Final Evaluation

Final Evaluation:
A04:
My initial ideas were to position skulls with human objects as if they were still alive. Victorian's used to pose for a photograph with their passed loved ones after they were deceived, so that death would imitate life. I wanted to use skull to represent death in everyday life and objects. I was also interest in looking into different histories about some of the many causes of death, and use the skulls to create a Memento Mori of how they died. 
A Memento Mori is a reminder death and was created in the Medieval period by Christians to reflect on the "vanity of earthly life". Memento Mori literally translates to "remember death".

I did this in my second work record that was inspired by Jordan Parks. I was told the place where I'd conducted my skill's building shoot for her as a Photographers Research was located near some plague burial pits. In response to this information I created a Memento Mori of how that person would have died. Here are some of the images I created.
 


I liked the theme of skulls and so continued them throughout the project. For my final outcome I wanted to create more Memento Mori, but this time I wanted to create something that celebrated life rather than morn death.

To create this I used skulls and flowers/ lights, both symbols of life and vitality. However, I still wanted it to be a Memento Mori so I used dead flowers to keep the sinister edge that Memento Mori are known for and thus resulting in my final images/ Memento Mori. 

My final series are a result of many different photographer influences, the first being Uta Barth. She takes out of focus images which allow the viewer to imagine the rest of her images, like filling in a crossword. I like her style of photography as she changes the focal length of the images and consequently makes them out of focus.

 I used this in my first shoot for juxtaposition:

I like the idea of the viewer filling in the missing details that aren't in the photograph as it forces them to become involved with the images. 

Another photographer that was a large influence on my work was Cheech Sanchez. She poses skulls with different harmful vices humans have, such as junk food, alcohol and drugs. 


I looked at how Sanchez laid out her compositions; they look haphazardly throw together while still being in a neat manner. I used this research when I was constructing my different Memento Mori as I knew the composition will look as if it's been constructed and I wanted to know how to make it look naturally arranged. I learnt that the cliché "less is more" rings true. The more I arranged around a skull the more artificial it looked, so I began using less. Less junk food wrappers and less distracting extras I was putting in my images before. 

Another artist that influenced my work was Jordan Parks. It was through looking at her work that I understood the technical side of Bokeh. 

I knew the function of the F-stop and how it affects the images you take, but I didn't know that it could be taken to extremes like Bokeh.

If you want to take a photograph with an intense focus on your subject then you should drop the F-stop to as low as it possible in locations conditions. By dropping the F-stop so low you decrease the depth of field and increase the amount of light that enters the camera. This means that in some conditions you won't be able to lower the F-stop to it's minimum as the images will be over exposed. I used a Macro lens with a slow shutter speed to take Bokeh images of the skulls in my final images. I was able to use a low F-stop as I was taking the shots in a studio and so could control the light, because I was making the images so dark I had to compensate with a slow shutter speed, which was why I used the tripod. 

 The settings I used for this image were F/2.5 which was the lowest F-stop that the Macro lens had. The ISO was 160 to avoid how grainy the image would be (I've added a Mosaic Filter to the image above, it isn't grainy). 

Over the course of the project I've learnt different techniques such as Bokeh, and how lowering the F-stop will affect the photographs I take. I've also learnt about the camera setting BULB. This allows you to hold the shutter speed down for however long you want, instead of having to use a pre-set time.

I've also learnt more into the aesthetic of death and different traditions that people have surrounding death. For example the Memento Mori originated during the Roman era, the victorious generals that returned from battle would have a slave that walked behind them saying Memento Mori (remember death) to ensure they were humble.

However, the main influence on my work was my discovery of the Memento Mori. How people would paint and buy artwork that would w=remind them of death. I intrigued me as I thought it was such a peculiar behaviour, I soon learnt that it was to remind people that they were going to die. Consequently this reminder would shape the way they lived their lives, being very conservative and careful in their behaviour as they didn't want to be remembered for their wrong-doings after they'd die.

