15hr Exam

For my 15-hour exam, I will produce a photobook that brings together the key ideas, images, and themes developed throughout my project. The book will explore the relationship between the individual and the urban environment in the book the photos will progress at a pace such as moving the photo angles from low to high as the book moves on (and the inverse) and there bieing less and less people as the book goes on, using my photography from London and New York to communicate how modern cities can visually and psychologically overpower the people within them.

Drawing on the influence of Trent Parke’s Minutes to Midnight, I want to think carefully about how the book is sequenced and designed, using the layout, pacing and presentation of images to build atmosphere across the pages. Some images will bleed to the edge of the page to make the city feel inescapable, while others will sit smaller within white space to emphasise isolation and human smallness. I aim to create a book that not only displays photographs but also feels like an experience, where the weight of the urban environment accumulates gradually as the viewer moves through it.

By the end of the book, I want the viewer to feel what it is like to be small within a system not built for them, using scale, contrast, atmosphere, and sequencing to leave a lasting impression of human insignificance in the modern city.

Before I start working on my sequencing, I want to design the front and back covers for my book, as I feel this will set the tone for the whole book and is vital to get right. For my cover, I have taken my main inspiration from Trent Parkes’ front cover, which looks like this:

Below is my first front-and-back cover draft. I have tried to replicate the negative space he used on his cover; however, I have used a much darker tone rather than white to set the mood for the book. The cover itself is very dark and the streams of light abstract the viewers perspective of the cover and creates that sense of insignificance i will test with some other font positioning and i wont really try and change the image as i am satified with how wel this image works compared to the rest of the images in my portfolio as it is very empty leave large amounts of negative space for me to freely move my titles around in

the image below and on the left uses the same text positioning as Trent Parke’s book where the text is place in two different placesdiagonally from each other with the main title being up o the left in a larger font, then the authors name on the bottom right, i dont reall like this as much with my book as i feel like there needs to be something between the two differnet texts on his there are bats on mine ther is nothing which is why i dont like it as much as the centered one above

The image on the right below is more similar to the one above, as they are centred within the book; however, I have pushed them to the very edge of the front cover. This could look nice and is a very close second to the image above, as I like that it is positioned away from some of the fainter light trails.

I did some more experimenting and came to this one, which I like the most of all. This is for a few reasons, such as its positioning: it is positioned in the bottom left of the front cover. This is good as there is a completely black space there that has no light trails in it, so I have placed the text inside that small circle, which frames the text amongst the many light trails, which in a way ties back to my theme of human scale, as it is dwarfed by the lights of New York City, which make the light trails in the image. I am very happy with this front cover as i feel it is very visually appealing as well as it conceptually fitting into my project, I will not be putting anything on back of the cover as Trent Parke also did as i also feel liek it kind of takes away that feeling of being dwarfed by the scale of the city as the book has a defined end if i leave it woth nothing i try to keep that feeling going withing the viewe.r

This is my front cover.

I then start creating the lead-up page for when my images will actually appear. I have copied this from Trent Parke because it creates a sort of build-up/anticipation for the view. The grey page 1 is blank; Lightroom doesn’t show it.

Sequencing

When sequencing my images, I will keep a couple of things in mind: are they visually striking enough for the book, do they help the viewer form an overall narrative, and will they help to generate the feelings of isolation and smallness as if they are being dwarfed by the city and how it controls the pace of the book.

I want my first image to be very striking to set the tone for my book. I want it to start off more simply, then gradually build those feelings with more evocative images that pick up the pace. Below are some ideas for first images:

Of the images above, I feel like they all work well as a first set, as they are all shot at street level, looking slightly upward. This has given me the idea to make my photos go from a low veiwpoint to a higher veiwpoint as the book progresses. Of the images above, the one from the lowest veiwpoint is the dark building; however, it has no people in it, so I will get a photo similar to it:

This image works really well because it’s from what I think is the lowest point I’ve been to. It also creates a great sense of scale, as the people in the frame are completely absorbed by the Statue of Liberty, with only their torsos and heads visible from my angle.

I have made it spill over the edges of the page to really drive that feeling of being dwarfed by the Statue of Liberty in the image. The way the photo came out, with the statue’s face and parts of its body shrouded in shadow, creates a really ominous effect that starts my book off very well.

