Unit 2
Ritual
You should make connections with appropriate selected resources when developing your personal response to one of the following suggestions: (a) Develop your own interpretation of the starting point Ritual (b) You could produce work based on recording events associated with an everyday ritual (c) You might produce work based on the food, clothing or objects that are used in a ritual.
I choose ritual because things you do day to day are sorts of rituals. For example having breakfast in the morning is a type of ritual because you apply the same actions when you eat and you do it on a daily basis. Taking photographs is also a little ritualised. You need to check your equipment, select appropriate settings on the camera, take with you other resources (e.g. tripod, extra memory card or film etc.), pack your equipment in a bag, before you even set out on a photo shoot. Taking good photographs is often a matter of organisation and planning rather than luck.
There’s no rhyme or reason to what makes a great photo. Most of the time it is pure chance and a quick shutter finger, but other times it is planning, ingenuity and sometimes even stalking.
-- Chelsea Roberson
Experiment No 1.
I have tried to capture people walking which can be considered a ritual and is what people do on a daily basis.
I went out during a lesson change to capture people travelling to there classes. I tried to get normal expressions of people and worked out really well. It was during a lesson change so i knew i would be encountering allot of people and happened to get some really interesting pictures. I choose to go out during a lesson change because then I can get more than one persons emotion. One particular photo didn't capture any emotion and had blacked out everyones faces and is funny because i wanted to capture their faces but ended up doing the opposite but turned out to be a fortunate mistake.
Danny Lyon
Daniel was bon on March 16 1942 in Brooklyn, New york. Danny was raised in Kew Gardens, Queens and went on to study history at the University of Chicago, where he graduated with a bachelor of Arts degree in 1963. That same year, he published his first photographs working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His pictures appeared in the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Later he began creating his own books. His first was The Bikers in 1968 where he photograph bikers in the American Midwest. Furthermore he became a member of the Chicago outlaws motorcycle club and traveled with them documenting their lifestyles and glorifying the life of an American Biker. In 1969 He photograph large scale demolition in lower Manhattan and the soon to be demolished streets and buildings and picture from within the sites themselves. It was published as The Destruction of Lower Manhattan by Macmillan publishers in 1969.
Vito Acconci
Born on January 24, 1940. Vito was an American born in The bronx, New York who went to Regis High School in New York City. He studied Literature and achieved a BA from the Collage of the Holly Cross in 1962 and a MFA in literature and poetry from the University of Iowa. In the late 1960's he started his career as a poet working with Bernadette Mayer and later started to move into photography and photographing himself through January 15-29, 1971. It was called seedbed where he lay hidden underneath a gallery ramp whilst people walk above him. But it was his Following piece in 1969 from October 3-25 that inspired me. These images show the Artist Vito following someone else were i took pictures through me following someone else.
Experiment No 2.
In these set of images i tried various types of angles to try and show different views on following the subject. I tried to capture different types of lighting through the mood of the subject in the picture. The mood in most of my pictures shows a lot of composure and tranquility whilst the subject is going through a ritualistic day. The atmosphere of the pictures is very dull and plain and don't show a lot of emotion.
Refining one of my photos in photoshop.
Original image |
Refined imageAs you can see i didn't want to play with this image to much as it was already a good photo from the camera. I only changed the brightness levels to get the dark parts darker. The ritualistic aspects of this image is that the person is simply relaxing and the mood is very calm.
|
Sophie Calle
Sophie was born on October 9 1953 and is a french writer, Photographer, installation artist and conceptual artist. Formally know for conceptual art and installation art. Her work that inspired me was "Suite Vènitienne" where she was introduced to a man she earlier photographed and discovered he was planning an immanent trip to Venice. The next morning she discussed herself with a blonde wig and took the train to Venice, where she discovered where he was staying, then shadowed him, taking photographs where she could without his knowledge.
I tried to interpret this through following certain people for a short amount of time without there knowledge.
These short set of photos where of me capturing a journey on my phone with some different angles, through the course of my day..
Here i have tried the same concept of following someone but i used a specific lens called "lensbaby 3g" 50mm lens that stretches the images out and blurs them. To get them image to stretch you have to manually move the lens and it creates the stretch. It may look complicated but is actually very simple. When moving the lens there is a button that allows you to keep the position of the lens so you can focus on your subject.
Here I have used the same lens but i wanted to use colour instead of black and white. I also focused on one particular person. The mood in these photos is very relaxed as my other sets of images with this lens.
Final outcomes
Final evaluation.
I have chose Ritual because it gives me the opportunity to photograph many different things. For example i could photograph anything that consist of a routine. This gave me the idea of following someone instead of going through my routines in life.