Carpe Diem

This image is (in my opinion) the best photograph i have ever taken, 3 different members of my family have it on the wall in their house, it makes me rather proud! It was taken as part of the theme "Sanctuary", and to me, this image is the closest thing i could ever get to sanctuary. The waves are bellowing in and the water and foam are running up the sand to catch your feet, but everything is calm. All you can hear is the "shhhhhuuuuussssshhhhh"ing of the waves as they cascade onto the beach, that is true escapism to me. This place, the beach, nature, walks in the moonlight, these things are my sanctuary. This image is very personal to me as it connects me to all the feelings i have about living in a busy place and having an extrememly busy life, and in comparison the time you get in between all those busy times to "get away" and pretend to be whoever you want to be. This image is very powefull, the harsh contrasts make it stand out beautifully, the way the groynes are silhouetted against the water and the sky is very eye catching. They make strong lines of force down the image, it seperates the image up into sections and let you appreciate each little area one by one.. I have named the image "Carpe Diem" meaning "Sieze the day" in Latin. This image makes me re evaluate my life, and think of all the good things. Dont waste your life, make the most of it. Carpe Diem.

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

This is another image from the trip to the "Yorkshire Sculpture Park". This sculpture was a bit strange and i didnt really know what to make of it, so i thought a nice picture with a lot of surrounding landscape and scenery would make it look very out of place, which it does. I think this is great as it shows quite a great contrast with a natural oudoor garden and a rather odd man made object. I sat on a wall here where i am stood waiting for ages to get a clear shot of this sculpture as people kept walking down the path, walking towards the sculpture and just generally getting in my way! As in the other image from The Yokshire Sculpture Park, the clouds looks very angry and rainy, but on this one you can see all the different layers within the clouds, you can see that there is bright and sunshiney cloud at the top of all the dingy rain filled cloud that is ready to burst out. This effect is really nice as it fills the sky with lost of different colours, shades and layers, it makes the sky much more interesting than just being "sky on a rainy day", the sunshine is breaking through, and i think that later on in the day we even had a rainbow :)

Human Form - Movement

This is another image from the project i did for my Art Academy on "Human Form". It is an image from the same shoot as i did with my friend who is a professional model and dancer in Paris. Towards the end of the shoot i decided to focus on movement in the images, as the model is a dancer i thought this would be very fitting as it will show off her skills and make her profession more apparent to the viewer. The movement aslo helps to experiment with the different shapes that the body can get into and the different ways in which it can bend. In this particular image i was looking at how the body flows, you can see a definate arc in the curve of her arms, back and legs. It flows from her fingertips, right down her body and finally into the leg that is placed firmly on the floor of the studio. I used the studio at college to take this image in and chose the position of the ligthing very carefully to create shadows on the back wall, i thought these would help to create the illusion of movement and also beam the shapes and curves of her body up large on the wall.

Discord

This image was taken as part of my A2 Photography exam preperation. The exam theme was "Discord", i was experimenting with different idea's of discord to see which one i liked the best. For this idea i had chosen to look at portraiture, but to put a twist on it and to look at strange things that relate to portraiture, like this for example, the portrait of a cat, rather than the conventional "human" portraiture. I thought that upon hearing the words "portraiture" people would immidiately think the collection would be images of human beings, i was going to include pictures of Barbie, Animals, Drawings and Flowers. I thought this may mess up people's idea of what portraiture actually is, and force them to take the same discordant view as i had and begin to see everything as a possible portraiture. I came up with this idea after un-knowingly studying my cat over a period of time and realising that she has very human mannerisms and i could imagine her one day just simply talking to me. I didnt actually use this idea as my final exam focus as i came up with a different one that i felt was stronger, although i took some interesting images during the preperation of idea's period.

London Fashion Week

This is an image i took on a fashion shoot with my friend Fay for my A2 Graphics project, themed "London Fashion Week. The shoot was suppose to be quite a natural shoot and not too posed as most fashion advertisements are, i wanted to do this one with a twist, to move away from conventional "fashion advertising". I got Fay to do quite normal things in the woods like just walking around and pulling branches off tree's. In this image i had just got her to throw a big stick into the iced over pond you can see towards the front of the image, she's running away from it just incase it smashed the ice and flug up and hit her! I really like this image as it can have two different meanings, on the one hand it looks very mischeivous and as though she is doing something that she shouldnt be, just like she was. On the other hand it looks like quite a threatening image, as though she is running away from something quite scary, as though there is something chasing her into the forest. The area she is running in to is also quite threatening and scary, it is very dark around the top of the image and also at ground level, the only thing you can really see is the small areas of light shining through the tree's. The image does look quite scary and threatening overall, it gives off the feelings that there is something you cannot see, something behind the camera that the model is scared of.

Trafalgar Square

This image was taken in Trafalgar Square in London on a visit there in December 2009. I was waiting outside the National Gallery for some of my friends and i stared taking pictures. it was quite early in the morning as you can see from the image with the sun being quite low in the sky. There weren't very many people around, as i guess it was too early for most people, there was a thin mist/low fog over the area, all these elements clubbed together to give the square a mysterious feel. I think i captured this feeling well, the image looks quite spooky as though there is something going on that you're not quite sure about. The bulidings are all plunged into darkness as the sun lights up specific areas and throws shadows around in strange ways. The direction that the sun is coming from and also the direction of the shadows makes the image look quite confusing as it looks as though it is different times of the day from the different areas of the images.

