Friday 3 June 2016

FMP - week 1

I started my project off by exploring escapism and what people do to escape the harsh reality of life, I started off by jotting down different peoples views on escapism such as: music, drugs, hobbies, friendships, social life's and relationships, basically anything someone would use to escape the harsh reality of life weather it be work, education or problems that prevent you from allowing to escape.
I started off my research by interviewing my friend George who regularly goes to the skatepark and he was explaining how he uses skating as his method of escape his work life and he never feels as free as when he's skating as he's with his friends who he can relate with and it takes his mind off education. This started to lead me in the direction of skateboarding as it is also a hobbie of mine and it was something I could explore and not just show skating shots but something more meaningful in photos. I then looked at a documentary called 'Totally Free' by 'Daniel Soars' which was a documentary about different aged people all coming together and skating about and just escaping and forgetting for that period of time. Quotes like 'I smoke a joint and spin around 50 times and the world is wonderful' really interested me so I started to look at a skating photographer named 'Sam Ashley' who shot photos of skateboarders mostly action shots but I liked the way he shot as he showed a lot of background and then showed the skater in small scale in photo like the one below.

I then did a response to this by shooting in the skatepark after first making a contact sheet and deciding which photos were best to use,  just a first basis experiment with shooting in the skatepark trying to capture action shots of the skater in their environment in their own world escaping from other thoughts, here is an example from below.

I then started to look at how the person I interviewed and he liked to smoke cannabis after he had been skating, this was interesting so I started to look closer into it and found quotes from Bob Marley saying 'better to die for freedom then be a prisoner all of your life' because after speaking the person I interviewed he used cannabis to escape from the reality of life as well as skateboarding so this lead me on to watch a documentary called 'culture high' which included people using cannabis to escape from the 'traumas of life' which I found relevant as this was why most of the skaters I knew were using it to escape and chill out.
Fortunately enough there was an event on cannabis called '420' this is where many people around the uk gather together in hyde park to smoke cannabis, this is a legal event and the police are walking around the event which I also managed to shoot as a restriction to escapism, I only took a disposable camera with me but this enabled me to shoot more frequently and capture people in their environment being free. I also managed to capture photos of police and I will be using those photos as an example of restrictions.

The photo above was taken by Ricky Adam who is a bmx and portrait photographer I found his work inspirational as he only photographs what interests him which is bmxing and portraits I found I could relate to this as I also wanted to photograph sports inside the skatepark, so i began to respond to his work by first making a contact sheet from the photos I had shot of my friend at the skatepark and here is a result below.

I chose 3 photos out of the many I had taken and i then began to experiment with different editing styles weather it was putting the photo in black and white or changing the levels to match the same style as Ricky Adam or just messing around with colours as you can see below.

After shooting these photos i've come to the conclusion that I would not continue to shoot in this style  as I think it is too commonly shot and I feel like I would want to explore something a bit more personal to me so that I can go into more depth and shoot photos that will have people asking questions when they view them, for example shoot escapism in skateboarding with a set of restriction photos as well.




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