Wednesday 16 September 2015

intro to blogger


Hello,

My name is Harry O'Donoughue, I'm 18 years of age and I live in bromley South in Kent on a regular weekend I enjoy going out with my friends to events and clubs. I also have a passion for skating and the skatepark and I like to link my work to this. I have started at Ravensbourne to continue learning about photography and media, I chose to do a foundation course as I was unsure what specific course I wanted to take further as it was between photography and media I have been studiing these subjects throughout a level and I ended up with a double distinction in BTEC media and a B at photography a-level.

In my spare time I enjoy skating and I feel as if this is a big part of my life as I do include it in my studio I do this by making short films and taking photos of people at the skatepark to highlight the tricks they do and to show what skating means to people.

This is something really enjoy doing as its a passion as well as a hobby so it makes working on it a lot more fun as well as also getting some really nice outcomes of photos and small videos I do using 'final cut'.

I was hoping to develop my skills at Ravensbourne using the resources to my advantage and hopefully coming out with a project that I'm proud of, just by the first day I could tell that this was the place where I could take my skills further and start creating a project.

Thursday 10 September 2015

photography




On the first day we were given a project title of identity and we then shown some examples of identity in photography, this interested me as it started to give me some ideas on what I could do.
We were then set a task to present what identity means and what is identity, when discussing this it became more clear to me what identity actually was as it's not just one thing but so many different things making up you as a person, this started to give me more ideas for my project.

On the second day we spent a day in London visiting various galleries. We started at the VnA where one particular piece grabbed my attention as shown



This particular piece interested me very much as it shows an paintings in different boxes within the piece, these paintings included paintings of: St John, St Luke and events such as: St George is dragged by horses. It was generally believed that the piece was probably made for the 'Chapel of the Confraternity of the Centinar de la Ploma' this interested me very much as without cameras this is how artists would show their work, unfortunately the artist of this piece is unknown and was not shown in the exhibit, however the information that was given was: Spain (Valencia), Tempera and gliding on pine and the museum number was: 1217-1864.
This piece was presented on a huge scale which was one of the reasons it grabbed my attention so much, and the fact it includes names such as St John and how these where all painted into this piece, as if this was done in current time a camera would be used and to think how much time went into this piece changed the way i looked at it.

We also visited other galleries such as: the serpentine gallery, national photographers gallery and finally the Tate modern, however the pieces displayed in other galleries did not interest me that much however looking at so many different pieces began to give me an idea on what identity meant to me.
when we were walking round all the galleries looking at all the different pieces i started to notice that everything can link to your identity for example:


This photo on the left was from the VnA gallery also and it shows religion. This piece was called the 'White Tara' and it was widely worshipped in Nepal and to me this showed just how important this object was to certain people thus showing that it is a part of there identity through religion. then as we continued to look around galleries i started to believe that there are a lot of things that are a part of your identity, not just a few things but a huge collection of things whether it is: religion, culture, the hobby's you do or even the things that interest you all these things pay a contributing factor to your identity.



After visiting the galleries i started to think of all the different things that make up my identity however there were a few things in particular that i wanted to highlight the most important being skating. as skating is such a big part of my life it is what i wanted to show in my project as it says a lot about my life as its what i am always doing and there are so many factors within skating that make me, me. For example its what i base most of my work on and I'm always travelling to different places and meeting new people from it and its made me who i am today.

To do this I selected 5 objects I think represent my identity the best, as you can see below i have chosen 5 different objects, each of these objects have a meaning to me and my identity.



This is my first object that i have chosen to use. this is a necklace that i have had since i was very young the 3 charms on the necklace all resemble something different to me, the first charm which is a christian cross i was given this at an early age to show that i am a christian, the second charm is a surf board that i bought when i went to Australia for 1 year when i was 6. The third and final charm is a metal guitar pick that my dad gave to me, and it was given to him by Eric clapton, all in all i would say this object resembles memory.





