Shoes on table shoot 2

So after thinking of a new location and a story that could be told with this idea of shoes on a table i looked at taking some of the nicer shoes i own and taking them into some more public locations.

 

The location i picked was a coffee shop, with the impression that the shoes were the kind of woman who does shopping and coffee and cocktails with her friends, a real sex in the city kinda girl. However i am not overly confident taking photos in public places, expesh cos it was rather busy in the coffee shop. i only managed to photograph the shoes on my ipod which really isnt the best quality. Again feeling rather unimpressed by my idea of this as i am not achieving the images that i want, or to the qaulity that i want! the colours are off, the resolution isnt the best.

Umbrella indoors - bad luck.

My original idea for this was to photograph people in different situations where it would almost make sence to why they would have an umbrella up inside. (in the libary reading a book about weather?)  However for the most part ive had alot of trouble trying to organise and place models. So ive had to think of alternatives to try and work around this, but unfortunatly pulled a blank. I have also looked into the idea of photographing the opposite, or something that i feel would be like the oppsite, taking a 'wet floor' sign, which suggests a leaking roof in the rain ect, and take it outside and put it next to a puddle.. but while this would make great photographs, i dont think nessisarly people would make the association between the two ideas. This is one im gonna put on the back burner and see if i could delvelope it more at a different stage.

Guru's and Grasshoppers

We showed our work this week to the second years to expand the viewing audience of our work which i found very insightful and rather fun to do. It helped give me another viewpoint of my work as well as allowing me to take a step back from my work and get a better evaluation of my work. The main things to come out of showing my work was:

To work on producing more 'step on' photos and grids, but the general concenus was that the grid images that included gaps and was more randomised then structured work better, while there was abit of debating about what structure of the boarder around the edge of the whole image should be

. The girls who saw the rest of my work also stated that the images that were working best at the moment where the 'he loves me he loves me not' and loved the contrasts and similarities of the images.

It was also suggested that i make a fuss of the page number 13 in the book and using that for a basis for the work ive done looking into the number 13.

As well as them liking the idea of the use of text and imagery, they said a key point would be the cover of the book as well, stating that a plain black book with simple text on the cover maybe more powerful then an image wrap around. And the importance of the name of the book.

100 boots

 

The book 100 BOOTS and accompanying exhibition is a collection of 51 photographs by photographer Eleanor Antin. She photographed 100 black wellington boots across the United states. Each image in a different location. the boots normally in pairs suggest marching or a single line of people walking, it gives almost this impression of someone being there, but not quite. The locations range from normal street views, to inside an art gallery. The fact that even just by placing the boots there suggests more then just a pair of boots putt there, but can suggest that it is doing something, for example looking at something, or waiting for somthing. All the images are black and white, and in the book is just accompanied by the text '100 boots...' and then stating what theboots are doing, making them appear far more animated then a simple inanimate object. After looking this during our book project in year one, when thinking of the idea of the shoes on the table superstition it did automatically make me think back and get drawn back to these images. They are just cute and rather entertaining images following around the story of these 'wandering boots.' It makes me think, what kind of story do i want to create with my images?

Shoes on table- bad luck

According to susperstitions its bad luck to put new shoes on a table. This auto matically reminded me of a book a looked at in the first year called '100 boots' (see write up) and how they use shoes to create a narrtive and almost create the boots to no longer be inanimate. I wanted to look at this and experiement slightly with this. I wanted the shoes to be reflective of the surrounding. The first experiment that i wanted to try was just simply in my room, a students room, so i used trainers (which ironically were new!) and tried to get the look that the shoes are actually doing something at the table. My plan is to have an image of the shoes in the location and creating a dyptic with a close up of the shoes, I got the following images:

However after shooting here i felt rather uninspired, i was very unhappy with the images. They didnt have the high standard feel of the other micro projects that i have taken leeps and bounds. What was the next step? i thought id experiment with the idea of new locations as maybe it was just the location i was not happy with.

Veronica Bailey- Modern Myths

I found this collection when looking through catalogs in the libuary. Veronica Bailey is a photographer and artist. Her work focuses alot around the idea of multiples, collections and the idea of time passing. The work that first got me looking into to her work was the collection entited 'Modern Myths' to which she takes different newspapers and photographs the edges, and references them to greek mythology. This idea that the image is changed from that of a peice of paper to something far more conceptual and deep with the addition of text is very important. The use of text and its influences over the audience is important with this book.

The images themselves are very similistic. the pages of the news paper distorted and twisted to create shapes. The idea that newspapers are used, publications with mearly 24hour shelf life, to create representations of what was popular storys and tales is very well thought out.

top to bottom:
Apollo,
Zeus
Hera

Alternative mirror trial.

One of the peices of feedback i got from tutorials would be to try editing the 'out of focus' images to have a  crack across it to fit in with the idea that its the image on the mirror.
Using exsisting cracked mirror photos i got the following results:

While it does add to the fractured look of the images, i am still unsure about these images in compaired to the undeditied images. Thinkin practically the images will be blown up to fit in the 12 x 12 book, would the editing look of the images just look to... fake? I have tried to steer clear of big photoshop jobbys like this as i dont want to quality of the book to fall due to one photo not having the right standard for such a big book.  I think it works better on the second image, as the cracks were more in focus as the crack images i played alot with the idea of depth of feild. I think this will be decided when it comes to laying out my structure for my book.