to create a narrative from, but it was not getting anywhere. I did know from the beginning that I wanted to do something with dreams & memories because it is a quite broad theme and anything could be done with it. I kept researching and found some other photographers that shot dreams. They all had very big budgets to start with and amazing sets that were quite hard to get hold of for me. This is why I carried on my research. Then I found a photographer called Tami Bone that also shot dreams. Her photographs were very simple looking but are really good thought off. She has really good compositions and are all shot in squares. I finally started taking photographs and edited them in a similar way than her. I started off like that but they still did not have a proper them e that would connect all the images with each other. Then I decided to shoot buildings in my images. The focus of the whole frame did not always lie on the buildings but I have tried to include buildings in all of my images. After that I started researching old castles and buildings as well and went to shoot in Yorkshire. Finally I knew exactly what I was doing and started getting into it. I still edited them in the same way that I did in the beginning to give the same feel as in a dream. I have produced a total of 14 final images and I am quite happy with them. I did not enjoy this project in the beginning but after I knew what I was doing I did enjoy everything I did for the project and I would definitely do something like that again in the future. 

Artist statement

My work is about dreams and memories. How you would see them in your dreams, all blurred out and mostly in black and white. All of them based around buildings and castles. They have been edited in a similar style as a photographer called Tami Bone that has also shot dreams. 

My final edited images

Here are all my final images. I have edited them in black and white and blurred most of the frame like a dream would actually look like and just mostly focused on one particular thing. I am quite happy with the results and think they look quite dreamy.

My final un-edited images

Following are the images that I am considering to make my final images. I have not edited them yet. I am planning the make them all in black & white and blur them roughly like Tami Bone's work. I will see what works best. 

Scarborough Castle

For this project, I decided to go to Yorkshire to shoot some castles. The first one that I came across was Scarborough castle. I really liked shooting there and think I did quite well considering the fact that it was really bad whether and it was also very foggy which is the reason why many of my images did not turn out as planned. Following are a few shots.

My project proposal - first draft

For this project I will be producing eight final images inspired by Tami Bone. My original plan was to do moving image but I changed my idea and decided to produce still images. I have chosen to work on the theme ‘dreams or memories’. I have looked at many photographers that have done work related to that. But all those photographers have worked with big budgets to produce one image such as Gregory Crewdson and Joshua Hoffine. Those are the type of images that I would not be able to produce in this time frame and because of the equipment needed as well.

I will be take images of things that have lots of lighting going on in the background. This will enable me to produce the effect that Tami Bone has created more effectively. She has made use of the Bokeh Blur on Photoshop, which is mostly effective when a lot of lighting is included in the image.

I have done a few experiments before taking my actual images, which is how I got to know that the lighting part is really important. She has turned all of her images into Black & White as well. I might include a tint in a few of them because it also gives a dreamy effect to the photograph and some images are not really effective when just put in Black & White.

I do not want too much going on in the background either because it just makes a mess behind the object photographed. Most of the images will be photographed outdoors again because of the different lighting sources that I would be able to photograph on the background.

After taking the photographs I will be editing them on Photoshop. Not too much editing will be needed. I only need to keep one aspect of the image in focus and blur the rest out with field blur and than the Bokeh effect after that.

The image of Tami Bone look really simple but there has been thought about it a lot. An example of that Is the image with the dog. It is perfectly cropped and amazingly composed. There is obviously more work in the editing process in those imaged rather than the shooting.

I have found another photographer called Ganesh H. that has produced similar work as Tami Bone with similar techniques on Photoshop. I have been looking at his work as well along with Tami Bone’s work to get more inspiration of what I should do with my work.

I will be producing a total of eight to twelve images and I will present them neatly in a photo box. I will be putting white borders on the photographs as well just to make them look more professional.

I have a total of four weeks before my hand in date. I will be managing my time accurately and try to get everything shot and edited before Easter. I will allow the first few weeks for shooting and posting more research onto my blog. The following weeks will be left for the editing of the images and getting them ready for assessment.  

My work

Following are a few more photographs that I have taken in Brussels. I really love the story behind the buildings that I have shot there. Grand Place is a very old place in Brussels. It is a tourist place. A lot of people come from very far to visit the place and the streets around that area look very old and beautiful. The man that got the big long building built, spent all his life savings on the building. He was very happy because he knew it would be beautiful and the best one around but when he saw the building, he realized that one side of the building was longer than the other and the long thing minar was not in the middle of the whole building. He was very depressed and went on the top of that same building and jumped down and died.

What locations can I shoot?

I started researching what different locations I could shoot for this project because I wanted to find locations that I could actually go to and that I had access to. I started looking in England first and I could also go to Belgium because I usually am there in weekends or in holidays. Following are the locations I found that could be interesting to shoot around:

• Warwick Castle - Near my house - Easy to go
• Bodiam Castle - 4h 49min drive from my house
• Dover Castle - 3h from my house - Planned to shoot it on my way to Belgium but it got too dark and was impossible to shoot anything in those lighting conditions.
• Bamburgh Castle - 3h from my house - Good location to shoot
• Scarborough Castle - 3h from my house - Good location to shoot with seaview
• York castle - 3h from my house - Near Scarborough Castle
• Grand place - In Belgium - 15min from my house - Great lighting/environment to shoot in

These are a few places that I have found to shoot that looked nice according to me. I hope I can at least shoot 2 of them and apart from them I will also be shooting any old buildings that I will find around in my area or wherever I go. 

Louise Bellin - Castles

Louise Bellin is also one of the many photographers that have shot old buildings/castles. I loved watching her work because looking at her work you can tell how much effort she has put in to notice every single detail going on in the frame. I love the locations she has chosen and she has used amazing angles to make the castles/buildings look even more interesting. I am definitely going to look at her work while I shoot mine because I am sure it will help me more to think about how to take my images. I will also try to find good locations because it does make a big difference to the end result. There are a lot of castles around, but I want to choose the best ones out of all of them. Following are the few images out of my favourites by her.