Intrigued by this artwork I wanted to create the role reversal, artwork that celebrated death. I hoped that I will change people's perspectives of death as something to be celebrated. We should celebrate someone's death as we'd celebrate their life, for without death then out lives wouldn't mean anything. They would have no beginning and no end. In this respect I feel I have responded well to the exam as I used juxtaposition to contrast life and death against each other. 

I feel my strengths were using my research into different artists and imitating the different camera settings they used. I feel this way because I have experimented and developed my own style using my newly learnt method of photography, Bokeh. 

I would like to have developed my range of subjects in my images. However, I feel my continuing theme of skulls ties my work together well and consequently meets the exam brief. 

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Work Record One (prep shoot one)

Work Record One (prep shoot one):
Plans For Shoot:
For this shoot I took photographs of a human skull surrounded by dead flowers.  I chose to use dead flowers as they are relevant to the theme of juxtaposition, and I chose a (fake) human skull as it is a recurring theme throughout this project.

The juxtaposition in the flowers was that they are mainly given to people as gifts and thrown away when they've died, and so keeping them and photographing them once they've died is irregular as people would no longer want dead flowers as they're considered ugly. This is also the case for the (fake) skull. I have used a recurring theme of skulls as they remind us of our mortality and, much like the flowers, are buried when we die. Never to be seen again. 

By combining these two independent reminders of death I hoped to create a small scale Memento Mori (an renaissance art genre that was designed to show us a reminder of our imminent mortality). Memento Mori is my favourite type of juxtaposition. This is because it is used to remind the living that they're going to die, this is juxtaposition as the living aren't dead yet and don't need to concern themselves with death. We shall all die but that is the price to play for living. Here are some examples of a Memento Mori. 
   


I also like the idea that the flowers on the skull are a remembrance of the person that has died. The irony in this is the fact that bones and flowers are left in graveyards to remember or morn the dead, and here I have these two reminders of death completely isolate away from a graveyard. 

Contact sheets:

Images that need improvement:

DS7_3567.JPG:

This image was on of the first out of this shoot. This means that I was still setting up my camera so that the exposure and the F-stop were at the correct points for the exam. This image was out of focus as the camera was focusing on something else. I noticed it was out of focus because I was reviewing my images as I took them and adjusted the point of focus accordingly.

DS7_3701.JPG:

I dislike the point of focus on this image. I was using a low F-stop of around 8-4, this would allow me to create a Bokeh effect. A Bokeh effect is where the main focal point is in focus and the rest of the images aren't. This leads to the viewers focus being immediately drawn to the main point of interest. I was using a low F-stop to create this effect as I wanted the viewers focus to be completely on the skull's eye sockets and the flowers surrounding that area. However, in this shot I've positioned the focal point somewhere in the middle ground of the image. This means that the flowers at a similar depth are in focus which distracts from the flowers near the eye socket, which was what I was aiming for. 

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Later in this shoot I was using a manual focus on the camera as I was sprinkling cosmetic glitter toward the skull which lead to it going out of focus trying to track the individual glitter grains. To fix this I used the camera's auto focus to focus on the skull as the camera is more accurate than a human eye. I then switched the camera to manual focus so that the camera wouldn't changed the focal length, then I sprinkled the glitter. I chose to take these images this way because I was fighting the camera on what the focus of the image was and this fixed the problem. 

My Best Images:

A01:
I chose to use skulls as they represent death and the Memento Mori that I have seen are dull and uninteresting as it is thought that death is a morbid thing to dwell upon. However, other cultures celebrate the dead . The most famous of these celebrations is Mexico's Del Dia de Los Muertos (Day of The Dead). They paint colourful sugar skulls and make traditional celebratory meals. This is because they don't fear death, they celebrate it. This is what I wanted to do for this shoot. I wanted to celebrate death like the Mexican's do, and so I used colourful flowers to add to the skull. However, I used dead flowers to show that we are still mortal and although I think it's wrong that we fear death we should also cherish our lives. 

