Small Beauties of Everyday Life is an Instagram account which can be viewed here.

Reflection:

We notice things as its brought to our attention, if we tell our minds to do something it picks it up, it allows us to notice the thing in life and allows us to see change. Day by day we go through the same routine and don’t notice the small beauties of life, we may walk past or not notice flowers, plants, colours or movement of things. As we put our minds to things focusing on the small details of things we miss out on, we find that the world is more complex, there is more than just a flower, we notice the petals, the dirt that’s it on, the stem,  its environment, whether its fully bloomed or not. Our understanding of the world becomes more complex.

I chose to go with the prompt ‘How to i notice and find joy in small things in life’ and i felt like it connects well with noticing, as some of the ‘small’ things in our lives have been neglected. My project had somewhat did a goodish job on how well noticing responds to my prompt. The close up shots allowed for the audience to notice the small details and the beauties of it and with the audio it played a big contrast element that made audience wonder about the location and wonder about the movement of the location. I felt like the most successful photo was the flower bus stop one, i had the shot planned first thing, i knew it would be a great shot to express this idea of noticing. This is my interpretation of locations, so when audiences first looked at it for the first time, they must have been curious and confused about the sound and the close up shot together. Overall i felt like i 60% successful job exploring noticing the neglected things in life.

I learnt that close ups are very good for noticing, its a good tool for noticing the small details and the beauty of things. I also learnt that audio makes a big contrast when combined with visuals, because you would look at the image, then all of a sudden you hear loud cars passing by, this allow the audience to further think about the surroundings and picture the environment juxtaposed against the close up that they were given. Sound really worked well as it evoked the movement of the place. While shooting i noticed that a great tool for noticing the small details was analysing the best suitable angle for the location, i noticed for some of my shots that if i had moved around a bit more i would have captured more movements. In some of the photographs, there aren’t a lot of movement and this is because i didn’t allow for a subject or a object to be in front to allow movement in the photo (eg. sunset photograph).

This whole semester has allowed me to think further about noticing things, when i go for a walk i notice things i don’t usually notice, and i further think about how the weather is affecting it, its surroundings, the small details on the subject, its subtle movements, the rhythm the pace of it,  a whole range of things. This process further allows me to enhance my production. Even though some parts of the course was hella confusing, i’ve learnt a lot of things and it will stick with me for the rest of my life. I enjoyed this studio so much and i’m so glad i got the opportunity to learn so many new things with noticing.