WEEK THREE- USES OF PHOTOGRAPHY
The Journey so far…
Over the course of the three weeks of uses of photography leading up to the MIMESIS project, I was able to combine both my practical and theoretical learnings into my work to successfully plan and execute my recreation of Australian photographer Andrew Barnes work.
The pre-production planning of my shoots involved an analysation of Andrew Barnes photography. I chose Andrew Barnes’ work to attempt to recreate as I found his images closely aligned with the way I want my future photographs to imitate and look like. I find that my style of photography largely centres around nature landscapes and landmarks. Whilst planning how I wanted to recreate the images I focused on highlighting parts of the images that I wanted to imitate. The things I focused on attempting to recreate were, lighting, angles and overall aesthetic of the photograph. I chose to not try and recreate locations and exact placements of the images as I thought this would prove to be too complicated and cause issues down the track. I chose five of Andrew Barnes’ photographs that I knew to be similar to photos I had already and could easily take. The actual shoot took place around the area of my local hometown of Horsham. I travelled to a small town called Natimuk and drove up Mount Arapiles to catch the sunset to try and recreate the golden hour vibe of Barnes work. I also travelled to the Grampians, another mountain area to shoot. My last photos were taken at various locations such as Glenelg beach. Whilst planning my MIMESIS assignment out I considered using Australian photographer Max Dupain’s work to try and recreate. Unfortunately, I found that most of his work I wanted to copy or recreate required human involvement and a beach location. I was unable to travel to a beach location to capture these images due to me not being in close proximity to a beach and due to the time of year.
When taking the photos i looked for specific elements I wanted to match up in my work and had to refer Barnes’s’ images. This worked in my favour majority of the time but proved difficult in other circumstances. My last photo of a waterfall did not prove to provide me with the similar colours and shades I required to properly recreate the image. One of the recreated photos I’m quite proud of is one that captures the moon in a similar angle to one of Andrews Barnes’s photos. I was very excited to capture this photo.
When going through the photos I had taken I discovered that many of my images did not match up with Andrew Barnes’ photos. This meant that I had to scrap a lot of images I thought were amazing originally. Some photographs I thought were perfect ended up not working but then fitting with alternative Andrew Barnes images.
Overall, I found this assessment both incredibly challenging and rewarding. It helped me to both discover what photos I like to take as well as different technical camera things I struggle with and would like to learn more about.
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