The next image will be on the opposite side. I want it to be a lower-angle, almost eye-level photo, so I can make sure it is not too similar to the first photo. I want it to have more gritty contrast and to get you in amongst the crowd in the inner city. It does stray a little bit from the first photo. Still, it aligns with my idea of going from low to high. Below are some possible images:

Both images work very well; however, the one on the left fits my theme better because it is at a much lower angle than the one on the right. However, the image on the right definitely fits my theme, and I will use it later. This is what the book looks like so far:

I want the next photo to be a bit higher than this one, and again, I want it to be more people-focused from the low angle. I want to do a double-page spread for this image, so I will pick a landscape image to fit across 2 pages. I will make it bleed over the edges fully to really ring the viewer into the image.

I ended up picking the photo on the left because I liked the angle I was shooting at, as it places the viewer right in the crowd, making them feel small compared to everything else. The centre point of the image is the One World Trade, slightly off to the left, which still shows how small humans are compared to the scale of their surroundings. I also found another low-angle photo from when I was coming out of the subway, which I added because I thought it matched the sequence of images well.

For the Next few images, I wanted to move away from Landscape photos a bit, as at this point I feel like I need to break up the image order, so I make sure to use a mixture of compositions, like more landscapes and more portraits. I’m going to use a fisheye lens and a portrait lens. These are the images I will consider:

I have chosen these 2 images because I feel they are the strongest and best match my project. The Times Square photo is great, as the skyscrapers and surroundings are all warped. Hence, they completely engulf the viewer, creating that sense of smallness I’m trying to evoke. The photo isolates the viewer rather than the person in the photo. The second image is good; when I use an over-the-shoulder angle, it really draws the viewer into the photo, making them feel like they are part of it.

i now want to start my seemless transistion into the street/eye level photos to do this i will find a photo that can seemlessly transition the two different levels to do this im going to find an image which is taken from just below my head hight roughly i still want it to feel low to the ground in a sense so im going to make the photo a 2 page spread landscape photo:

I personally think the right photo of the 2 is much better than the one on the left, which looks relatively high because of where I was holding the camera. I will use it later, though, because I really like the image’s composition, especially the leading lines that draw the viewer in. The image on the right will work well on a 2-page spread that isn’t identical on both pages, because the 2 main subjects are separated, allowing me to place the page fold right between them.

Looking back a litte bit to before the trasision i see an oppertunuty to put in some portrait images of my double exposure portraits these work as the photos i took of the subjects was from a low angle so they wouldnt notice when i was taking the photo

these are the tree images i am considering for it i feel that they all work when it comes to fitting the theme of my my project and they all fit in to where they will be placed in th ebook. However, I feel that 3 is too many, so I will only include the last 2. This is because, to me, they are much more conceptually and visually striking than the one on the right

I have copied something that Trente Park did in his book, where he placed 2 unconnected photos on opposite pages, but made them link in the middle, so they kind of look like they are merging. However, it doesn’t really work with these photos, as the border they are connected to doesn’t work, so I’m going to change the photo even though I visually prefer the one on the right to the others.

I feel like this will work much better than the other one, since the borders have a very similar level of exposure and the contrast matches. The only issue I see is the difference in how the buildings look in the photos; however, the effect works much better than before.

Continuing on from where we left off, the street level photographs, I wanted to use one of my more experimental photos:

All of these images work well; however, the left one works the best. This is because I am pretty much eye level with my subject, which is blurring past me, the subjects being rocks and people under a bridge.

I felt that my subway photos would have worked well for the next photo because I don’t just want a hard transition from my experimental stuff; I wanted a photo from the subway with motion blur, but not too blurry. I wanted a middle ground, so it wouldn’t look weird side by side with the photo I picked, which was this:

The reason this photo works is the emotional blur on the left side of the frame, with the person walking by and the pillar, which takes up the left third of the image. It is also just around my eye level.

I want to do another 2-page spread for the next photo. I want to try to recreate the effect Trent Parke used in his book, when he put separate photos side by side with similar borders, as if they were one. I first needed to pick out my left photo:

These 2 images would work the best; however, the one on the left is by far the best option for the link, as the left side only has a small amount of light, so it will merge well where the pages meet

I am very pleased with how this came out; they almost seamlessly blend with each other:

I’m going to continue repeating this process for the rest of the middle viewpoint photos

I have rinsed and repeated the same processes for the next few images that I put in my book, using a similar process, such as the double page spread and the double page spread with 2 images that hold a likeness to each other then I distributed them as i have earlier on using a single portrait or a singe landscape on 2 pages with a blank page i want to try and transtion to where you are looking down towards street level i want this to be graual but i feel that this will be challenging becuase i dont have many from a veiwpoint that isnt the top of a building.

