Spring - first draft photos

I was one of the unlucky ones who got given the season spring! As it's now autumn I thought I was doomed but surprisingly the photos I managed to take turned out quite well. Since the weather is the most opposite to spring it could be, there isn't a single green leaf in sight, no spring time flowers and no cute baby lambs roaming around, I had to improvise so I focused more on the colours that spring brings rather than the other more obvious elements.

I decided to take a slightly abstract approach to photographing 'Spring', I did this because not only would it be hard to capture litteral photos of spring, because it's autumn but also because they look quite different and interesting this way. To achieve this result I layered 3 photos of flowers using photoshop and changed the opacity to allow each photo to shine through, some more than others. I'll be honest and say there is no artistic reason for the layering effect except for the fact that I thought it looked good. Some could argue that it's not enough for photos to just 'look good' and that it needs some symbolic meaning or something, usually i'd disagree with this but in this case 'looking good' might not be enough. The problem with the layers is the psychedelic effect it gives and how this could confuse people and take their mind more towards the distortion and away from the spring aspect of the image. In order for this photo to meet the brief, it has to scream out 'spring' and although the colours and the subject do this, the layering ditracts from this a little too much, making the viewer think 'why has she done this?'. When I re-shoot I will keep in mind that my priority is 'spring' so will therefore not take a photo which has overshadowing elements. I still want to go down the abstract route but will try and allow the 'spring' side of the photo to shine through more than the abstract side, so it's a matter of either toning up the 'spring' or toning down the 'abstract'. After getting past the 'why is this photo all distorted?' I think it's a lovely spring looking image!

In the feedback session I thought the responses about this photo from the other students were very interesting. Someone said this photo looked like the view from inside a flower looking outwards and someone else said the dark patch in the centre looks like the silhouette of an insect. Hearing these mixed ideas made me realise this photo is very ambiguous. I didn't try to capture something which looked like the view from the inside of a flower nor did I try to capture the silhouette of an insect but by people recognising these things, I know this photo is a successful one. In terms of this photo represeting spring, It's very abstract so I wasn't sure if a stranger would automatically think 'spring' when looking at it but in the feedback session the things people seemed to get from this image were things related to spring which makes me confident enough that this image fits the brief to an extent which makes me happy!

Colour assignment

We were given a coloured swatch and a word each and were asked to photograph things representing this colour and word. As well as this we were supposed to take photos focusing on capturing things that represent words like: texture, pattern, vibrant, colour, contrast, etc. I was given the word 'Moist' and my colour swatch is shown below.

At first I was anxious about my given colour because nothing came to mind about what I could photograph but I later realised this was a good thing because it made me look at things with more depth, it gave me a reason to take in my surroundings and look at things I wouldn't normally even notice. I ended up finding quite a few things that shared this colour but then had to use my immagination to capture something which not only represented this colour but looked interesting and different at the same time.

This is one of my photos showing the colour from my colour swatch, the colour is a little out but it's close enough for me to feel happy about it! Not only did we have to show a colour in the photo but we had to show the qualities from a certain word too, for this one I orignally chose the word 'contrast' because on the camera screen the deep purpley/pink colour behind the pale green looked much brighter and gave a must stronger contrast but now looking at the photo I can see that this word wouldn't come across very well. 'Texture' would be a better word to give to this photo, but still this could be shown even more with the correct lighting to create more shadowing withinin the rough green patches. I like this photo because it's not obvious what it's showing, it makes the viewer think about what it could be which is always a good thing because it wouldn't allow them to lose interest. It's a very ambiguous image.

My word for this photo was quite obviously, 'reflection' and my colour is present by the cloth in the water. I have clearly focused more on representing the word in this photo than the colour which is just a background element which probably wouldn't even be achknowledged. I like this photo because it gives the viewer a new way of looking at an everyday thing.

'Shape' is the word shown in this photo, it's simple and unfortunately not very clear because of the plant element that i've incorrporated. I think the plants give a sense of 'What is this all about?' but thats not necessarily a bad thing...? Photos don't have to make sense. The reason I did have the plants in this image was simply because I thought it looked good, it looked much better with them there than the ball on it's own. The plants give the photo a webbed look as well as compliment the greeness of the ball. The ball is infact a sweet which when wet turns into the green colour which I thought looked to be simlilar enough to my colour swatch. The reddish wall makes the green stand out more which is one thing I really like about this image. Overall I'm happy with how this turned out because even though the reasoning for this photo isn't obvious, it's still a lovely looking photo!

After taking photos showing the colour from my given colour swatch, I went on to representing certain words within images. Surprisingly I found the colour swatch photos much easier to capture than the photos which were just aimed at showing certain words, I think this was because even though my colour was very limited, it was still easier to notice than the words were. 

I had given the photo on the left the word 'colour' and the photo on the right the word 'depth'. These two photos don't show the words very well, I orignally thought the words were shown clearly enough for the photos to obviously be about them but after a feedback session with a tutor and some class mates, I now have a different opinion. This task was set for us to make the chosen words stand out but I took a discreet approach which failed because most people found it difficult to pick out my chosen words from them two images. I will re-take photos showing these words and will allow more focus on them to make it more obvious that thats whats the photos are about. 

The word for this photo is 'movement', I think this is shown well. Even though my chosen word is presented very obviously in this photo, I'm not too keen on how this photo as a whole looks. I think it's a bit of a boring image, theres nothing particularly special about it.