FMP - week 6

Week 6 I started by looking at a new artist I came across from looking at his photography book he made with 'supreme' the artists name is 'David Sims' and I really liked his style of photography as it was sort of an old school style to it, and in some photos he had photos overlapping each other which i liked and wanted to recreate. In one of the photos there are four boys sitting on a sofa which was one of my favourite images as I think it bests links to my project and I will be responding to this image in particular but also incorporating my own theme of my project into it.

As you can see from above the photo is of the four boys sitting on a sofa and I think that it is a good photo of escapism and the boys are enjoying themselves all laughing and having a good time, so I decided to respond to this by going out into London and taking some photos on my 35mm camera trying to capture what I thought would best respond to David sims' work unfortunately most of the photos didn't come out very well, however there was one photo which was a happy accident as the roll of film must have messed up and exposed two photos onto one, but I think it worked really well as it contrasted with a working man with the skateboard representing the escape. photo shown below.

I then made a collage focusing on the aspects of escapism in skateboarding, I focused on one person that I originally interviewed to start this project, the collage is shown below.

From this collage I wanted to capture is a few photos which I took on a disposable camera of just a skater enjoying himself and what he gets up to on a day to day basis, I then wanted to respond to this by having the same person however have an image of him contrasting with an image of my parents, and my parents being the restriction as they will keep a teenager from going out too late and steering them in the right direction which may not allow them to skate as much. I then have an image of the same person on a bike smoking a joint which shows him being free in his environment. Both images shown below.

Half way through week 6 I started to plan how I was going to lay out my final images and I decided to have two images in landscape and two images in portrait, I wanted to have the two landscape images contrasting with each other and I also wanted to have the two portraits contrasting with each other, I will be printing the photos onto a4 as well as a3 because I wanted to have the two a4's together and the a3 shown separately. My final images will be laid out into pairs and they will also contrast each other, I will also want to think about the contradictions and the juxtapositions, for example I will have one picture of a restriction and I will then have a picture of escapism in skateboarding contrasting with the restriction image. I am doing this as it leads the person viewing the image to ask questions about the photos, I also think that the images will contrast well as one is needed for the other an example of this is without restriction there would be no escapism as there would be nothing to escape from, because there thing people most commonly escape is their own restrictions. Below is a the frame I would like to show my final images in.

I then began the process to select images to use in my final display, to do this I laid out most of the images that I had taken so I could identify which ones I thought would contrast with each other the best,  thought this method of selecting images was the best as it gave me a birds eye view of all the pictures and I am also able to move the images about so I can mess about with different images.

FMP- week 5

I started week 5 by continuing to look at the contrast between restriction and escapism in skateboarding, I did this by looking a different videos on 'youtube' and I came across a song called 'I Just Wanna Skate' made by 'DGK ALL DAY', which had a photo on the video of a man about to whack his skateboard against a police car, and I thought this was a good representation of the skater rebelling against the restriction, as recently I have been exploring how people use skateboarding to achieve freedom and feel like they are escaping from the restrictions of life. Whatever those restrictions may be, below I have shown the screenshot of the song.

I decided to respond to this song with a photo I thought would best recreate the song in a photo so I went to a skating event where the police were patrolling so I tried to get a photo of one of them, luckily I managed to get a photo of one of them amongst the crowd which I thought showed contrast between all the people walking about and how they weren't looking at the police man maybe because they are scared of the restriction, as the police are a big restriction in a skaters eyes as they prevent a lot. Below is the photo I took when I was at the event.

I then went on to focusing on the contrast between restrictions and escapism in skateboarding and I did this by going out shooting at the skatepark and also shooting adults in their workplace, I again shot this on a 35mm camera so therefore didn't know what the outcome was going to be however I got a really nice set of photos, I then selected two which I thought best contrasted. I ended up picking a photo of my dad and a photo of people sitting down on the ramps, the irony of it is that my dad used to skate so you could almost say he is reminiscing on his old skating days if you put the images next to each other, or that the youth is thinking about how thats how they will end up. Below is the images I chose.

I wanted to start looking at what makes a skater a skater, for example could you tell someone skated just by what they wore, an example of this is dyed hair or piercings I think that fits that sort of life style and having dyed hair shows that the person in being original and doing what they like, this is in context as the skaters are skating because they enjoy it and its what they do to escape and be in their ideal place.

I have done an example of this below as I did a small experiment by taking photos of the shoes of two skaters and then taking a photo of the shoes of two parents and as you can see below it is easy to identify which is which as the skaters shoes are covered in holes and they are very worn out and messy and the parents shoes are neat tidy and clean and professional, I think this resembles more than just shoes but their lifestyle as well. You could argue that the shoes are much like the lives of the people they are owned by as the skaters shoes are covered in holes and the parents shoes are neat and tidy. photos of the shoes shown below.

