The Shoot.
For my Portfolio shoot I originally thought of ways I could compare my country town to the city of Melbourne where I moved to study. Although this originally seemed like a good idea I soon found it hard to execute as I wasn’t quite sure how to tie the images together. I considered trying to make the shots look structurally similar or take the of similar objects or things but show how they were slightly different. When I traveled back to the country I soon realised that I no longer wanted to continue with this style as I wanted to pursue a different route focussing on the experience of ‘going back home’.
I looked at ways I could capture the natural aspects of home and chose to incorporate family members into the images to focus on how home feels to me. I purposely didn’t include family members faces to give my images a sort of dreamy feel and aimed for a light bright vs dark warm colour theme to highlight and contrast the different scenes of being home. The images I took (both portrait and landscape) gave off a sort of dreamy vibe and I started to form an idea in my head about what I wanted to call my portfolio and the exact feeling I wanted to convey to people who looked at it. The texts ‘Asthetics in digital photography’ by Henri Maitre comments on three factors that contribute to a photographs popularity.
“- why the document is of interest, that is, its ability to draw and hold our attention by relating the document to contexts familiar to us;
– the surprise factor, that is, contrary to the previous point, its ability to give us a novel visual or cognitive experience by bringing in an unexpected contribution;
– beauty, that is, the pleasure it brings us, independent of its content, through the arrangement of its elements.”
These stood out to me after taking the photos I wanted to use and will definitely play a part in my future work.
Maitre, H (2023) Aesthetics in digital photography, ISTE LTD