For this photoshoot I was inspired by Eric Pickersgill, though I took a different turn on his style there is definitely a resemblance of our images. I tried to follow the aspect of a dystopian society but is contrasting with my First photoshoot.

For this photoshoot I decided to do it at 3pm when the sun was radiating so I could use the natural lighting, I did this photoshoot with five female models, taking images of them on their mobile phones around my front garden. I chose this setting as my garden is surrounded by nature such as plants, ponds and creatures such as rabbits and birds. The idea behind this photoshoot was for the female models to ignore the nature that surrounds them and for all of their attention to be on their devices. I took various images such as the girls sat on a bench in front of a pond. One of the models on a swing with her full concentration being on her phone. 3 of the girls sat with a rabbit but again only looking at their phones, One of the models looking at online images of nature while oblivious that they are surrounded by similar surroundings, and multiple more.

In conclusion I am very happy with how this photoshoot came out as I feel that it really captures todays society of technology and the ignorance of people when they are surrounded by nature.

Final edited images

I edited all of the images below using Lightroom classic which helped produce the tones that I was looking for in this photoshoot. To edit these sets of images I mainly played with the contrast, shadows and highlights to get the vibrance from the nature in the background but to also make the main focal point the female models on their mobile devices which overall really conveys a powerful message in my opinion of the rejection of nature in todays society and how we often neglect the beauty of it.

Image comparison with Eric Pickersgill

The image that I made and developed on the left was produced to share some similarities with Eric Pickersgills image on the right. The similarities between our images include a female model surrounded by nature with their pure focus on their mobile phones. There are many differences in our style of work though such as how Pickersgill more than often produces his images in purely black and white and gets his models to pretend that they have a mobile phone in their hand even though its not there, compared to my image with is in colour since I wanted to show the beauty of the nature in the background with the female model actually holding her physical mobile phone. My reasoning for not following Pickersgills exact methods as I felt that this would not work in my photobook due me wanting to present the image more straight forward which would of enviably been easier to convey my ideas.

Contact sheet

I took these images during a CISF training camp which included surfers from Wales, Guernsey and Jersey. I didn’t have a zoom lens with me at this shoot so wasn’t able to get many images of my sister on the waves. However I did mange to get images of her doing her warmup run, coming out the sea and debriefing with one of the coaches.

Image selection

Rating my images

Contact sheet

I took these images at St. Brelade’s Bay during another CISF training day. The conditions weren’t the best so I had to make sure I captured the right moment when my sister caught a wave.

Image selection

Flagged images

Rating my images

There were a few action shot that I could use from this shoot that I am going to edit as I think they would fit well in to my photobook.

Contact sheet

I took these images at Le Braye during my sisters free surf session. I took images of my sister getting ready, entering the water and her surfing as well. I had a zoom lens which enabled me to capture action shots of my sister in the water.

Image selection

Flagged images

Rating my images

I have rated my images on what I think are my best images. I will definitely use the green images and I will work on the yellow ones as they have potential.

For my exam I am going to make links to Nancy Honey and Tamara Lichtenstein, and tying in the exam topic observe seek and challenge. I am going to take my images in they style of the male gaze which can also be turned into the idea for empowering women on making themselves comfortable when they feel vulnerable, which links to the observe and challenge part of the exam board theme, as I am observing in the way women are seen in media and in general though men and then challenging that by letting females feel empowered by the way they are seen and making people comfortable around a camera as it isn’t objectifying them as it is capturing beauty.

I am going to experiment with lighting to try create shadows I am going to do this by using lights and lamps which I have at home, I am going to do multiple shoots in different locations to construct the idea of adventure and seeking new places.

For this final project, I would like to present my study in a photo book form. As a result of this, I intend to produce many photoshoots so that I will have a large variety of images that I can pick from. This means that, I would roughly need a minimum of 30 final images to create my book. I have plans to begin my study for this project as soon as possible to allow me the most amount of time to compete it.

In my third photoshoot, I produced 401 images.

Some of my favourite images:

1:

2:

3:

4: Cindy Sherman inspired shoot

5:

6:

Selections:

Editing Results:

Some examples:

Some sky images, I changed the overall colour for some. I did this by changing the temperature and tint sliders, combined with all the basic sliders too and slight tweaks of the vibrance and saturation bars, these all were used to completely enhance and make the photos so much better:

Most of the night images edits were mostly minimal and hard to even notice, as they were mostly toned to the way I saw fit already. The ones that feature the car lights though took a bit more work than the rest of the photographs. These were made by slowing own the shutter speed on the camera, so when a car was about to pass I would press the shoot button and the shutter would stay open, capturing all the lights and movement during that window of time. When the shutter closed, after about 20 seconds, the final image would show the lights from the cars turned into streaks.

In formalism the Design, Composition and Lighting are dominant over Subject Matter. The photographer becomes a visual designer whenever a frame is captured.

In my work I believe I focus on the idea of formalism in the way the image is dominantly made up of bold lines shadows and tones, with elements of heavy texture or even the lack of texture.

here are some examples of my work from my first photoshoot in which I believe my work shows a heavy inspiration from formalism.