FMP- week 4

I started off my fourth week by visiting a gallery, and the gallery I decided to visit 'Never mind the sex pistols' by an artist named 'Pierre Benain'. I really was inspired by Benain's work and I really like the way he shot and the style of his photos, I came across the gallery on an educational visit and i really enjoyed it so I went back for a second time. I got a feel of escapism from his photos and this is why I am including him as research in my project, as there is a old fashioned feeling to his photos and the way the people in his photos look like they have been out all night and they have beers and cigarettes and the room they are in is dirty and there is things everywhere. The photos are of John Lydon who was in a band named 'There sex pistols' and 'Paul Benain' shot photos him. I could really relate to these photos as some of my nights out after skating have looked like the photos he took, so i thought I could get some great photos to respond to his work.

I then started to plan a response to 'Benain's' work so I started to go out an shoot on a 35mm film camera to get the same effect as 'Benain's' pictures so I took a camera to a party that everyone was going to after the skatepark so I could incorporate the theme of my project into the same style as 'Benain'. I took a lot of different photos and tried to capture the same essence as Benain did, for example I took most of the photos when the party had finished and the last men standing were all together. I felt like this was the best way to capture the same style as Benain did, I even captured a photo of one man sleeping which I used as one of the responses as it reminded me of Benain's work I also had one photo of a man smoking and then another of a man drinking at early of the morning. I feel like this is a good representation of escapism and freedom as its photos of youth doing what they enjoy on the weekends when there not at school or work or anything of that sort, below are two of the photos I took responding to Benain's work. As I said I took them on a disposable camera that I took to   a party that was taking place after a skating competition so I feel like I have stayed in context of my project.



After looking at Benain's work I started to focus on restrictions to contrast with escapism which I was thinking would be a good idea to show in my final set of photos. For a first look on restrictions I decided to focus on myself as I had suffered a severe arm brake and it was preventing me from skating and therefore I thought it was the perfect example to display as restriction as I had been put in a cast and I thought the cast represented a restriction perfectly. Below is a photo of my arm in a cast.

After looking at restrictions I decided to research artists who focused on restrictions and I wanted to show in my work restrictions as well as escapism to show the contrast between the two whatever the restriction or method of escapism may be. After searching and looking at different artists I came across an artist named 'Jeffrey Cervantes' who did a set of photos of a man with wire wrapped around his face and obviously the wire representing the restriction of the man but the question I asked myself was what they were restricting him from?
I wanted to respond to Cervantes work but I wasn't sure how to, however I went down to the skatepark and began to shoot, I was shooting on a 35mm camera so I didn't no what results i was getting but when the photos came out I immediately had a photo which I thought represented Cervantes photo very well, as you can see from below it is a photo of a boy smoking a joint blowing smoke with his middle finger up however he is also behind the bars of the ramp and I thought the bars represent the restriction very well and the bars almost represent life which he is rebelling by showing his middle finger and smoking a joint.

I then edited the photo in photoshop to get the same effect as Cervantes did with his photos, so I added a brown tint effect on the colour to recreate his work as you can see below.

FMP- week 3

I started week 3 by deciding what direction I wanted to continue in my project, and I came to the conclusion that I wanted to focus on the contrast between escapism and restriction within skateboarding for example showing how skaters will achieve the sense of escapism whether it be skating in the ramps or just socialising with people who have similar interests and restrictions could be the law or parents or things as subtle as the weather, just anything that restricts the skaters. I started off the week by making a collage as you can see below.

I made this collage by cutting up photos I had already taken which hadn't turned out how I wanted so I was able to do this, I was trying to capture escapism in skateboarding. As you can see I have photos of skaters and I then have added thought bubbles to represent what they're thinking about or what they would rather be doing, I did this just to experiment with unused photos I had.

I then moved on to a photographer named 'Marco Hernandez', he shoots in a style I really like as he captures all the 'madness' that the skaters are doing when they are not skating, for example at a gig or something like that. The photos that I focused on I think represented escapism quite well and I also felt like you could tell that the person was a skater just by how they looked and what they wore, for example if they had tattoos and piercings and they looked messy and dirty with worn out shoes with holes in then they were most likely a skater. I also like the style he shot in as it looked almost as if there had been a crazy night out and he had captured the photos and each photo told a story, like the photo below. I think that the photo below shows how the skater is sitting down at a gig/party smoking thinking about his restrictions and almost asking 'is it worth it?' with a beer in his hand, this also shows the recklessness behind it as well.

I responded to this photo by trying to capture the same sort style as Hernandez's work, I did this by shooting just after I had been to the skatepark with my friend and I then took a photo of him holding his hand up in the shape of an 'L' I also had skateboards in the photo and the location of the photo is under a bridge, you can also see on the wall he is smoking I think this is a good representation of escapism as he is normally at boarding school so on the weekends he is able to go out and escape.

photo shown below.

