My Visual Logbook

After my 1 to 1 with Andi I realise that I now need to go through all my images for the first brief to adjust the curves very slightly so that the tones all match and are much more coherent. I started with the two portraits below and theres a before and after. They look much better and I didn't realise how different they really were until you put them side by side and see the difference between before and after. I plan to go through all my images like this so that they match better than before.

James' lecture today was on beauty. I think I gained some knowledge and it made me question a few things about my own practice, which I can write about in my 3000 word essay. The main topic that stuck with me was my stance on my practice and how Taste fits within in.

Where do I stand within the spectrum of wanting to take cool images because they're cool rather than to actually mean anything, and having meaning behind them?

I take pictures because I think it looks good or for a purpose other than to have any signifiant meaning behind it. My commercial practice is totally fashion based and I do not mind producing apparent 'meaningless' images as long as people look at them and appreciate them for being 'beautiful'? I question the word beautiful because beauty is based on taste, and as James argued today, who dictates what is good taste and what is bad?

What I think is good taste will be very different from what the next person argues good taste is, unless they agree with me, then they will have good taste, too. But only in my opinion.

I turned to one of my close friends who explained her opinion in terms of design, and showed me a very inspiring video which illustrates the idea so well for me.

in terms of design everyone who designs has good taste, its basically on the job application. 'Good taste' is your eye for design; your ability to tell if something works or if something doesn't.
It doesn't matter if its a picture of a tomato or of a dog and you dont like tomatoes or dogs, you can still tell if it works; if the composition is there or if the colours are saturated enough. A good designer, (or photographer I think) can differentiate between the good and the bad qualities, and not allowing their personal opinions to get in the way of their critiquing work.
People say art is subjective which is true in a way, but as a designer you have to be objective to be able to remove personal opinions when viewing others work.
This makes total sense to me because thats what tutors do when they see students work.

colours are emotional contagegent within artwork. for example inside out, the colours reflect the feelings, joy is yellow, fear is purple, sadness is blue, anger is red, disgust is green.

The video below illustrates taste and how designers have to work to be able to demonstrate theirs to its full potential.
The idea that your work kills you because your taste strives for you to do better, and that the only way of rectifying this is to keep working because by going through a large volume of work you close the gap between frustration and ability. I love that idea so much; its really helped me to understand the process of learning too as its putting words to my frustrations. It will be really helpful for me to include this in my essay about the process of learning.

I have previously seen my images as sets of two and three to make sure I am maintaining an aspect of consistency, however for the first time as I have near enough chosen my final 12 apart from one final portrait, I wanted to see them all together in one space to see how they look as a set.

Some are finished and some still need retouching and refining, however as they look now, I am confident that they will work together and that they all look similar enough to be identified as my work. It was useful to put them all in one space as it was much easier to identify where they needed to be adjusted and which ones didn't fit within the set. I now need to go through them individually and adjust the curves very slightly to help them fit better.

Today I hoped to capture a final still life and a portrait for my first brief. I hope to finish this as soon as possible to then be able to focus on my remaining diversity brief.

In our lecture on Tuesday James tasked us with producing a treatment for our new brief. I had made mood boards before and didn't find it very different apart from including some more words and direction to be able to sell my idea and provide more information other than visual.

I found Mark Sanders photography on It's Nice That, his personal project with Charlotte Heal titled 'Contours' combines close up cropped images of the body alongside clothed images, so carefully done that the lines of form match up perfectly and flow completely. I had to look twice when I first saw them because of the cleverness to align them so fluidly. Art director Charlotte Heal describes them as 'their modern take on the nude'. This combination of fashion photography and the human form really inspires me to do something similar for my brief on diversity and the human form. My next post shows my treatment for the brief, demonstrating the aesthetic I am going for and the types of models/styling I plan to use. 

The colour and crop is beautiful and its minimalistic take on the human form is something I hope to speak through my images also.

I really don't like the above three shots. I like the idea, but the execution just didn't work out and I didn't have a coloured background to work with other than white/grey, and adding in the yellow during post looks unnatural and I tried to work around it by adding the illustrated leaves as I had before, but it just doesn't work as I had hoped. I took these before the first two above and felt quite disheartened and was worried I wouldn't have enough solid images to select from for my final submission, however I have the studio booked next week and I am confident that I can either recreate this shot and get a better result or shoot something better.