Shoot – Coventry to Birmingham

Me and my friend Ross Rawlings went on an exploration of our local surroundings accessible by trains from Coventry to Birmingham. Here are a few examples of the images we produced on a couple of shoots over the last few days.

While on the journey we talked of a possible piece that could be made out of this idea of the train line from Coventry to Birmingham and thought of artists we had already come across that we had been influenced consciously or not from this trip. Two that firmly stand out are Todd Hido and Dan Holdsworth.

Christmas At Home

Here are a few photographs I took while at home for Christmas.

Skatepark – Portraits

About a month ago I took images of a skate park at night and with this as my base I decided to take this further and create the same setting but with portraits of my friends in the images. I have taken these images below and am very happy with them however I now want to push this on and get actual skateboarders to come up to the skate park and use these as the subjects and create a set of portraits of skateboarders. I love the background in the images and think they look aesthetically pleasing and with skaters in the images instead of friends I feel an idea of transitional change from teenager to young adult will be shown as this is very much apparent in the age that most people skate.

Manchester Trip

“The night has opened my eyes” The Smiths

After editing the images down to a select 18 I feel I did what I intended to do. I have decided to pair photos together that were taken pretty much at the same time as one another and that work together. I have placed text with the images in a similar way to that of Corrine Day in her diary. I wrote of what was happening at the time however this text is meant to come inside with this idea of relaxing and enjoying the weekend. The text is very simple as the images are of normal moments but at places or with people that were personal to me during the course of the weekend, I hope this comes across in the images. As well as Corrine I would also say Richard Billingham has influenced me for this piece as it is a piece done with simple equipment that is cheap and easy something that Billingham is renowned for.

As you can see the images are not all pefectly exposed and some appear blurry but this was because of limited settings on my point and shoot camera. In some of the shots I did not want to use a flash as I liked the colour in the room’s as it makes it feel more intimate and personal in places. The piece I think reflects well on my moods and how I reacted to places like Mikes house where I have never been before and the city of Manchester that I was very unfamiliar with. This sort of idea very much comes from some of the photographs I have previously put on the blog for example the ones of my friends and places that are occupied by these people. One difference is that I gave myself a time limit and a certain objective to reaching a clear narrative. I have decided to call this “The night has opened my eyes” because I wanted to look at the fact that I have not documented the nights out and this reason for going to Manchester for my friends 21st but to look at the moment’s we shared in between these times. I feel the night does have effect on these photos as we look through the normal moments in life as apposed to those that appear as the usual documents of friends. I wanted to explain to the audience that these moments are just as special if not more.

I hope to get my memory final atefact on by tommorow at the latest but have had some problem getting it of avid edit.

Images of Friends

These images below are just some that I have taken around, the images are not all perfectly exposed however this very much comes across in Nan Goldin’s work and was something that I wanted to experiment with. I aimed to take photographs  without worrying to much about exposure in order to create a very raw style. Some of the images are aimed up towards the lights in order to create a contrast in colour’s. The images are personal to me and are just shots of me spending time with my friends at university.

The Kinks

“Every day I look at the world from my window” – The Kinks, Ray Davies

Memory

After researching memory over the summer and in my workbook i have a fairly good idea on the topic. As i am very much into photography i looked at Corrine Day’s book Diary. This was a very inciteful look into somebody’s memory but this is all it is, it brings no personal memory’s to me as i didn’t live these moments that i see. This shows how the memory in photographs does not lie in the image but in the body of the person who was there and who took the image. This brings up the question that a photograph in itself can not be a single memory , it is a trapped moment that can be looked back on but never again experienced by subject or matter. To look at a photograph that “represents” memory is as far as memory can be seen, the notion that the memory lives with the person and not the photograph. Henri Bergson The question then arrises as to why you would be interested in these images for me it is the incite into another humans life, a way of looking at the world, the contrast in opinions on life through the form of a photograph. A photograph of a memory will have a completely different take for the outside audience because they have not lived this moment it means just a perception of another persons memory.

As a practicing photographer I have always taken photos of my friends at university and here are a selection of these however this is not my final artfact as i want this to be fresh and want to try something I haven’t done before. The images below have been taken over the period of 2008, there are more however these are just a few that piece together some of the people at university who are a part of my life and myself. For these images I take inspiration from photographers such as Nan Golding and Corrine Day who all look at their own personal lives and document on a day to day basis. “The past is gone for ever. We cannot return to it.” Pg 3 London : Virago, 1991 Family snaps :the meanings of domestic photography /edited by Jo Spence and Patricia Holland, This very much portrays why I take these images of my friends at my university because one day we will have to leave and to capture these single moments is important to me as these moment will disapear. By having a photographic memory of these people in there usual states to me is as important as having pictures of us all smiling on a drunken night out. These images look at us in a family like way and this closeness is something I will never forget and photography is just my medium to bring alive these moments to an extent.

“The past is gone for ever. We cannot return to it.”

corrine day diary

corrine day diary

This provides the base for my next artefact, i want to explore places that mean something to me but probably nothing to anybody else. My reason for this is to represent how different places are seen and what they mean to different people. I want to play around with the idea of this actuality and the representation of memory.

Corrine Day Diary Images from (www.corinneday.co.uk 07/11/08)

Spectacle Of Football

When thinking about football in a non league sense I thought about looking at what it means to people that just play in the street. With this idea I walked around Coventry and took photographs of people playing football in places that are seen everywhere. An example of this is the images below where I look at a local football cage thing and took a group portrait image of the people playing there. In the portrait what I find interesting is how the youngsters put their arms around each other in a very traditional way to how footballers do on TV, I like how the people seen play up to this image created through the spectacle of football. This could be an interesting aspect to look at in regards to breaking down how football effects kids on the street on a day to day basis and how this comes back across to the stars in football everywhere.

Spectacle of Football

After going out today to shoot and record sound for my spectacle piece i feel i have something to work with that could turn out to be a nice piece. I am still not totally sure on whether to use the images yet but it was still good to shoot these images as it is always something i could pursue in the future. One reason i may just use the sound is to leave that speculation on the particular game i was watching and therefore leading the audience to ask more questions on what they are hearing, question the importance and reason for this game.

When doing this i began to think of how this piece could be explored in a more in depth way if i was to make this a full piece. One way i came up with this is to record many different sounds from different levels of football and combining these in a fairly long piece of sound. With this i could play this loud in a dark room so that people become one in hearing this, everybody hears the same thing but people interpret it very differently. This in itself could become a spectacle as everybody in the room are combined by what they hear very similar to a football game but peoples perceptions on what they are hearing or being told in a game differ. The idea of 10 people listening to this and then coming out of a room could show spectacle itself as they can discuss what they heard, what they got out of it and for sure these ideas will contrast from one person to another.

Recent Photographs

Here are a selection of some photographs i have produced over the last 3 to 4 weeks.