Another photographer that influenced this shoot was Jordan Parks. She is mainly a portrait photographer but she has had success in another area as well: Bokeh. Consequently I used what I had learnt when I'd researched into Bokeh and the camera setting/ composition to make it effective. In response to the exam I'm going to create a colourful and bright Memento Mori. I want to make it as colourful and as beautiful as possible to completely juxtapose any of the pre existing ideas of Memento Mori. I want to do this because it will display my opinion visually. 

A02:
To further these ideas and opinions I will edit my images in Photoshop, paying particular attention to vibrance and saturation. This is because vibrance and saturation will change the colours within the image and so the flowers, and as I mentioned before I wanted the flowers in my images to be as bright and colourful as possible. I want to edit my images in this way because they shall reflect life.

As I shoot my images in RAW+FINE format, I have two different formats of my images. The FINE format is simply a fine JPEG file. The RAW files capture date about each image, this means they can be edited more subtly that JPEG files. 

This is what my images looked like when I opened them in photoshop:

I adjusted my images using the sliders on the right hand side of the screen. I raised the exposure and the contrast, this brightened the images and allows for a greater contrast between the different colours and tones. I lowered the highlights and the shadows, because I'd raised the exposure the all of the image had been brightened when I only wanted parts of it highlighted. By lowering the shadows and highlights it regains some of the details; within the brightest parts of the image I lost some of the details I'd have liked to have kept so I lowered the highlights. I also lowered the shadows as I wanted the details within these shadows to be removed as they were distracting to the overall image. Next I raised the vibrance and the saturation of the image to make the colours in the flowers boulder and brighter. 

After I'd finished changing the image with the sliders I clicked OPEN IMAGE. Once the image had loaded I applied a filter. I found the filter in the drop down menu called FILTERS. I then opened Filter Gallery.

Once in Filter Gallery I experimented with different filters until I chose the one that best suited the image. 

My favourite was the glowing edges filter. However, this was too dark for the colourful effect I wanted to create with the flowers. To make the image clearer and lighter I layered the filter over the original. To do this I duplicated the original layer and then applied the filter to the duplicated layer. 


The duplicated layer sat on top of the original. To merged the two layers I lowered the opacity of the filter layer, this let the flower's colours through.
 
However, the layers together were too dark. To the image lighter I used curves which affects the exposure and so lightens the image. 


This process resulted in a neon effect being applied to the image. This effect suits the exam topic of juxtaposition because I have used it to create a bright and colourful Memento Mori, when the original Memento Mori are usually a dull reminder of death. 

Although I like this outcome I don't think it is bright enough for it's purpose as I want my images to be blindingly colourful when compared to Memento Mori. 

I furthered my experimentation into different filters and layering them onto of one another. As I still like the Neon edges filter I kept that filter on one of the layers and added a filter to the original layer. Here is the layer I chose, it is called  . 

Once it was applied to the original layer I went back and further manipulated curves to bring the neon colours out of the image.
Here is the end result:

I have used layers and filters to edit my other images in a similar manner to the image above.

I like how my images have been processed as I have retained the colour of the flowers, even where I've put multiple filters onto the same image. If I was to change any of the image it would be to make some of them brighter as some of the filters I've used are naturally dark and so dull the colours slightly. 

I chose to use computer experiments rather than physical experiments because I liked the different effects the filters gave the images. Using computer experiments is also less time consuming as it only takes the filters the time to load, whereas the physical experiments would have to be shredded or torn and then rearranged and presented. I would also have to source the materials to complete the experiments and find a working space that is suitable. 

Edited images:

I like the neon colours in this image as it contrasts the classic view of what a memento mori must be. 

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For my initial ideas I thought about using crosses and other types of skulls/ bones in the images as they repeatedly feature in Memento Mori. However I chose not to use them as I was trying to break away from the existing imagery around death. I wanted to form my own ideas about death and create a new style of Memento Mori, one that is bright and colourful. I want to create a Memento Mori that reminds people life is short and celebrates their life along with their death. 

I feel I have responded well to the theme of juxtaposition. I have achieved what I set out to: create colourful and bright depictions of death. I wanted to contrast the drab images people associate with death and mourning with beauty and vibrant colours, so that people won't be sad that they've died but happy that they've lived. 