I then did another shoot after we had all been to the skatepark, I took a disposable camera to a party that I was going to and I shot photos of people when the night was coming to an end to get that same feel as Hernandez's work, I wanted to capture peoples facial expressions which I feel tell a pretty good story of how the night went to is going for them. For example as you can see from the photo below he looks rather agitated and annoyed and waiting for the night to end so he can get to bed.

I plan to start week 4 by going to a gallery which I feel is relevant to my project, I will be doing research over the weekend to find what I think is the most interesting gallery.

FMP- week 2

 After the first week of research and exploring I have come to the conclusion that I will be following the path of skateboarding as I feel this is the subject I could go the furthest in as I think it is interesting to get a perspective on a skaters view of escapism and what they do to feel free and escape, so in this second week I have began to look and different methods of shooting and I started to experiment with with long exposure and motion photography.
I first came across this by seeing 'Arturo Bragaglia's' work whilst exploring long exposures, 'Bragaglia' was a pioneer in Italian futurist photography and he did long exposures in the 1900's and mainly shot motion photography of peoples faces as you can see below.

                                   

I found 'Bragaglia's' work very interesting and I used it as inspiration for my own work as I wanted to incorporate long exposure into skateboarding and capture the movement in skateboarding. So I began to set up a shoot, I first completely blacked out a room and made sure no light was able to get in and cause any unnecessary exposures as that would have ruined the photo. Once i had set up the room I got a strobe light and placed it in a position where the light would expose the person on the skateboard each time the strobe light flickered. I set the camera to an exposure of 5 seconds so that it would capture 5 seconds of movement and as you can see below the outcome was very successful and I feel like I recreated 'Bragaglia's' work quite well.

I then put this photo in photoshop so I could put the finishing touches on recreating 'Bragaglia's' work as his work has a slight green tint on it so I changed the colour balance and made the image slightly more green to capture that same effect of 'Bragaglia's' work.

Unfortunately I didn't stick to this method of photography as I didn't feel I could develop it much further so I started to move on and carry on with my research. I did this by starting to look at 'Theo Pauls' work and as you can see below the photo is of a skateboard in focus while the background is blurred, I liked this style of shooting and i wanted to recreate this as 'Paul's' photo looks like its telling a story with the person holding a cigarette in the foreground who is obviously having a break and chilling out however its hard to see but there is a man doing a trick on his skateboard blurred in the background and you could even argue that the cigarette is the restriction to the skater.

When responding to 'Paul's' work I decided to include a part of a skateboard and use the depth of field  and had the part of the skateboard in focus in the foreground while the city is blurred in the background, when I took this photo I thought the skateboard part almost looked like a building in the city and it could represent skateboarding in the city and the contest between the working side of the city and then the escapism of skating in the city. Below you can see my response to 'Theo Paul's' work.

After looking at Theo Paul's work I started to research different documentaries exploring escapism in skateboarding and I came across a documentary called 'All This Mayhem' which was a documentary about two brothers who started skateboarding as a hobby and then became world class athletes, however it shows how they became addicted to drugs and abused them in way in which it affected their performance and they eventually ended up going to prison and one committed suicide. I felt as if this was a demonstration of too much freedom and they abused the freedom they had as they could have become successful world class athletes.

I responded to this by taking a photo of a skater behind the bars of the ramp, I did this to show the bars as the skaters restriction much like in the documentary the bars in the prison were the skaters restriction in that, I feel as if the skateboarder and the bars contrast well as an escapism and restriction and the bars represent the restriction.

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.

Half way review

Ive started my project looking at different peoples perspective on escapism and what they do to escape that reality of life, whether it be a hobby/taking drugs/going out/listening to music or expressing themselves through fashion the possibilities varies. I started with primary research, interviewing different types of people so I could grasp all their different intakes on freedom and how they achieve the sense of freedom or what they do to escape and just forget all the negative things in their life the first person I interviewed was a skateboarder and he said he never feels as free as when he's skating and then has a joint after, so I looked further into this and found some interesting documentaries and artists which were all relevant and it was how he escaped reality I then took a set of photos on what I thought best would show the person I interviewed and others like him as people doing the same thing as you often have the same story. In the future I hope to look at the contrast between escapism and restriction and what restricts people of being free/happy whether it be work/family problems or anything like that, and I hope to capture these situations in photos. I think I will be going down the path of skateboarding and focusing on that as its something I feel I could get a great project of and have a really nice set of photos. I would also say I need to plan and schedule my work better so I am keeping up to date with my blog as well as my sketch book so I am able to produce good photos.

If I was to narrow it down I would ask when you close your eyes and imagine freedom what do you see? Or what were you doing or what do you see yourself doing when you have been most free/happy in your life?