Crit Notes 22 Nov

On the 22nd of November we had our final pin up and crit where I brought in some of the exterior and interior shots that I was struggling to edit down to four.

Notes I took during the crit

• Need to think about sequencing and the order you would display images on a wall
• Avoid having photos together that look too similar
• Think more about potentially cropping images, look for distracting areas that could be cropped out
• Always try different orientations when taking the photographs. Think about ways of presenting them such as on a magazine cover or double page spread etc.
• Shouldn't be able to tell how tall the photographer is. Try a variety of vantage points and angles

• The images I have chosen for all eight except The Exchange Gallery photograph have a similar dark and moody aesthetic. Could replace this image with another to keep the images more consistent

Above is a comment I received from a fellow student who noticed a similar style across the final four interior images we narrowed down in the crit. I was planning on using the photograph of the gallery in my final four however when I put all four images together the gallery shot stood out too much as it is so bright and white compared to my darker photographs. So to keep my series consistent I have decided to replace this photograph with another shot of inside the Waterman's Rest which is of the inside of the windows which look out onto the harbour.

Final four exterior photographs

Overall I am pleased with my exterior images and I really like the consistency across them created by them being more dark and moody in nature. 

Final four interior photographs

I am happy with my final shots of interiors although I do feel I could of tried taking some interior shots using artificial lighting, as all of my final photographs are lit by daylight. 

Penzance Train Station

While on my way back from visiting the Liberties exhibition I returned to Penzance train station in the dark and it was really atmospheric looking down into the empty station with the soft lighting on the platforms. So I decided to capture this scene as I have not yet taken any exterior photographs at night for this project. 

This was one of my favourite shots from this shoot as I really like the more pink colours from the lights against the greys on the platform. I also like how these leading lines created by the platforms work in the composition in drawing the eye up into the horizon of the image. 

Above is another one of my favourites from this shoot that I will definitely be using in my final four exterior images as I really like how the lighting has turned out. As it reminds me of the kind of effect Gregory Crewsdon would get in his photographs which I really love. I also think this image is really atmospheric with the dark void of negative space surrounding the platform. 

Exchange Gallery Penzance

In brainstorming ideas for potential interior/exterior shots, I started thinking about places that particularly interest me and would make more personal sense for me to photograph. As taking landscape photographs for example despite being able to appreciate them they are not something I am particularly motivated to shoot, as I don't really enjoy that kind of photography. 

I really enjoy visiting galleries and exhibitions so it made sense for me to go and shoot a gallery and I had planned to visit the Liberties exhibition at The Exchange in Penzance, so decided to shoot that. The work displayed was contemporary in nature and a lot of it was highly conceptual, so against the white exhibition space it makes for some really intriguing images. I really experimented with framing the space in this shoot as I didn't want my photographs to focus on one piece of art for example and instead the actual interior space which is used for exhibiting contemporary art. 

This is my favourite image from this shoot as it doesn't draw too much attention to any particular piece of work and gives a real sense of this large exhibition space. A big issue in a lot of my photographs was that this piece in the middle of the room was too distracting being such bright shades of red and pink which the human eye is most sensitive to. So in remembering the work of Saul Leiter that I looked at, I worked on only showing a small accent of this colour so it wouldn't demand all the attention in the image. Because of this I think I will use this one as one of my four interior shots. 

Godrevy

I noticed after my landscape shots the other day that I was making sole use of light around the afternoon so decided for my next few images to try shooting landscapes at a different time of day. So I decided to go shoot Godrevy at six in the morning to capture the sun rising over the cliffs. I brought my tripod to try shooting some long exposures but it was so windy on top of the cliffs that I was not able to do this. Instead I played around with compositions and framing colour in my photographs. 

This was one of the photographs I felt was more successful from this shoot and was taken looking down at the beach at Godrevy. Much like the shot that was my favourite landscape image taken in Flushing I like how there is lots of detail in the foreground. However I do think it is a shame the lighthouse is not more in focus which is a result of me using a low f/stop for this shoot to help deal with the lower light conditions. 

I think this was my most successful image from this shoot as I really like the richness of colour I managed to capture and how the darker quality to this photograph gives it a really moody feel. I think the white lighthouse breaks up the two halves of the image well and looks more an impressive structure with the portrait orientation I used for this shot, as I also tried photographing from this angle with using a landscape orientation. 

Flushing

While I was doing my interior shots in flushing I noticed that the sky was particularly interesting, so I decided to try taking some landscape photographs as well. It was cloudy where we were but across the estuary in Falmouth there was a patch of sunshine peeking through the clouds which was surrounded by dark clouds where it was raining over the town. This made for some very dramatic lighting in my shots and I spent a lot of time playing around with this light and the foreground created by the rock pools where I was in Flushing. 

This was my favourite shot form the shoot as I really like the colours from the rocks and how all the tones work in the image. It is a little dark here but I have brought the brightness up in the foreground and I feel it would look a lot better in print. 

I also decided to take some detail shots capturing colour and signage in Flushing village, inspired by the colourists I have looked at. I do quite like these as detail shots however after discussing them with Gretchen they are not particularly strong enough for my series of four exterior shots and they focus too much on this signage in the image. Which I shouldn't rely on too much in my photographs.