These are all of the images I feel that can work for this section of work. There are very few that I think can work as a transition, though. The photo of the homeless man is viable, and is taken from a slightly higher perspective, which isn’t from the top of a building; this one should work the best. However, the other ones, like the one of the distant figure famed by the trees, could also work very well; it’s just too high to transition.

This definitely works as a good photo to transition from the street level veiwpoint to the higherveiwpoint as the subject, and I, the photographer, are both on street level. I am just looking at the subject from a higher veiwpoint, the end of this book is supposed to make everything in the city and on the scale of people feel insignificant, to help them feel high up and separated. I am making the photos not spill over the borders so as to make it seem like they are further away, rather than spilling out of the page for the viewer.

The next image should be higher than this one, just not to the extent that they will actually be. I would avoid this if possible; however, there are no images that will allow this to be a smooth transition, so I will work with what I have.

I wanted to do another double-page spread, as there will only be around 2 for this section, since there are not many landscape photos for this bit in particular. I know it goes over the middle of the page; however, I have left the borders so it won’t go over the edges of the pages near the top, bottom, or sides.

For the next image, I chose to use this one as it is at a similar height and veiwpoint to the last image, as I am ‘very high up looking down on a crowd of people inside the Oculus.

This photo is also from a very high vantage point, as the people at the very bottom of the image are very warped and distorted, making them look even smaller than they actually are. I’ve put it on this page layout as I don’t like it if 2 images are on the same layout twice in a row.

I wanted the next idea to be a double-page spread; however, the subject in my image is dead center meaing he will be squashed between 2 of the pages, so to avoid this, I will put it on an offset 2 page spread to the right, so it won’t look similar to the one that was spread to the left.

This has worked much better. I have left the borders, so the image won’t run off the page. To follow my theme so far, the subject is now fully visible and is slightly offset to the right.

I have repeated similar steps to get to where I am now. The image next to the previous ones I put in a portrait format and zoomed out a little bit, then I made sure to leave gaps at the edge of the page to keep the same overall theme and purposeful in the next image, which is the double page spread. I wanted to put one of the large buildings on each side of the page, with the horizon divided by the middle of the two pages. I have again left a whiteboard to separate the image from the edges of the page. The top-down image of the intersection works very well, as it completely dwarfs everything around it, making the cars, let alone the people,e look very small. I feel that the gallery of images will create that sense of loneliness, and the viewer is being dwarfed by the city. At this point, the book is finished in my eyes; however, a couple of things may need tweaking. I realigned the images below.

Overall i am very happy with how it has come out so far i think the way i have structured my book is very unique even though i have drawn inspiration from trent parke my book differers from his in many ways, the way my book is structured seems to be much more intentional than trent parkes whos to me doesnt have any clear structure in terms of purposefull and meaningfull sequencing of images, he has also left a lot of boarders in his book as to stop them from spilling over, the simiaritys between our books lie in the presentation of the photos i have used similar techquniques to him such as placing 2 images side by side on the border of 2 pages so that they look like they blend together and i have used the same offsetting of how the photos are laid out so they wont seem repetitive and all on the same side of the page one after another, out of the around 100 photos i was considering for my book i only used 34 of them in total, I do still want to use some of these photos as they still fit my project extremly well and it would be wastful as to not use them just because they didnt fit into the sequencing of my book when printing i would also like to draw attention to my best photos so i might end up including some photos I have already used.

This is a gallery of images that I think are some of my best photos that I want to particularly draw attention to I will do this by printing them and placing them in A3 frames i want to print one image to draw people attention to the ones i am considering the most is the very bottem right one it is one of my most visually stricking images and it didnt make it into my book the statue of liberty photo was a lcose second as it is very visually similar to the building photo however i already have a statue of liberty photo in my book. The photo also conceptually matches my project extremely well; the isolated figure at the bottom on his bicycle is framed by the road and the bottom of the building, and follows the rule of thirds, creates a sense of solitude, and is completely dwarfed by the monumental building in the backdrop.

When I initially put it in, it was too small and rotated incorrectly. After I fixed this, I made the border sizes 0. 25 so that I have a little amount of room when putting my image into my frame to move it left and right. When I put it into the frame

However, when I put it on, the borders were slightly off. This could create a slight misalignment when I put it in the frame. In hindsight, I could have made the borders a little bit smaller, as they still stick out a little on each side, except the bottom, because when it came out, the bottom had no border

this came out very well the blacks at the botten of tthe image have merged together a little bit but i thibk its mialy due to how dirty the frame that my teacher gave me to fix this i tried to clean it but its so dirty that it made the microfiber town go brown.

