Wednesday, 18 November 2015

Work Diary - Shoot 5: Menorca, Spain

Evaluation


Whilst on holiday, my camera was set to ISO 200, F22 and a shutter speed of 1/125, and I decided to take as many photos as I possibly could. My influence for this shoot was Martin Parr and his realistic beach images, showing the truth of "Brit's on holiday", with their sunburnt skin and over-enthusiastic clothing. I decided to shoot a lot more photos of strangers, such as taking photos of people playing in the pool, people reading whilst laying in the sun, people swimming in the sea or just generally walking around. I also shot some portraits of my own family members as well, such as my 4-year-old cousin riding a donkey with his mum. This shoot was really enjoyable because the setting was such a change from where I live, and also because the photos genuinely capture the ideals of a traditional, hot and sunny holiday. In this shoot I wanted to portray the activities and aspects of a holiday, which makes it a holiday, such as the things I have mentioned previously. Likewise with my other shoots, such as in London people ride bicycles through Hyde Park or in Brighton everybody chills out on the beach. These things are what make them places, them places, and I've tried to demonstrate this theory within my photographs and I believe I have achieved that. 


This is one of my images that are particularly like Martin Parr's style, because of the family playing in the sea and how genuine and realistic the image is. In this photo, I have captured 3 individual parties, there is the woman and the boy towards the back, the 3 people near the front lying in the water and then finally, the gentlemen leaning against the cliff all by himself. Each group represents a different part of holiday feelings, for instance, actually swimming, feeling excitable, being lazy and lying around, as well as having downtime to yourself. I like this image especially because of the depth of the cliffs and sea as it narrows towards the background, and it's almost like it's leading somewhere - to the deepest parts of the sea. There is also a colour difference in the seawater, as it is very much clear nearer to the sand, and then gradually becomes green, and then finally blue. Showing depth within the gradient of the sea colour. 


This is an image I shot extremely quickly whilst on a walk. I particularly like this image because of the fencing, although obviously it is distracting from the main focus of the image, which is the people laying down reading their books on sun-beds, I like it, because it is literally like a visual barrier between the person viewing the photograph, and those people relaxing by their swimming pool. This photo identifies the 'relaxing' and 'calm' feeling of being on holiday - and actually having the time to read and enjoy a book in peace, whilst sunbathing. Again, this photo is very Parr-esque as it is not staged nor planned, and these people are genuine and as natural as they can be. 

Progression


After this shoot, I plan to focus on Location Portraiture - so moving on from what identifies a place, as it's own, and more on to what identifies a person. This will begin with photographing a single person in busy streets and on their own, and then I will continue to focus more on people and begin to use the studio to create interesting portraits that demonstrate emotions and thoughts. 

No comments:

Post a Comment