 I wanted them to be beautiful and bright as this juxtaposes the classical image of them reminding people of death and twists it into the celebration of death. I wanted to show the juxtaposition of life and death, without death life would be worthless. 

Work Record Two (prep shoot two)

Work Record Two (prep shoot two):
Plans For Shoot:
I will use lights and skulls to create a Memento Mori. I wanted to use the lights as a symbol for life and the skulls a symbol for death, this relates to juxtaposition as the lights look like fireflies, which glow in darkness. I like this symbol of life as they shine in the dark night to find a mate, even if it alerts predators to where they are. I wanted to change this shoot to contrast my last shoot with these images because my last shoot was of skulls and death, consequently representing our Mortality in a Memento Mori. For this shoot I wanted to show life and death contrastingly directly, and because fireflies weren't available to me I decided to use lights. 

For this shoot I was experimenting with my camera settings, mainly F-stop. F-stop changes the depth of field and focus. I wanted to use this low F-stop as I have already experimented with it and I like the focus I creates on the subject of the image, along with the intense atmosphere. 

Contact sheet(s):

Images that need improvement:
D726365.JPG:
This image was too dark because I held the shutter open for too long. I was holding the shutter because I wanted to experiment with different exposures and so changed the camera setting to BULB. This means for as long as I kept the shutter pressed the pictures would be exposed. Due to this setting I was manually opening and closing the shutter myself which resulted in my overexposing the photograph, or rather more than I'd like.

D726440.JPG:
I had the camera settings on BULB still which meant that I was controlling the camera's exposure. For this image I didn't leave the shutter open for long enough, which resulted in an underexposed photograph showing only the lights.

Best Images:
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My main ideas for juxtaposition were to contrast life with death. I chose this macabre route as I feel most people think death is something to fear, however I think death is just closing one door and opening another. My main idea for this shoot was to pair lights and skulls to create juxtaposition between light and dark/ light and death. I also used Bokeh as I like the focus it gives the images, and I needed this focus for my images as I want to make people think about death etc. My main influence for the style of Bokeh was Jordan Parks as she uses it to photograph special moments like weddings or anniversaries. 

For this shoot I was using a Nikon DSLR with a remote release and a tripod. I used the remote release so I wouldn't move the camera when I pressed the shutter, which was particularly important in this shoot as I was using the BULB setting. This means I was manually controlling the shutter, because of this if I was to move the camera during a long exposure then the image would come out blurred.

To improve my images I will edit them in Photoshop:

Once I'd opened the image in photoshop I duplicated the layers so that if I changed or applied a filter that was irreversible then I'd be able to delete the layer and keep the original. 

I then selected FILTER GALLERY in FILTERS. 

Once in the filter gallery I experimented with different filters and the effects they create. The first filter I chose was Chalk Sketch. I chose this because it was very light and would allow me to choose darker filters to add on top, such as the the Neon Edges. I then changed the opacity to be able to see the layers beneath.

After I'd added the other filters to the images I wanted to add more texture to the image so I chose a stained glass filter and applied it on top, then lowered the opacity so the other filters I'd applied could still be seen. I then merged the layers so the changes would be fixed.

 Here is the final image:

I like the stained glass filter I added to this image as it makes it look like honeycomb. 

I edited my other images using the same process.

Final Images:

In in my initial ideas I pictured myself using everyday objects as if it was still alive, not dissimilar from my Cheech Sanchez shoot. 

I feel I have responded well to the theme of Juxtaposition as I have contrasted life and death in this shoot. My initial ideas for this exam project were to use skulls and contrast them with different objects and ideas. I wanted to do this as I feel skulls have a vintage reputation of being a reminder of death, which I wanted to juxtapose in my work. I feel I have achieved my main goal I set for this shoot, create a colourful and beautiful series of Memento Mori. I wanted them to be beautiful and bright as this juxtaposes the classical image of them reminding people of death and twists it into the celebration of death.

I wanted to try to change the viewers opinions of death. It shouldn't be dreaded, but celebrated as it is inevitable so why worry?