Time Pieces - Part Two

Now, in my last post I said something about a book. Well I created a book along with Graphic Design student, Jonathan Martin of my final images. The books showed photographs of ten final country day images and ten city afternoon/night images starting off with the earliest getting darker as the book goes on. 

I came up with the title 'Time Pieces' because I was working with the two strengths of my project; Documents of time and Photomontage. I also thought that when you think of a time piece, you tend to think of something delicate and dated, much like the media of disposable cameras as everything now is digital, and using a disposable camera is seen as a very dated method of photography. 

I also framed two final pieces; One day photograph and one night photograph. 

I chose these two photographs because I felt the represented each different scene the best. The country photograph shows a woman walking her dog on a quiet and lonely path and the city image shows the funfair part of the German market. I chose this particular photograph because I felt that showing the city as a funfair, especially the carousel represented city the best going round and round without a stop, and just the silhouettes of the people going in and out of the town centre. being so busy that you can't identify anyone. Comparing this to the country image which is much more mellow shows the exact comparison I wanted to create in my project.

Time Pieces - Part One

This is the project I ended up with since my last post. It seems so long ago now, but its over!
The main element I had in this project was to explore the different ways photographs can be merged or pieced together and so after my double exposures with a disposable camera, I decided to look for other ways photographs could be put together to make one image.

I then, thought about the possibility of Photomontage on a larger scale, meaning the pieces that would make up the photographs would be single photographs taken by a disposable camera, then when put together the photographs will line up to create one full photograph. I chose to use a disposable camera because I felt that it would give a more true to life view of what I was photographing, and would offer the best format once developed for what I was aiming to do. I returned home to Yorkshire to photograph the countryside, as I felt this was offer the best landscape especially with the time of year it was when I was taking my photographs. The first few photographs I took were tests, but I was quite pleased they worked so well.

These two photographs (which were used in my final book...yes, a book!) were taken in Ripon, North Yorkshire at the clock tower and the market square, facing the Town Hall. I was happy with the way they turned out, and how well they fit together to create one scene. The aim of doing this, is to make the viewer look at the separate photographs and see each part of the scene before then looking at the image as a whole, and taking in the different things going on in each piece. Anybody can look at a full photograph but how much do they miss? With the way the photographs are layed out on different levels, the eye looks along each one separately before registering each piece as a whole image. 

With the success of my test reel, I moved on to Harrogate, North Yorkshire where I began to be more creative. I was afraid that my images were becoming to similar and decided as I was becoming more comfortable with the disposable camera that I would try out different shapes and piecing them together.

This is probably the most creative shot I took; When walking through Valley Gardens in Harrogate I noticed this squirrel running around in the leaves, so I snapped a shot. Then, the squirrel jumped up on to the tree and I stood ready waiting to shoot (or waiting for that 'decisive moment' as Henri-Cartier Bresson, godfather of photography would say) and the squirrel looked at me and I snapped a shot. It would have been perfect had the squirrel run up to the top of the tree, but he didn't, so I snapped a shot of the top the tree hoping for the best. When I had the photographs developed, and put them together, I noticed I had a photograph that traced or documented the movement of a squirrel and it worked, but little did I know this would turn into a recurring theme in my project. 

This is another photograph put together from my Harrogate photographs where again, the document of movement comes into play as we can see the woman in the red jacket travelling through the photograph which makes the piece in itself much more effective as I am beginning to develop a theme within my photographs - a theme that I can work with and develop in my next photographs.

As I continued with my work, I realised there wasn't enough locations around me to create new refreshing photographs to make my work exciting, and so I decided to return to Birmingham and photograph the life in a city with the life of the countryside, so that my project follows along the same layouts but creating different scenarios for the viewer to look at.
It was late November, verging on December in the second largest city in the country and I was going out to take photographs...I must've been mental. However, I went and I survived and came up with some fairly good photographs to show for it, but that didn't come without hitting a rock first...

My idea was to show the country days and the city nights, and show the differences in the general atmosphere for example - country days tend to be very quiet and peaceful and city nights tend to be lively and busy where life just keeps going on until the next morning when everything starts again. When going out at night I had a disposable camera, but I have a flash so everything will be alright, right? wrong. I was left with these dark photographs with faint blobs of light. No good. So I had to time them right and go back at a time where it was dark but still light enough for my camera to pick up what was going on and everything was okay in the end.

These are the kinds of photographs I ended up with, even though they aren't as dark as I wanted I am still pleased with my outcomes. I feel that particuarly the second photograph I have shown still has that element evident in my photographs, so I was glad I could carry on that theme throughout my project. 

Even though I mentioned most of my really dark photographs weren't great, I was able to use some of them as more artistic pieces rather than time documents like some of the other pieces I have shown. 

For example, this image is very dark however it has that document of time there which you can see in the three close up shots of the three people walking past me in the time it took me to take the three separate photographs. So, even though some of the photographs were very dark they were still usable, and still  showed the themes that had been carried out throughout the rest of the photographs in the project.