The Three Muskateers

This was an image taken on a trip to the "Yorkshire Sculpture Park" in October 2009, the trip was a first hand visit for my Art Academy project. This was a sculpture just outside the entrance to the art gallery. I though the setting and placement of the sculpture was very interesting, there are a few horizontal lines across the image, the hedge and also the line of the grass. The weather was also i little bit cold and temperamental with rain and snow showers so the clouds looked very angry and grey. i loved the way they looked on a photograph, you could tell there was rain waiting inside them and they seemed as though they were lurking around the skies above waiting for the most inconvenient time to empty themselves! The light from the skies also shone through at funny angles due to the thickness of the clouds, here it has been thrown onto the back left hand side of the white sphere shaped scultpure's, this is throwing a lovely stretched oval shaped shadow onto the grass infront. I look at this image and just think of mathematics as it seems as though it is full of shapes to mee, circles lines, clouds, etc. It looks a bit eary and spooky aswell with the moody sky and shadows, ther is a somewhat sinister feeling lurking somewhere within it.

Human Form - Tragedy

This is another one of the images from my "Human Form" theme in Art Academy. This image is of one of my friends who live in Paris, she is a professional model and also a professional dancer at The Lido. i wanted to do a shoot with her as her body is perfectly toned and muscular in different places (due to dancing) than most other people. This image is a personal favourite of mine, i really like the way she is disengaged with the camera, but her body language still implies that she is aware of its presence. The way in which her limbs are placed looks very posed, again implying she is aware of the camera being there. Her foot has been brought to the front of the image to emphasise the length of her body, this links back to her profession, being a model. The tattoo of two gecko's on her foot is quite eye catching, it draws your eyes up the image into the rest of her body and finally up to her head. I have put the image in black and white as i feel it looks more tastefull, it was also done in the studio and therfore the background isnt very interesting so i felt as though there was nothing to draw attention to apart from her body. The desaturation of the image has drawn attention to this, it has made it dark and made her stand out well from the background, making her the mail focal point of the image.

Shepard's Delight

This is another image that i took during Summer 2009. I was out walking with my grandparents one evening, just as darkness was about to fall and the sky was lit up with wonderfull colours from the sinking sunlight. The beautiful colours looked wonderfull on the sky, and as i looked accross the river bank, there were a line of tree's. These tree's were silhouetted against the bright colours of the sky, i thought these tree's added interest to the sky, giving the image depth and layers rather than just being the sky. I think this image is also very calming. It was a very warm evening and there was a very still feeling in the air, i think this is reflected by the stillness of the trees and the presence of only a few clouds.

Sanctuary - Whitby

This image was taken on a trip to Whitby and was under the theme "Sanctuary". Everytime i look at this image it makes me feel very calm and relaxed. i think it is because the image itself looks very calm and tranquil, the only thing causing distruption is the small boat making a few gentle ripples in the water. The water look otherwise quite calm. It was taken during a trip to Whitby, it was quite a warm day and the sun was shining fairly brightly, you can tell this from the lightness of the sky and also the reflections of light on the water. The location is well away from the main tourist area of Whitby and it was very peacefull here, i think this picture reflects the quiet/peacefull feelings i had about the place. The reason i have looked at it as a "sanctuary" is due to the quietness and the area being very picturesque, it felt like a place you could escape from your normal life to, a place that you could get peace and quiet and pretend you were whoever you wanted to be for a short space of time.

Human Form - Blue Suede Shoes

This image was taken in a series for my Art Academy "Human Form" project. I was focussing in on fashion in this image, being the reason why i included shoes and then also kept the shoes blue in colour, and made the rest of the image black and white - so the shoes would stand out more. This image was taken in colour and then i changed it to black and white as i felt it looked much more tastefull. The model looked "nude" in black and white as apposed to being "naked" in colour, i didnt want the image to look tacky and slaggy, and i think the pose in which the model is in looks quite confrontational, so the black and white calms the "tack" down. I also think that the image looks better in black and white as the tones make up a clear definition between the background of the image and the body of the model, there is quite a dark area around the outline of her body, which help her to stand out from the background. The shoes i have left in blue and then also increased the saturation so they would stand out and be the first thing that you notice about the image.

Summer Leaf

This is an image that i took towards the end of Summer 2009. I found the leaf on the grass area towards the front of my house, i thought the contrast between the two colours was very dramatic. The green is a complimentary colour to the red, this helps the red to stand out much more and become more appealing to the viewer. The general feeling of this image is very calm and tranquil. The bright colours make it look quite loud at first glance but then when you look at it for a longer length of time you can see that the image is very calm and there isn't any movement, all the grass and the leaf are completely still. The image makes me feel very happy, the bright colours remind me of summer and the warm weather and all the good times i've had. The image acts as an emotional trigger.