Plan for idea: Documentary

For my idea I am going to be photographing different gumball/sweet machines. The reason for this is I want to shoot something that’s in a detailed specific was but that there’s is lots of. I think it would be cool to shoot under a category and then document the differences. I will shoot on digital for all my images just because I think it will look the best for what I am documenting. I’m not exactly working in a time frame, I’m more working on the different machines in different areas and seeing how they are similar or what is not the same. I will focus on the specific flavours of the machines, and how each one is their own and cant be replicated (apart from the fact they are in different areas) I want to focus on reporting the machines in a very specific way and having a collection and set of each machine within the area. I will try and do 3 machines at 2 or 3 different shopping centres with 3 different flavours in each. Maybe I will find some in one place that they don’t have in another. I think I will produce my images in a set of 3 with a triptic of each. So for each set of 3 it will be a certain shopping centre with 3 different flavours in each.. and more specific detail about each machine/flavour. I might possibly need permission from the people like security in the shopping centres because one time Elliott and me got told off for photographing there but hopefully it wont be a problem.

 

 

    

Artist Research: Carolin Walch

http://carolinwalch.de/

Idea Generation Recap

Not sure where I am going with my final images and what I want to do for my overall final idea…

A reminder that I want to capture

– The past WITH the present

– An olden day and nostalgic feel

–  The feeling of reminiscence

 

Quotes:

 

“The Greek word for “return” is nostos. Algos means “suffering.” So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”   ― Milan Kundera, Ignorance

 

“What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed.”  ― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

 

“Memory believes before knowing remembers.”  ― William Faulkner, Light in August

 

 

 

First Test Shots – Dear Photograph Style

I’m extremely happy with the turn out of these test shots. I think it has been the most successful so far with what I’m doing with my idea, simply cause my goal is to capture the past with the present. I think what I am most pleased with these photos is the fact they have me and my family in it while still being shot all around my nans house which is exactly what I wanted.

This photo is probably my favourite out of all the ones I took, I think mainly because of all the aspects of the picture I managed to link. This included the tiles on the ground, the mat and the wall behind me. I think it’s kind of a good photo due to how well it shows the past and the present in one which is what I was mainly aiming for. I think to improve this photo I would’ve liked to of got the tiles on the ground matching perfectly but I took this photo multiple times like I did with the rest and every time I did it wasn’t lined up with other parts which took away the effect of the photo.

 

Artist Research: Kenneth Nguyen

I came across the artist Kenneth Nguyen while researching into nostalgia. I was drawn to him mostly due to the fact that he focused his photos on a specific place which is exactly what I am doing. I think I like it the most because he captured the same place multiple times to capture that feeling of nostalgia. I think it is cool how each photo is so different yet there all so similar which I think is something I want to focus on so my images aren’t to similar and repetitive. His work inspires me to try and capture my nans house to the best of my ability but still keep the originality of it.

Experimenting with photos from the past.

While at my nans house and looking for old photographs to use for my other test shots I came across these square coloured photos which really appealed to me. I stopped thinking about the assignment for a second because I wanted to keep this photos for myself after my nan said she didn’t want them. They were shot in the 70’s and each one has such unique-ness and everything about each one I love especially because it is my families history. I then stopped to realise I could also use this towards my assignment because what better way to present nostalgia then through the history of events that has occured with my family. I wasn’t necessarily sticking with this as a final idea but I think it was cool to make my wall into a photo wall with things that happened when my mum was a kid and even though I wasn’t there it still triggered that sense of nostalgia due to the fact it is seeing my mum, grandma and grandad in another sense which was weird and also very cool and interesting.

   

Second Test Shots – Specifically

Another idea for what I wanted to do to capture the idea of “nostalgia” is photographing certain parts of the house in a close up perspective but still having the knowledge of what it is and putting them all into one picture. Having a more close up perspective I think will help focus on what makes the nostalgia kick in. Looking at the parts of the house is a specific way of looking is another way of capturing the nostalgia feel I think. I decided to look at this way of photographing my nans house because I think recognizing each individual close up object will be kind of odd but also a different and weird way of looking at it. What I want to do is photograph about 9 different parts of the house, or maybe organize it into rooms and put it into one collage. So I could have 3 collages with 9 photos in each of close up parts of that room. I wrote this before I took my picture as kind of a plan for what I wanted to do. This is just a rough idea but I wanted to see how it went and this was the result: