Personal Project

As a photographer I am fascinated by the camera's ability to tell complex and personal stories that transport the viewer into a different place and time.I have decided to research into James Ravilious and Joshua Thomas Cooper for my personal study. Both of these photographers have similar photography styles as both are shooting black and white photos. However, the way the images have been presented are vastly different. By researching both of these photographers, I would like to understand in more detail the effects of black and white photography to an image. I will seek to improve my camera ability by shooting in manual mode.

I would like to use both photographers as inspiration in my work by using black and white on the camera as well as shooting with colour. In my first shoot I plan to do this to see if editing the colour images rather than shooting in black and white makes a difference to the overall piece. The majority of Ravilious’ work is candid photography  of the people and communities of the countryside whereas Cooper utilises the coastal regions to create dramatic landscape vistas. From this, i would like to experiment with candid photography and photograph the day running a farm in a rural community.

Thomas Joshua Cooper takes photos using an 10x8 large format camera."I hate the words "snap", "shoot" and "take" when it comes to making photographs. Everything I do is very seriously built up. They are 'made' pictures." He researches the location before he visits so he knows exactly his schedule for his shoot. These photos were taken with a negative camera and shows various textures and depth. I like the way Cooper incorporates the sea and rock face where the sea acts almost like a mirror. The research he claims to do previously seems to pay off as the images have a real depth and integrity.

James Ravilious was born August 1939 in Eastbourne, England . He moved to Devon in the 1970’s where he took up photography inspired by Henri Cartier-Bresson. They both predominantly focused on candid photography and Ravilious shows the daily tasks in a rural village.
In Ravilious’ most well known work he turns his camera on a small farming community, a developed story occurs in every photo. For example, the photos here are examples of the typical day in Devon during the 1970’s and was inspired by the work of the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Ravilious uses candid photography to depict what the reality of daily life was like. As a member of the community,Ravilious was not simply an outsider, it is as if the photos were a perspective of his routines.

This gives the photos more intimacy with a variety of meanings and depth. In that time James took over 80,000 black and white images of all aspects of local life including farming and housing interiors. From these photos, you can see various shots of candid photography. At this time, only a small percentage of people took photos of the british countryside. He shows a real honesty of the time period. Ravilious shows the positives and negative times, I believe he did this effectively. In 1997 he was given Honorary Membership of the Royal Photographic Society.

After researching both of my chosen photographers, I plan to further my knowledge of black and white photography using the manual mode on the camera. I will attempt my first shoot using this technique and then review these images to determine whether I continue to shoot in manual or otherwise. 

If I were to shoot in automatic mode I would be limited my technical and therefore creative choices.One of my main rationals for shooting in manual is to give me a greater degree of control when shooting. I can control how much light the camera allows to absorb and having that flexibility is crucial for my images to give the suitable tone in my work. Although both of my researched photographers used a traditional negative camera, I think shooting in colour can exceed what a negative could do. This hopefully will allow me to adjust the shadows and highlights in the image when editing (using the dodge and burn tools) as part of my post production to create a natural border to my images in a collective piece .