This is the second object i have chosen, and as you can see it is a  train ticket, i chose this to represent travelling as i am always travelling whether its by car,plane or train to me this is a big part of my identity as i have been travelling around the country and out of the country for various skating events and just in general to get out rather than staying in. i think that this is a big part of my identity as it shows what type of person i am, as id rather be out and about than stuck indoors



These are my headphones and i have chosen these to represent my identity as i am always listening to music everywhere i go. i feel these represent music which is a big part of my life as i listen to a lot of music wherever i go whether its whilst I'm just at home. i would defiantly say headphones link to my identity as music is a part of my life

This is the fourth object i have chosen to represent my identity, this is my camera. i have a DSLR as well as this 'Go Pro' camera however this is the camera i mostly film on as it is small and easy to carry around. I feel as this is a good object to represent my identity i am always filming and editing my own videos whether its on skating on just making videos for the fun of it, i feel this is defiantly part of my identity as i love to do it and its something i can defiantly see myself doing in the future.


This is my fifth object i have chosen to represent my identity. this is a festival band and its one of many that i have, i defiantly feel that this object is a part of my identity as i love music and i have had some of the best memories at festivals probably moments that i will remember for the rest of my life, this is why i have included it.









I started to look at the artist Sarah Deragon. She is an artist from San Francisco who is showing in her project that people label other people due to there gender and sexuality, she says: 'this project seeks to explore the labels we choose to identify with when defining our gender and sexuality'. Her work interested me very much as i also believe that people are labelled if they are gay or female and they are judged on stereotypes given to them. This elaborates on identity as its what other people think about your identity just because of who you are, for example being gay, people expect you to be a certain type of person which is wrong.









I then started to look at a photographer called Sam Ashley and he photographs skating, i found his work by looking at skating magazines but the one in particular that had his work on the front cover was 'Sidewalk' skate magazine, I then started to research him and found out that he mostly photographs skaters in the streets of London finding new spots and then photographing them. i enjoyed his work because i do a lot of my skating in London so i could relate to the photos and i even recognised some of the spots in the photos.











This is my final object, this is object has a lot of meaning behind it as it is a part of my first skateboard. although it does not look like much to me this object has a lot of sentimental value as to me its when i started skating which now is such a big part of my life. i feel that this is a big part of my identity as i have been doing it for so long and its what i spend most of my time doing, therefore i have added it to represent my identity.








 After looking at Sam Ashley's work i started to think about what i wanted to photograph, and then i had an idea to show in a photo a piece of my identity for example this is a part from my first skateboard shown in the photo above, and i have then included London where i used to skate in the foreground. As you can see from above i have then chosen an object to take further as it is such a big part of my identity i took this photo in hope to show it as my identity, i set up the photo with the part from my first skateboard in the foreground in focus, however i positioned the part slightly further left as i was trying nit to attract to much attention to it. The reason i did not want to attract to much attention to it is so that some of the viewers attention is on the background which is London (Canary Wolf), this is somewhere i used to skate with my friends as it has some good street spots that me and my friends would enjoy skating and it is somewhere we would go quite often, what i am trying to show in this photo is as skating is such a big part of my identity as i spend most of my time doing it and my life revolves around it in my free time i have tried to show that by having the part of my first skateboard in focus. However i also tried to show a location where i skate often by having it blurred in the background.






This is a photo taken by Abigail rose and is showing the movement of this person using long exposure, long exposure is done by increasing the shutter speed on your camera to capture stationary images while blurring the object or in this case person, long exposure is something i would like to introduce to my my photos.

























These are two images I took, when taking these images I used long exposure, i had the shutter speed at 5 seconds and i also had a strobe light set up to capture each of the skateboards movements as seen above. I had the strobe light set up in the dark room so that the light would expose the skateboard in different stages of movement. I did he same process for both of the images above. This linked to my project identity as it includes a hobby that i spend most of my days doing.







These are my final 5 images, as you can see from above i included macro shots as well as some close ups to show more detail on the skateboard. i used these particular images as they show a place where i skated a s a child as well as my first skateboard in the picture, i thought that this would show the viewer a place that means something to me as it has history and a lot of worth to me as it is where me and my friends would meet to skate.