When my work is presented, I want this photo to be right behind it. Part of this is because the photo is so much larger than the book, which already creates that sense of smallness before opening the book, as the book is less than half the size of the photo thinking back now the statue of liberty photo would have been more imposing of a photo to have behind the book however the first photo of my book is the statue of liberty so it might seem a little bit repetitive to the veiwer if they see practically the same photo twice in a row. What is also good about the photo I picked is that it is looking up, just like the photos at the beginning of my book.

I have also experimented wit some different book layouts such as standerd portrait which could also work well for my book it doesnt change the way the photos are laid out mainly except i would have to shrink some of my double page spreads as the image would be way too big for the page, i feel that it is also less emersing for the veiwer as it is very urpight when a landscape book draws you in a bit more and makes it feel like it has more depthand makes the viewer feel like they are in amoungst everything.

I have done this again with a standard landscape; this has a very similar effect to a large landscape; however, it still came with the issue of less spacing for some of my photographs, where the subject is very central. There is also less room for my photos overall – I want my photos and book to make people feel dwarfed, and I don’t feel this effect can be achieved with a small book. I want my book to engulf the viewer and make them feel isolated and small.

Evaluation

AO1

During my project, I have researched a fair number of artists such as FanHoo, Trent Parke, Berenice Abbott, Giorgio de Chirico, and Josef Koudelka. I mainly discovered them through the internet; however, I discovered a few through books that we have in the class, oom such as TrParke’s Minutesuites to Midnight Suit ‘ and Josef Koudelka’s ‘ Exile. I have learned a lot from studying their work. From Fan Ho, I learned how he uses geometry and negative space to isolate a single figure in a large sprawling urban environment. I have also learned how Berinice Abbott uses low angles and structural lines to emphasise the dominance of architecture over the human figure. From Trent Parke, I have learned how to use stronger contrast and darker tones, allowing parts of the image to fall into shadows, which really helped reduce detail in the human figure, turning them into more silhouettes and making them feel less important relative to the surrounding space. All of my artists, especially these 3 show that scale can be created through framing, viewpoint, and the relationship between people and their surroundings, which directly links back to my project’s goal.

I explored the theme of scale. I was originally going to take it at face value and was going to do architectural photography, but I wanted to take photos of people as well. Then, I thought back to the London Square Mile photography gallery, which was a big original inspiration for my project. It’s a large complex urban area with people isolated within the frame in the photos, and this really called to me. This is where my original idea for the scale of us came from. From the research I developed, I looked at more artists who inspired me to do these high contrast black and white photos and explore that kind of isolation I want to create in my photos. My theme stayed very consistent throughout all of my work as I had found a formula that worked for me and something that comes naturally to me. I had always wanted to shoot in black and white, and my artists and this project allowed me to enable this.

A02

I have used multiple exposures to merge portrait photography with the NYC cityscape. I have placed the human face directly onto the surrounding buildings and street scenes overall. Rather than placing a person beside a building to show scale, the approach that I took embeds the city within the individual, which to me suggests that the urban environment has become so large and so dominant that it has literally been absorbed into our identity. The figure does not stand apart from the city, but is entirely consumed by it, which reinforced my theme of human insignificance by suggesting that the city not only physically overwhelms people but also shapes and overtakes them on a deeper level. I experimented using my fisheye lens to explore whether distortion itself can become a tool for communicating scale. The fisheye bends architectural lines into curves and draws the edges of the frame inward, creating a circular image in which the environment wraps entirely around the human figure, rather than simply towering above them.

Over the course of my project, I have refined and developed my work via peer assessment when my classmates have looked at my work and tell me what my photos are missing and what I should change going fowrards and looking at artists and their work and menteally comparing it to my own work, critiquing my composition, and my work’s visual aspects so i can create more visually interesting images, when developing my work it was a very In the spur of the moment thing where I would capture something I thought would make a good image on the other hand sometimes I would stay in an area that has an intresting compistion, lighting, or shadows and I would stay there and take multiple photos of people in that area one example of this would be the occuls where I used the stripped lighting to create dynamic contrast in my image, the further and further into my project I got the more conceptual it got as i went along it went from a more basic street photography style of work to more conceptual way of warping the photos, multiple exposures, long exposures and using my fisheye lens.

