Category / Uses of Photography

by harrietread

Week 12

Finishing up my photo compendium this week, I made a couple of changes to the final construction of my photobook. Firstly, I chose not to print a book out. The final day that I had to shoot, at the Dutton Garage in Richmond, was yesterday. That gave me one day to shoot, pick and edit the photos that I would need for my photo, and I also knew I would be taking a lot of photos that I would need to choose from.

I also chose not to have interviews for my compendium. The main reason that I chose to do this was firstly because the salespeople at Dutton Garage told me that they would be too busy to be interviewed on the showroom floor. Secondly, I chose not to have interviews because the process of approaching strangers, especially at the Benalla Historic Car Races, would be confronting and challenging for both me and the interviewee.

To compensate, I have chosen photos from my collection that link people and cars together. I had a fair few shots of both people and cars in frame. I was concerned about privacy and consent, but the figures in the photos are unidentifiable so it’s appropriate to use them. I also tried to focus on making connections between cars and people over a period of time. There are a couple of photos of older people admiring cars at the car show, and at the Dutton Garage there was a display up on the wall of young people admiring them as well.

The most difficult part of my experience was working out where to go to take photos. There are not many car meet-ups happening locally at this time of the year, and most car shows that are on are in other states or simply to far away. Fortunately, I was able to make it to Benalla and I managed to gather strong material at the Dutton Garage. I also had help from the official photographer there who toured me around the showrooms and gave me help and advice on technical and aesthetic concerns when photographing vehicles.

by harrietread

Week 11

This week has been about thinking more closely about our photobooks. What I have been considering and planning has primarily been what kind of story I want to tell about cars through photography, and also how I will improve my technical and aesthetic practice when photographing cars.

So in my consult with Brian last week I was thinking about presenting my photobook like Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York, in the sense that I wanted to go up to strangers with their cars and have a quick 2 min interview with them about why they like cars etc. What I want to get out of this approach is a humanising perspective of car culture.

In terms of my technical skills, this week I began doing some practice photography of cars. I practiced light painting, which i mainly done at night and involves having a really long shutter speed and then literally painting the car with light from a torch. My practice has proven effective so far. Now I need to practice composition and framing.

by harrietread

Week 8

This past week has involved finalising our photo essay projects for this assessment. I went into the Laundry Station this week for my photo essay, which is owned by the friend of my classmate Chynnae’s mum in Wyndham Vale.

What I wanted to convey in my photo essay was this notion that the laundry is a private space, but when we make it into a public space like a laundromat humans tend to find little bits of community and friendship even though they don’t go to the laundry to do so.

Technically, I chose to use a fixed 24mm lens for this shoot. The reason for this is that I wanted to expand the space that I was in and a wide angle lens tends to do this well. I wanted to create a sense of depth in the space. Additionally, I chose to use a fixed lens because I wanted to create an aesthetic consistency with my shots; I was aiming for a cinematic appearance to this photo essay. This created a difficulty for me in that I was more aware of how close I was to people, since I could not zoom in on figures. I noticed in editing that the edges were often more bowed out like a fisheye lens that I originally intended, but I find that aesthetically this creates a Wes Anderson-ish, quirky mood.

by harrietread

My Take: Wk 5 Uses of Photography

In this week’s tute we watched ‘Finding Vivian Maier,’ a documentary made by John Maloof, about a woman who practiced photography during her time working for forty years as a nanny. Something that I found both endearing and troubling about her character was how much she reminded me of people that I know in my daily life. Both her struggles with mental illness and her sense of self, however much she concealed it from people, are things that I recognise in myself and many of my friends and peers.

I find this significant because since so  many of these peers are highly creative and productive, I can recognise that creative people often tend to seek creative and productive activities to cope with or stay in touch with their mental health.

For our upcoming Project Brief, Strangers with Stories, I am a little nervous just because it is a daunting thing to have to go up to total strangers and ask them about their lives and interests.

by harrietread

My Take: Uses of Photography Wk 3

Tuesday’s class focused on photo editing, using Adobe Lightroom. I only started using it at the start of this year for editing a photoshoot for a dancer friend of mine, and I think I like it more than Photoshop.

Photoshop feels like it deals in absolutes, and it gets very technical and there are so many things you can do with it. Too many for me, since normally I just want to fix up the lighting.

Lightroom’s functions are really straightforward, and just playing around with it is enough for me to develop my skills. Failing that, YouTube and Google are full of tutorials that I can use. I’m appreciating in this studio that I am given a lot of time to practice my skills, rather than faffing around for 3 hours on some theory that leaves me braindead after 15 minutes.

by harrietread

My Take: Uses of Photography Wk 2

This week, I did my presentation on Robert Mapplethorpe, an iconic and influential photographer and artist who worked in the 70s-80s. He came from a conservative family, and moved to New York as a young man where he met the soon to be renowned artist and musician Patti Smith. Mapplethorpe inspires me as an artist and creative soul because he was someone who loved to and endeavoured to work endlessly, whether it was on a new art medium or a new idea in his photography. His work in the 80s focused mainly on the developing gay and lesbian movement in America, at a time when homophobia and stigmatism against AIDs was growing quickly too. Much of his photography at that time, such as the iconic Self Portrait with Whip, explored ideas around S&M, sexuality and homosexuality. He died of AIDs in 1989, but his desire to challenge audiences and push boundaries in art inspires me to give myself my own challenges, in my work, art and other aspects of my career.

by harrietread

My Take: Uses of Photography Wk 1

Uni is back, and once again not super sure of what I’m doing half the time but that’s life. Got a way bigger focus on photography this semester: studio is Uses of Photography and I’m also in Photojournalism. That, and I’m doing a fair bit of work as a photographer doing parties and headshots for dancer/actor friends.

It’s interested doing photography as a media subject, since I’ve only done it before as an artistic subject. For UoP, it’s linking back into the significance of photos in media (social, etc.) and for Photojournalism theres a lot of focus on journalism and news, which oddly enough will be new for me.

For now, honing my technical skills in both these classes is an important factor for me. But being a media practitioner is the main focus that will be communicated and absorbed over the course of this semester.