Idea 3 - Behind the House !! FINAL IDEA

I came up with a third idea for this project and decided it was the one I was going to stick with as it is easiest to do on such a short amount of time.  Due to coming up with lots of different ideas, I decided this is the easiest and quickest out of the three. 

I live in dartford jus infront of a Heath, not dartford heath but a heath called Bowman heath.  It is a lovely area and I love not having anything back onto my family home and garden. My idea for this is to take images of the backs of people's gardens along my road that I live in.  I have put on the google map image of my road because we are along a set of house that have an ally way that goes up the sides of around 40ish different houses.  It is really hard to tell who's back of garden joins on the who's and who actually owns each one because some are detached house and some are not.  I live in a semidetached house but have one of the bigger gardens along the back.  I have put the bullet point on my house, right on the corner on the road, you can see our long garden that back onto the start of the heath. 

The idea again for this is to photograph every houses 'back of garden garages' along just the ally way around our set of houses.  The reason for this is to show how different some people like to live.  I said before how I liked Simone Nieweg's garden images and that I would consider this idea because of the personal affect it can have on the family living there.  It is a really short walk along the back ally by the garages but I hope they are all different.  

The other reason for carrying out this idea is because it fits into my "Same but Different" idea, as i will be technically taking the same image, of the back of someones garden, but there will be completely different outcomes. 

 Here shows the two entrances/exits to the ally and both ends.  I will literally walk through and see what I can get from this series and see how the people on this road come across by the way there back of house looks. I think it could be interesting to see how people look after the front of the house so much, but when it come to the back, have no interest in keeping it well presented and tidy. 

Idea 2 - Derelict Dartford

My second idea for this project would be what I would call "Derelict Dartford".

Dartford is my hometown and I have so many fond memories of the place when I was was walking through there every week and weekend with my friends, for most of my life.  It was always a place i liked and thought was ok.  It wasn't until I have come to University to the traditional seaside towns that I realised, every-time I was going back home for the day, and go into my hometown, I would see a new building bordered up and closes down and realised it is turning into a very poor conditioned town as a result of disuse and neglect. 

I went into my hometown not long ago and the Priory Centre in dartford I once knew had lots of small shops inside and was always busy, I went down there not long ago to walk through the centre and see empty shop next to empty shop.  All boarded up and neglected, and had consequently made dartford look as hell of a lot worse.  So for a place that holds so many memories for me, Now for me being away from home for three years and seeing the difference within the three years I think it looks shocking. 

The pub here for example, It was named "The Plough" and was a pub I remember going to years ago, a fun place, always busy, now closed down and boarded up and has been this way for years now. It is such a shame, but for my project idea i would raise the awareness by taking deadpan empty images of all of the closed down places in the hometown. I would show how in three years dartford now look derelict, empty and could have so much more.

I believe that this project could work really well and is still something i want to do even if not for this project - I would probably go very early in the morning to photograph the places as I would want no people to be seen in the images. I like this idea but will come back to it if I decide to use it. 

Idea 1 - Trampoline

My first idea for this project once i knew that i wanted to change and shoot something different and not portraiture was my Trampoline Idea !! Although i thought it sounded a little bit strange to begin with, I do actually think it is a good idea.  I would still consider producing this as a documentary even I do not choose to do this for my final.  

I have a trampoline in my garden, it had been there for years and years and over time has quite literally became part of the garden.  This was going to be the main focus of this idea, the fact that something bought as and activity play thing the over time turns into a piece of the garden and a piece of the family home,  it then begins to hold memories for the family and you can sit and remember any old memories of happy times with the trampoline.  I was going to start the series with a photo of my own trampoline, because i have quite a big garden.  This also follows on form Simone Nieweg's images of gardens which I really liked the idea of.  Once I thought that this was a good idea to convey and that I could work from the fact that I know how having a trampoline as funny as it sounds, is part of the family life now, everyday we go into our garden its there so sit on as if it were a bench.  Once I was happy with the idea I started to look some ideas up as research.  

I came across this top image on flickr which I thought looked really nice.  From this images alone i could picture how the project would look and also how it would look in a photo book final.  I really like this image due to the leaves covered on the trampoline making is seem even more like part of the garden.  I also love how the family cat in sitting on the edge, it really gives you that sense of home when looking at it. 

I found some more examples of images of trampolines in people gardens that would all holds a special presence to that particular family.  The idea now was to go round to a few different families, some of which I know have big trampolines, an photograph thE trampoline in the garden as an object of the garden as if it were a bench, tree or plant - a document of the trampoline bought into their home space.

I personally like the two images below this piece of text.  The reason i like them is that you can really see how much the trampoline has been used by the family and almost get a "personality" from how the family would be.  You can tell that they probably have a lot of children that are very playful.  The trampolines look run down and like that have been used for some years.  This would be how i would document the different trampolines And think it could potentially be an interesting short series of 6 image if i choose to do so.  Hopefully i get the time to be able to shoot these and find enough around my hometown area. 

Some more examples below of the different types of imagery that could potentially be part of a trampoline series.  I think it holds a lot around the family home and how the family are who have a garden with a trampoline.  I particularly like the last two black and white images but If I were to complete this ad a project I would still stick to Deadpan photography and have no living being in the images nor any form of life, just the garden space surrounding and the trampoline.