I feel that the concept of my project worked really well, as I was able to capture it very well in the variety of large urban environments I visited, such as London and NYC, because of the large urban environment in the inner city; however, the buildings aren’t as high-rise style as those in NYC which i why I decideded to use NYC only for my book as i was mainly using london to test the waters i originally found it hard to get the compisition of my photos to look good but the more i took the more it made sense to me i would poistion them using the rule of third alot of the time and the rest if of the frame would be buildings, I would also use cntered subjects or two subjects that are parrallel to eachother on the page, my investigation did develop over time bcoming more and more conceptual over time it strayed from the more simple style of street photogrpahy to abstract warped images on the street which still linked to my project as I have dwarfed the person in the frame and or made it part of the cityscape, the conceptual shift had a great increase on the quality of my response as by shifting slowly into more concpetual photos allowed me to experiment more with my cameras settings and made me more confortable overall at being experimentive with my compitions, concepts, camera settings, and lighting.

AO4

My fInal outcome consists of a book called The Scale Of Us which is a book in which i document the isolation of poeple in large urban enviroments In my book i show the different perspectives of scale from the bottem to the top I made the book a large landscape Bokke to really draw the veiwer in, I then start the book by making the veiwer look up into the photo so from the veiwers perspectieve they are in amoungst everything the day to day busyniess of the NYC streets sa my book preogrresses you begin to reach the eye-street level phtoos this keeps the veiwer inside the bound of the city where the high rise bulidungs tower over the week human frame in the images,, this is supposte to make the veiwer feel small, towards the end of the book we go up and zoom out a bit with high veiwpoints that make them see how small everybody is makeing humans compared to the city feel powerless and finite I have also framed image of a photo in NYC where it is from that low point i keep mentioning it is from me crouhched down at street level loooking up at a building with a person on a bike riding past, this image is supposed to be from the veiwers perspective they are suppost to be made to feel dwarefed and lonly by this photo before they even open the book. I have taken my inspiration from Trent Parkes ‘ Minutes to Midnight book, as he was one of my main photographic inspirations for this whole project. His work is similar to mine in many stylistic ways, such as his very high contrast black and white photography, so I decided to use his book for inspiration. His book mirrors mine in most aspects. I thought I should use his book to show me how to lay it out, as most of his images were the same crop as my images, except for the fact that his photos are landscape only.

From the beginning of this project, I was dead set on creating a stylistic black and white photo-based book as I felt that it would really fit my project well because scale is extremely dramatic which i made further clear by using a black and white film emulater, and I still think it does work as a book, rather than other ways of presenting, such as video, projecting them, or doing a print-only book, in my opinion, my book has definitely worked well and has gone exactly to how i envisioned it in my head, it meets all of my expectations for wat i expect from a photography book, the strcuture is methodicly set out in a way that creates feeling of being small and inperminent to the veiwer and even me who looks at it myself, i measured my success on a few things: likeness to a proffestional photographers book, has it done what i was planning it do, does it have clear purposfull pacing, is everything in there correct and intentional.

I Know that i have successfully explores the theme of scale as i have adadoted the prokect to my own perspective of what scale means normally scale means ( Scale is the relative size of one object in comparison to another, used in art and photography to show proportion, importance, and the relationship between subjects within a space. ) I took this and thought of the realtive size bit then thought about how small humans are in comparision to the build urban enviroment around the small human frame I do feel like i could have taken the phrase scale and adapted it a bit more or i couldve done the opposite and taken it at face value for what the word means however i feel like my project explores the theme of scale in a more in depth and conceptual way breaking down what it means and relating it to human scale.

My Work is Personal as it shows my unique perspective on the concept of scale as a whole. The reason I picked scale is that I wanted to show my perspective on what cities make me feel. To me, they are like large automated areas where people are small and insignificant and hold no value when dwarfed by the high-rise dominating architecture surrounding them. The large glass buildings with no design or creativity suck the soul out of the city, which is the reason I wanted to use black and white IR photography; other than being inspired by artists who also use black and white photography.

When people look at my work, I want them to understand the message I am trying to send about how I feel about cities and how they relate to the human scale. When they look at it, I want them to feel small, insignificant and dwarfed by the buildings in the photos spilling out of the pages and my frame behind my book. From my book, I want them to understand the relationship between people and large-city environments. I want them to focus on how scale can make each and every individual look and feel small in their surroundings.

If I had more time for this i would have made some more frames,s something very similar to the one I have, so I can place it again behind the book that I have, so instead of there just being one frame, I could have had two, maybe even three large imposing photos behind my book when it’s being presented I would have also experimented with maybe making two books seperating my portait style photos and my landscape style photos as to be more similar to Trent Parkes book however think still mixing them up was a good idea, I may have made my book a bit longer as i only used 34 photos out of my selected 105 which was filtered out of 2700 photos, also instead of using the slow gradual change I might have made them into seperate segments to allow for more photos to be used in each segment.