• Think like a professional photographer
• There aren’t too many places available with free access for people to enter and allows to take photos
• Feedback: The photos could only focus on the presentation of colors, it is not so necessary to use a ‘model’
• Feedback: If I cannot find shooting location with all different colors, then try to buy so cardboard (colorful) to set up a scene.
• should I include text on the photo book to intend the viewers of what I want to present?

FEEDBACK & PROGRESSION:

Reflection on Photobook Presentation:

I wasn’t quite clear on what theme am I going to focus on for the presentation, so what I did on presentation was everything that I was planning to show through this project brief, and this post is to further clarify for myself about the two inspiration and how can I expand the inspirations further:

Inspiration #1 – the first inspiration was not origin from a photography, it was from an album from a Korean female singer IU (Lee Ji Eun) called ‘Palette’, she is one of the most well-known K-pop stars all around the world.  IU explained that this title came to her mind while she was thinking back to her last 10 years living as a celebrity. Just like the other celebrities, IU hides her true personality which she uses a ‘perfect’ personality to appear in front of the public in order to attract more fans and to maintain the position she has gained so far. ‘No one wants to disappoint someone they love or someone who loves them, and neither do I…’ In this album, she has described her different personality by using different colours, everyone will find the ability to represent different personality depend on the person you are meeting, just like the colours, blue for example, we don’t like it but its always there. Anyway, what I have got from this inspiration was the idea of using colors to symbolize human, they can be emotional, symbolic.

Inspiration #2 – The second Inspiration and the most important one — William Eggleston

One thing I like the most about this photograph was, Eggleston doesn’t really show their eyes which may confuse the viewers on what emotion is he expecting the viewers to feel. But that’s what I like most, I want to experience that: without showing the object’s facial experience, how can I still let the viewers feel the emotion. Viewers from a different background may have a different interpretation, for example, if someone from China might think red as a lucky color, it brings happiness and luck to them. Although for someone from a western country they might consider red as a symbolic color of emergency or fire.

The test shooting was aimed to test how do the colors may work together, I have focused on three main colors: yellow, black and red. The shooting area is located in RMIT building 10, I walked past this area when I finished my group meeting. At the time there was a person was holding his boost drink in his hand wearing a black T-shirt, the picture of how my photograph might be has appeared immediately. Contrast colors- red & black; purple & yellow; black & white etc; I was very curious on how might these colors work together.

According to the feedback from Dan Binns andPauline Anastasiou on the other day, they suggested that without an actual person inside the photo could also work very well, because colors are the most important ‘protagonist’ in this scenarios. However,  I still want to include an actual ‘person’ as the main focal point in my project, the reason I want to do that was that my intention is to present the emotion through the colors and via combining them together. I think is more viable for myself to show emotion through human instead of objects.

Through the test shooting, I wasn’t too satisfied with the group of test photographs, I used a ‘model’ in my work with the combination of black and red as I really want to test out how can I achieve the sense of isolation and distance as what William Eggleston did in his work, the red in the shooting area was too vivid and bright which I think will take over the focal point from the ‘model’, so I used black to press the red down. However, looking at the comparison between my work and William Eggleston’s work, the setting of William Eggleston has create the photograph to look sad and isolated with the garnet red classic car give the audience a feeling of back to the 90s.

– INTERACTION WITH STRANGERS –

The main theme of this project brief is to record our interaction with strangers, through different ways of interaction we are supposed to find out what are the stories they have in their world. A big thank you to Hannah for bringing me into this world, I guess I will not have the chance to see what is the world of indoor cricket like if Hannah doesn’t bring me in. This is not the first I went out to the public and captured different types of people, remembering myself in China photographing people on the street, most of them felt me being offensive and uncomfortable to be photographed. Although in this project, it’s totally in a different situation. I have met 4 teams in total, most of them are from Swinburn. I was quite surprised when I took my camera out, around 90 percent of them feel happy to be on the camera, there was only a few of them who didn’t want to be shoot. Among these people who don’t want to be photographed, I remembered one of them was being very alert whenever I moved my camera when the object you want to capture is being very different it’s actually quite challenging for the photographer. The players were either very happy to be in front of the camera or being very alert when you hold up your camera, what I did

Among these people who don’t want to be photographed, I remembered one of them was being very alert whenever I moved my camera when the object you want to capture is being very different it’s actually quite challenging for the photographer. The players were either very happy to be in front of the camera or being alert to the camera.I understand them and I don’t want to have any negative effect on their condition, so what I did to relief their stress and concerns were to hold up my camera and walk across them to show they are not my object so they don’t have to be aware.

