Personal Project

I decided to print out my contact sheet and annotate certain images I felt had similar themes and felt coherent. I had striven to work in a candid style as this is cornerstone of Ravillious practice. I began my shoot with a walk around the farm, a very familiar place- I had in my mind a series of locations that I wanted to include in my shoot- however it was also important that I remained as an observer open to chance and the unexpected. Like Ravillious I was aiming to be a neutral observer- not interacting with the scene and simply recording it. The one difficulty in this was working with the animals whose curiosity led to some of the images being more like portraiture. Although this was not the plan the portraits were consequently some of my most effective images. During the contact sheet stage, one of my initial decisions was to crop some of the images. For example, this image depicts two horses in a field. It has a larger depth of field and is slightly more exposed than I wanted it to be.  With regards to all of my images, I wanted them to be timeless, with little indication of when they were taken. 

After doing this I wanted to focus on the animals with some elements of machinery and I edited 27 images that I felt were complementary to Ravilious’s work. 

The majority of Ravilious’ work was taken in the 1970’s when the ability to edit images was not possible. I took my images in colour so i could have greater scope when editing, enhancing the individual colour balance. On an image, changing the colour balance can change the tone or atmosphere of a piece and intensify or lesson specific parts of an image. 

For example, when I first edited this image I experimented with the various colours to what I wanted the image to highlight as the centerpiece or fade into the landscape. Slighting adjusting the curve function also made the image have a rustic look to it. I edited the majority of my images with similar styles to give a coherent theme. By annotating my contact sheet I got a greater understanding on how I wanted my photos to look.

Using a documentary photography approach, I capture the images as they unfold. By not planning a set idea when doing a shoot, all of the images were spontaneous which i feel has a greater meaning than if they were 'set up'. I wanted to be parallel with the inspiration of Ravillious and his images by exploring how black and white can change the tone of a shoot. I wanted all of my images to feel coherent and as a collection of images, I feel like I have successfully achieved this. 

I wanted all of my images to be coherent therefore I put them in the same format by cropping them into squares. I eliminated any dead space I felt did not add to the image. I wanted to show the lives of the animals as Ravillious did.