The project
began with choosing to experiment with macro photography as it’s a
favourite style of mine. During the course of conversations with class
colleagues I learned that there is a specific term for this coined by the
Japanese to describe the aesthetic blur used in photography that was
characteristic in some of my work. The term – ‘bokeh’ means mist or blur and looking
at versions of this I decided to experiment.
Primarily
bokeh is used to create effects in darkness using pinpoints of blurred light to
make interesting effects, but the blur can be used to manipulate light in other
ways, namely; to create a sense of focus on a specific subject; and to create a
sense of heightened lighting, used by opening the aperture to admit large
amounts of light. It was this effect that I wanted to experiment with most.
Having
touched on this when shooting bluebells around 3 years ago, I wanted to see if
I could recreate the ethereal sense of lighting again in different settings. I
sought to produce a set of images that:
· Created a
sense of ethereal lighting
· Enhanced
the effect of texture
· Focussed
the attention on specific aspects of a shot and;
· Create a
beautiful and contemplative series of images.
Progress
went well despite a varying range of characteristics from dark and stormy to
bright and windy. Allowing light into the camera meant that I could combat the
effects of wind with fast shutter speeds and maximise the most of light in
shady woodland conditions. The type of images ranged from macro shots of flora,
to textures and landscapes.
I
deliberately chose a subject and a style of photography that I felt more at
ease with, mainly due to time constraints and thus didn’t stretch myself as
much as I could have. Having worked with joiners, I was intrigued to see how
these could have been developed to incorporate double exposures to enhance the
effect and feel of them, however my knowledge of Photoshop was minimal at the
time and attempting to learn how to effectively manipulate multiple images in 3
hour weekly slots would not have given me the time to put together a
comprehensive selection of images for a photobook.
The main
difficulty lay in selecting final images from the 80 that came from the 6
shoots that I undertook as part of the brief. After uploading to Blurb I
realised that further editing would be required to create a book images that
best fulfilled my original concept. I selected on the basis of the following
criteria that embodied the original concept for the book. The images were
chosen for their;
· ethereal
quality
· texture
· blur to
create intriguing and abstract compositions, and;
· sense of
contemplation.
One or two
of the images were grainy owing to the high ISO setting I needed in a stormy
pine woodland, but I felt that this may have added to the texture of the
image, so included it in the final selection.
The process
went smoothly; having created photobooks for wedding clients and to record
holidays I felt comfortable with putting together a series of images to create
a cohesive and compelling story. I really enjoyed using the graphical and
layout options in blurb and decided to group the images together according to
the environments and conditions in which they were shot.
The layout
options were numerous and I enjoyed experimenting with laying larger panoramic
crops across pages and also placing complementary images together to create the
feel that I wanted. As a contrast I also took from Robert Frank’s layout in The
Americans and laid out one image on the right-hand page. Taking the idea of
simplicity even further, I cropped the image down to a letterbox format, to
give a sneak preview of what was to come in the following chapter. The white
space assisted in providing a visual break from the content of the previous
chapter, before going into the next one.
It was also
pleasing to experiment with the images as a background to text. Shallow depth
of field really allowed me to play around with zones and added an extra
editorial edge when adding text. The result is visually more engaging,
combining the imagery with the text that supports it and brings both elements together.
The final
test is how well the book is received: I hope that the images are as compelling
and beguiling to others as they are to me.
