Workshop Experience Week 8 and 9 : Urban Environment and Portfolio Discussion
Week 8 saw us discuss and decipher the world of Urban environment image capturing. I really like this style and was inspired by looking in to the work of Stephen Shore an din particular his series of "Uncommon Places" . A very eerie and beautifully executed series that has really got me thinking around what I could attempt in this genre. Whilst our portfolio at the end of the semester is pretty broad - Personal Expressions series, Inanimate series, and an Animate series - i do want to see what mixture of genres I can use to tell some stories, and Urban needs to be a part of it for me. The idea of capturing normally inhabited places uninhabited is a good one.
Some of the other students showed some cracking atmospheric urban environments images which got me even more interested in exploring this genre further. Its sort of like capturing street shots but making the human subjects less centre of the story, and if they do appear in the frame, they are to be mysterious and non descript and non directly engaged - totally different to other forms of urban photography I have been doing. Intriguing.
Week 9 we were all asked to be prepared to give a quick verbal overview of what our ideas were for our end of semester Personal Expression part of the portfolio. This part of the final submission needs to have a strong narrative, linking 7 to 12 images in such a way as to take the viewer on a journey and exploration of whatever the concept is that you are trying to convey.
The "linking" narrative can be personal, conceptual, thematic, just about anything as long as it grabs the viewer and leads them through the images in a story telling fashion.
Some of my fellow students had great ideas, ranging from a series exploring support and medical dogs and their connections to their owners, a concept of capturing small personal items that have meaning to people and photographing both the item and the person to engage and tell the story, through to ideas to explore food in its various states of the cooking process.
I am thinking of a series along the nostalgic lines I suppose, where I try to capture images that portray the emotional state I was in when I lived in certain places throughout my life, starting from birth. I envisage a series of images showing either the house and its environment to portray the feeling, or a detailed interior shot that conveys the emotional response i had.
Feedback was supportive but cautionary as it may fall flat or disconnected. Will drive on to see what some test shoots produce. Other ideas could be showing the cycle of Lake Eildon from plentiful to dry and where the water goes and what it is used for. The other parts of our portfolio are Inanimate 7 -12 images and Animate 7 - 12 images. Should be able to collect some images around each of these areas. Will see what plays out, but I only have 9 weeks left ! Gulp.
Update : We had to submit 2 assignments this week too. One assignment was 1 image from each of these genres : Straight Portrait, Group Portrait and Environmental Portrait. The second assignment was to be 3 images from one or any of these genres : Traditional Landscape, Urban Environment, and Architectural.
Following are my submissions. Until next time!