– SEQUENCING THE PHOTOGRAPHS – 

First of all, as I have mentioned in the previous blog posts, I have divided the series into three parts: Before the game start; during the game (Half-time) and after the game. I thought 14 photos would be a lot in the beginning, but after I have edited all my photos I felt they are all good and I want to use all of them!

• The first and the Last photograph, these two photographs were arranged because the looked similar but still different, if we take a closer look at these photographs, we can see they are the same team. I can see they were the team who really held up to one another and they actually won at last, so I used this team’s photo to start off and finish the series.
• I included quite a lot of close up shots in order to emphasise the facial expressions, and what kind of behaviour will they have followed by the progression of the game.
• I have inserted the judge’s photographed in the middle which I want to tell who important the judge is within the game, we can sort of tell the power they own just by looking at the chair they sit and the distance they are lifting up from the court.

– REFLECTION –

• If I am going to shoot this again, I would like to try during day time. I usually don’t switch on the flashlight because I feel like the flashlight may alter the actual colour tone, night time shooting always needs more lighting than day time, especially indoor and the objects are moving very fast. Another thing I really want to try is to leave the shooting until the game has finished, I want to have them all sitting down on the court and they can do whatever they like. I really want to capture the difference of facial expressions between win team and loss team, how they might react with each other.
• Collaborative, it’s another big concept in this project. It’s a pity that Hannah doesn’t know any of the players, so I didn’t focus on a particular person and get some of his portaits, but I felt quite satisfy with these two shootings.

– Project Brief 3 progression –

The first shooting of Indoor cricket, I was full of confidence with my shooting plan for the first shooting on the sports game, it was totally unpredictable and uncontrollable. That’s why photographers need plenty of experience and practices before they produce the final work, I had a feasible plan but I haven’t got any experience with sports. One thing and the most important thing I learnt from the shooting was, the rhythm in the cricket court changes very fast and unpredictable, there were two teams on the day and they were warming up when I arrived. Everything was so unfamiliar to me, the players were warming up, chatting and making fun with each other, which I never imagined the atmosphere changed in the next second – the game started.

What I think I have captured the most from today was how the players and the court look like from the perspective of the audience especially for people who first enter this world, with the sense of unfamiliar and embarrassment. Other than showing the world from three different stages follow by time procession, I also want to show how the world varies when we see from the outside of the net and while standing in the court.

Plan for the second shooting:

1. Portrait shoots of individuals
2. Highlight the change of rhythm from portraits – strong characteristic
3. Capture more facial expressions
4. Teamwork
5. be on the court to show the difference of view from the outside
6. Be very prepared for the unpredictable speed!

Roughly edited version from the first shooting:

– 7.2 Class Exercise –

Finally!! Here comes my favourite!!! In today’s class, we were asked to shot a 4×4 so sixteen photographs in total follow the theme of ‘edge of frame’, ‘edge of a season’, ‘edge of an object’ etc. I really enjoy viewing this kind of photographs, the first reason is because of they can either be very architectural and very emotional, the second is I am really bad at finding a perfect composition for shooting especially for street photography, it usually takes ages for me to get everything in the right composition.

Rainy day is also a theme that I always wanted to try but didn’t, at first I didn’t really get the feeling of what objects should I shoot so these photos were randomly captured.

Tour to National Gallery of Victoria (NGV):

In the first half, we went for an excursion to the National Gallery of Victory. The photography festival has included a number of contemporary photographers such as Danny Singer, Ceal Floyer, Lucia Koch, David Rosetzky, Polly Borland, Adam Fuss and Thomas Demand. Ceal Floyer’s work – The answer has really attracted my attention, Floyer is known for her sculpture, installation, and sound works involving everyday objects and humble interventions. Floyer’s work doesn’t seem to have a deep meaning in audience’s first view, but when we take another look it usually contains a sense of humour.