My Project Ideas !!

So I have been looking into photographers from New Topographics to American Colour and beyond who have interpreted my idea of "the same but different".

I have been looking for the photographers that shoot in series' and have all of the same images of the same topic but with the outcomes looking completely different.  I personally like Simone Nieweg's garden images an think that this could be a really interesting concept to work with,  I have actually considered photographing peoples gardens before as it shows a great sense of personality and family within everyones home.  I like this idea of garden and may come back to this.

I also looked into John Schott, who also interpreted the idea that I am trying to do which is of the same but different.  I like his images because of how deadpan they actually are.  I do think that I could potentially have a similar subject to this.  But I would go around my home town of Dartford an photograph the streets there to really see a difference in the town from other towns.

I now have come up with a few different ideas for what I want to do. I will write out some new separate posts of ideas I have had and then my final idea.

Hand-Book Making - Final Book

Here I have taken some (quite poor quality) phone images of my final handmade book created in class.
So from my paper copy of my book shown in the previous post, i was able to print all of my images in the right place, back to back to print and create into a handmade book.  The one thing that let me down was printing on normal a4 paper, this meant that the pages themselves were flimsy but I resolved this by sticking some pages together.  I only printed the photos on my printer at home, because it was just a test to see if I really liked creating a book.

It is something I would consider using again and creating but with different images. We were advised to think about creating a photo book as our final product for this module.  It would be nice to have a final book with some new documentary images, as i feel documentary fits well into this particular style of work.  I have taken documentary projects before but would like to work on one for this project and hopefully come up with a small series of my theme throughout called "Same so Different."

Here shows the book standing up so you can see the pages in between, and also the embossing stamp I used to create the title on the front of the book along with my name.  I used white paper which made it very difficult to see the embossing so I would consider using a darker colour, maybe a dark grey colour next time, just so it is easier on the eye, i think the white is effective as you do not see it as much but I would like the viewer to see the name 'backstage' clearly, or the name of the other project. You can also see the stitching I used to put this book together, I think it is a great easy way of holding a handmade book as the sticking is small and tight. 

I have used landscape and portrait shot image for this particular style of work for my backstage documentary but I know that if i was to create a book as a final piece for this module I would like to create them all landscape images as that is what I am looking into producing.  Some double pages where the two images are both landscape you can get a feel as to what it would look like but I also really like the middle of the book which is the one image as a double page spread.  I would consider using this more if I had a long documentary landscape series. 

I am very happy with the book that i created even though it was just printed on normal paper, it still looks professional and smart.  I really like that I used this project for the book and my tutor asked if I had used the project for a book before, and as I hadn't she suggested that I should.  Obviously the final images i used were only 15, but these were only a few compared to the many I took on the shoot so I could potentially make this into a bigger book. I would like to consider this for my final and maybe even the subject matter too.  I know I have decided against portraiture for this project so maybe if I come up with an interesting concept I could show in a handmade book. 

Hand-BookMaking - Draft Copy

So, I had a class in which we had the chance to create our own photo books, this was a great thing, as I had never created my own handmade book before.  I had planned to make an interesting style with fold out sheets in all different ways, but when it came down to it, I wanted to just show my book in simple form.  Here are some images I have taken of my rough drawn up copy of what I want my book to look like. I have folded some A4 paper up and got enough sheets for my whole documentary series of 'Backstage', a project completed last year.  

I decided to use my 'Backstage' images to put into my hand made book as I had never used them in a book before, or even considered it.  I have decided to leave a white border around all of the pages and images, this hopefully will make my images stand out more once printed.  

The rough drawn up copy we were advised to put together because it make creating the book a lot easier when all the nice prints are there and ready to put together, the paper mock up will help to see how it all fits. This was also a plan of how to print each image, and what size, rotation, and image needs to go where for it to be printed correctly. This took me a little while to plan out, but now I have this paper copy the real thing should be easier to work with.

I wanted to include some fold outs in my book after looking at some famous Japanese photo books, they seemed really interesting and different, the colours also used for these books made them very unique.  Although I do like being unique, I then realised that i want this book to be quite plain, its black and white imagery so therefore, I do not want to splash too much colour around it.

My subject for this small book is called 'Backstage' and consists of some very bust behind he scenes of a dance show, I was able to capture the dancers from changing costumes, applying make up to dancing on the stage - this is something I really enjoyed doing and would consider doing again.  I do not think it fits well with this module, but this series will certainly look good in a hand made book.

Harry Callahan

The reason for including Harry Callahan's work of architecture and street photography is because he has the same simple aesthetic of the normal view of houses on the street.  I particularly like the last image of the orangey building, I think it looks similar to Lewis Baltz, industrial parks with a very simple plain feel.  Photographing houses and streets like that has made me realise that the simple shot of the man altered landscape can be this simple, a document, of something new, and in a different way.  I personally know that, I could photograph some of the new housing estates that have been put up around my area at home, they are so different to the norm of whats already there, proof of a changing world around us.

I wouldn't mind trying to convey the changing world within my small series, I know i want to photograph the same but different to show how many of us can be given a personality just on the basis of how we each live.  People are too quite to judge these days but because of this, the viewer sees more from an image than we think.  I have a couple of ideas of taking images of my road that I live on. but i will re visit these again soon.