My Visual Logbook

Today we had our peer review session. I was paired with Emanuela, who I worked with for our project 3 magazine task, so it was interesting being able to see her other work.  Below is her feedback for my work, I have taken on board what she said and hope to improve my grade with it.

Jacques Henri Lartigue was a French photographer and painter, born in 1894 and died in 1986. He is most famed for photographs of planes, automobile races and Parisian fashion models.
Born into a wealthy family, Lartigue was first given a camera when he was seven years old and begun  taking pictures. He was incredibly lucky to have such access to state of the art photographic equipment at such a young age and have the influence of his photography loving father.

Lartigue was a true amateur; he produced the following images from the ages of around 7-18. They had no great impact on the development of photography at the time as his work was virtually unheard of until about 60 years after it had been taken. They portray his friends and family in turn of the century France; albums which are shown through the eyes of a young, fun loving boy, who probably wasn't thinking about much else other than subject matter, and how he could capture what others didn't.

Lartigue is an example of an early snapshot photographer who's subject matter, his friends and family, is similar to that of my narrative. I love that these images are now captured forever, and they act as a window into 1900's France. My aim is to create a photobook which will serve as a kind of photo album containing all those close to me at this point in my life.

During my one to one with Richard today he asked how I planned to fit my narrative together as one coherent photobook. After our seminar yesterday morning with Juneko I was already beginning to consider what images I should use and in what order as this decision will either make or break my photobook. He urged me to look further into Richard Billingham than I already had done, specifically the actual photobook 'Ray's a Laugh' as the narrative and structure is very considered and interesting.

Amongst all the chaos of the images of his alcoholic father and his mother, are images of birds and landscapes. This was very surprising to me however it related back to what Juneko had mentioned yesterday, about how these pauses in-between sequences are so unexpected, they force the reader to stop, and gives them a moment to reflect and question why there is something so different imbedded within the other images.

I have debated whether Billingham shoots his images from the position of an insider or an outsider, and this discovery of the additional photographs has made my decision more informed. They give way into the head space of Billingham and how he escapes from his parents and the flat they live in, taking landscapes and nature photographs, which I know is what he then went on to shoot more of and include in his photobook; Landscapes 2001-2003. His position as an outsider in his own family home is very shocking and shows that the content of the book is not to be taken lightly.

I really love the addition of these images and can't understand why they don't come up on a google image search of the books title, as if they aren't as important as the other surrounding photographs.
These shots create a juxtaposition which intensifies the chaotic nature of the images surrounding them, they are so peaceful and this calm, graceful presence of them is a shocking, stark contrast.
The effect this has on a reader is very interesting and I want to experiment how to generate a similar effect through my photobook, using a similar technique.

Today I worked alongside Hannah Gilmore and Patricia Lopez, a Fashion communication and promotion student, and a Graphic design student respectively. I showed them the document in which I had just placed the images in my chosen order, and asked them how they thought I could improve, and bring the whole thing together and look coherent rather than just images on pages.






Patricia felt the zine was missing something with all the white space I had around the landscape images. She suggested adding some text and used an idea from a reference leaflet she had which she uses often for design ideas.

'Fill with placeholder text' was a very valuable thing which Patricia taught me, This enabled me to see what my layout would look like when filled with text. Before when I have tried to see what it would look like, as I did with the first page and that writing, I copied and pasted some text from my visual logbook. This handy shortcut could have saved me some time and is a lot more easier.

As it was my job to prepare the zine file and send it to the printers, I have been emailing back and fourth with Adam, part of CBF printers. After receiving the initial quote I wanted to make sure I was making a document which was compatible, and in their preferred format. After my second attempt still wasn't quite right, I rang Adam and he explained to me on the phone exactly what he needed and was incredibly helpful.
Below is our email conversation.
After these messages I rang him as it was much easier to communciate via phonecall, Adam had to explain to me how to format my document as it still wasn't quite right, but I got it in the end.

Mike Brodie's A Period of Juvenile Prosperity was born when, in 2003 Brodie got on the wrong train by accident and ended up hundreds of miles away from home at age 18. Along with a Polaroid SX-70 camera, Brodie begun to document his journey and the people he met along the way. He later switched to an old 1980's 35mm camera and documented hobos, fellow travellers and runaways whilst clocking up around 50,000 miles of unticketed travel. 

The images in the series are raw and beautiful, and I love the amateur feel that they have to them, resulting from the fact that Brodie is a self taught photographer with no formal training in the subject.
To keep in touch with people he met on his journeys and photographed, Brodie uploaded the images to the internet, and was nick named 'The Polaroid kid'. 

I really love his subject matter as its very intimate and shows a side of travel which we don't see very often. The Amateur feel that his images possess really appeals to me as something I would like to recreate within my own narrative. 
The structure and layout of his book was also very simple, layout and how I want my photobook to look is something which I need to start considering; images included in A Period of Jevenile Prosperity have no captions or writing around them, just blank space, and some spreads have an image on each page, whereas some have just one, on either the left or the right, which I found interesting as I expected all lone images to be on the right hand page. Creative decisions like those will be very important in the process of making my book.

“I don’t want to be famous, but I hope this book is remembered forever”.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/10071614/A-Period-of-Juvenile-Prosperity-by-Mike-Brodie-review.html 

Today I have been experimenting with different designs for the pages of the zine which my image will feature on. For the time being I have placed my image on the cover as it was a portrait image and fitted the whole page whereas any images sent to me so far were landscape, which wouldn't have worked as well, however when the rest of my group send me their images for the zine I can see if any others are more suitable.
I experimented with the scale of the image on the cover also, using different crops. I wasn't sure on this idea as I preferred the original image uncropped, however my graphic designers suggested that I should try many possibilities as winning ideas are often discovered by accident or when you least except. I think I still prefer the original image however I will put the idea forward to my group.








To the right and below are experiments in which I tried to incorporate both my portrait and still life image on one page. I showed this idea to my graphic designer who suggested I add the blue down either side, which really ties the image together.
I stayed with the idea of the text and the colour matching box around it as I think this is a solid idea which will be used in the Zine.







I chose to include just one single image per page as taking the size of the zine into  consideration, one image A5 will look more striking whereas two on a page may look squashed and not as professional.