Ceal Floyer, 2015

BrainStorm for PB3:

I am going to shoot with an indoor cricket team, I have done a lot of research and studies on indoor cricket as I have zero knowledge on it. I have divided the shooting into three stages based on the game while focusing on the key emotions that I feel as an audience:

1. Preparation – warm up, I will be focusing on the rhythm of the game, fun; passionate; sociality and relaxing before the game start?
2. During the game/ half time interval – effort? passionate? tension? Interaction in between players, has the emotion changed?
3. End of game/ post game – exhausted; how do they react to the result of the game (positive/ negative?); the court is back to silence, is there anything different comparing to preparation stage?

Class exercise – Exchange

According to my family background and the looking at the people around me, the first thing that bumped into my mind was the exchange student (international student) when I first heard the word ‘exchange’.

To be honest, I didn’t capture anything that I now consider to be ‘exchange’ so I didn’t upload any photographs, I was blank for real when I heard the word ‘exchange’, it is broad but also limited as a shooting concept which made me felt challenging to decide what to shoot. After a progression of research and thinking, I have drawn the image in my mind based on my understanding of ‘exchange’, it can mean to exchange your stories and experience to one another or it can also mean the exchange of one’s soul. A simple example will be when you heard a beautiful song and you want to share with one of your best friend or someone that you think who is happy to listen to you, this is an exchange of your characteristic/ experience. Or when you first meet someone, the process while you get to know each other becomes the exchange of souls in certain levels. 

And this images reminded to one of my favourite photographers Can Dagarslani, he is highly influenced by surrounding architecture forms which can see through the symmetrical scales. His work are mostly done with two people in the frame with the symbolization of relationship, communication or identities, I believe if I shoot ‘exchange’ within Can’s style will also work explicit as well. 

WEEKLY REVIEW – WEEK 4

PROJECT BRIEF 2 – INSPIRATION PHOTOGRAPHER – NGUAN

One of the most important decisions which were also the most satisfactory decision I have made during the shooting stage in this project brief was the matched up of colours. In the first three photos (Between the Pink) I have matched the red bench with the model’s dress, lip colour and the headphone colour. The pink shopping bag worked surprisingly well as it balanced the colour tone just like in most of Nguan’s work, the focal point has softened because of his manipulation of colour tone.

The first thing that I found worked well that I didn’t expect to work well was how most of my photos were over exposed a bit, during the progression of using ‘light room’ I tried of pressing down the exposure to see how it works, yet it was less colourful or fantasy without the overexposure.

Secondly, I there was usually unexpected episode happens during the different stage of the progression, during the post-production stage I was using VSCO to do most of my post-production work it’s convenient and also very professional. However, I have forgotten that large-scale photos will be compressed to a smaller size and the photo quality became less distinct since I upload the finalised photo straight to the social platform so I wasn’t aware of the change of size.

I believe myself is very sensitive and keen with colours, either choosing a colourful hoodie or differentiating two similar colours. There is no denying that a lot of black and white photographs are fabulous, but I don’t usually like black and white photos because I feel like they are lifeless compare to the photograph with colour. This is another reason I have chosen Nguan as my inspiration photographer, I always say that when I saw his photographs I feel like I am eating a marshmallow. I have actually learnt a lot about myself, how I am very unfamiliar with post-production; how I am very keen on colours.

-Within the Pink –

In Tuesday’s class, we were divided into small groups and bring a camera each to the outside of the campus, the class activity was to use varies ISO; aperture and shutter speed to record things on the street. I was quite surprised that how the same locations can produce different photo styles, each of us in the group look at things from a different angle which made this series more abundant.

Project Brief 1 – I decided not to continue with Nobuyoshi Araki for the Project Brief 2, I have never looked at him from a deeper angle other than this presentation, the first time he grabbed my attention was not by his works but his quote: ‘My photos are my diary. Every photo is no more than the representation of a single day. And each day contains the past and the projection into the future. That’s why I feel compelled to indicate the date on every picture I take.’ and then I saw his first series of artwork — ‘Araki’s cat’, he started to take photos for his cat since it first arrived until it dies because of the old age.  However, once I started to follow and study him from lots of different angles, I found I do not agree with him that ‘Art is all about doing something you shouldn’t’. It’s true that everyone will not have the same answer or perspective on what is art, but I believe that art should be use to record what you really like or motivate you.

I am still looking for a direction for the next project brief, but I guess what I have learned from Araki is we need to have a strong, clear concept and storyline for a series of photographs, this will enhance your audience to understand the work.