For our final assessment, we are going to think about one theme and produce an individually photobook of twenty to thirty photographs. When I first heard about the task, there were so many thoughts running through my mind and I had no idea what was the best choice for my project. Initially, I was thinking about a theme of street scene where I would photograph random people at the random moment on the street. However, after discussing with Brian, he told me that it was kind of going with ethics issues which we debated about in the class before. We are also required to get a release form for each single subject in our photos for the school assessment. Therefore, I had to give up on this idea.

Thinking about for days, I finally decided the theme for my final decision – Light. The reason for me to choose the theme is that light is not just light itself, it can be a form of art. In my opinion, there are many forms of light, yet they are hard to be captured and expressed. Here are some of examples:

The movement of light is shot in a scene when the shutter of a camera is left open during a long exposure. This kind of photograph is usually taken in a dark location which allows slow shutter speed. By using photographic technique of long exposure the flashes, streaks, colours, textures, and trails of light could eventually be captured in the photograph.

Bokeh Photography is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image. In order to produce a bokeh photograph, it is required to get a proper lens that allows wide aperture. Because bokeh is the blurry portion of an image, it is always need to be taken through a shallow depth of field.

After presenting my pb4 idea of light, the guest panels had some suggestions to me:

• The concept of light is too broad, maybe I could narrow down to one particular form.
• Add some emotion to the idea of light.

Initially I was thinking of doing light painting which is a photographic technique which use a hand-held light source to move and paint under a long exposure photograph. However, it is hard for me to express emotion through this kind of photograph. I have then chosen the theme of light and shadow which has endless possibilities in photographing.

I get inspiration from a Japanese photographer called Daido Moriyama who had published Light and Shadow in 1982. In Light and Shadow, Moriyama used his radical photographic style of black and white to illustrate the narrative between both light and shadow. Here are some of Moriyama’s work in his photobook:

Having discussion with Brian, he recommended me to have a more specific area for the photobook. As I have a strong interest in street photography, I am going to roam on the street and photograph light and shadow along the roads, walls or corners. My photobook will be produced in black and white where I find black and white is centred on how lights and shadows shape the meaning of the image.

Here are some of examples that I found at a juried international photography exhibition on ph21gallery which are alike what I will be going to photograph.