Covert & Obscured Exam Theme.

My personal intake on the exam theme. 

To begin I didn't know exactly where I wanted to begin with this theme. I knew that I could take various directions when it came to this exam theme that best suited my style. Although I've been proven to take decent portrait photos, this wouldn't be the direction for me to take, as it wasn't a consistent strong point of mine. The best pathway for me to take would be landscaping and architecture, city life and everyday life. If this being the case it had opened various options and various opportunities to exploit. 

Relating the exam theme to locations I would need to look at the following:

Forests( Foggy and or Misty)

Oxford Street and Busy Areas (Street Life)

Tourist Attractions (Street Life)

Caves and Hidden Passageways

Holes

Junk Yards

Abandoned and derelict buildings

Abandoned building works

Old, Burnt down buildings/ Houses.

Alleyways

EveryDay Travel

All of these ideas linked to both my preference and to the exam theme. It would be possible to have a subject in this photo and hide their true identity to develop some of these ideas further. Nonetheless these locations made for a good, and rather interesting starting point.

To obscure the idea even further it would be a choice to take each photographs from different points of view. For example I could take all my photographs at a birds eye view. A view that many don't get to see.

With all this being said I was hoping to find a photographer who would inspire me. One that shared the same interest in landscaping as I did, but fit into the Covert and Obscured exam theme as well as I did.

                  

Rankin and his 'destroy' project

John Rankin Waddell (Rankin) born in 1966, a british contemporary photographer, whose unique take to fashion and portrait photography, inspires many upcoming photographers to take their photos to new levels, new meaning and a new approach not seen by many.
The 'Destroy' project commenced in dedication to the Youth Music's 10th birthday. In lute of the celebration 70 of the worlds renowned musicians and visual artists were collected together to have photographs taken by Rankin which were then donated to Youth Music. In addition to this, the photographs that were taken of each individual participant had their chosen photograph sent to them, which they then had to personalize or 'destroy' in anyway they wanted and suited them. These participating artists included; Joe Strummer, Ian Brown, Andre 3000, Kylie Minogue, Robyn and such bands as Pete and the Pirates, The Enemy and The View.

This project allowed each individual to express themselves in anyway possible. Just as a photographer expresses his/herself with each photoshoot they do, be it landscape or portraiture, it allowed the photographs to have more meaning and be given a new light different from what the art world had seen before.

Rankin had said that the photos were basically a way for each celebrity to comment on what they thought compared to what the media thought or had scrutinised them for. He commented by saying that the photographs that we had seen in the magazine were nothing but glossy lies. With this being said, letting the participant have some influence and impact on the message of the work, bringing their own individuality to the work. Which brought a new intake to the world of photography.

It was interesting to see the creativity of each celebrity, and what message, if they had one, they wanted to portray. For example the picture on the left is the altered version of Kylie Minogue photograph that Rankin took. In order to alter it she used nail varnish, which she focused around her breats which looks as if being scratched out. This represents her battle with breast cancer and how in turn affected her and how she overcame it. Whereas others simply altered their photos to match their personality or what they see.

Looking at the aesthetics, each photo varied. Some were black and white, like this one on the left, obviously with amazing contrasting tones and tonal value and a well thought about composition. Other photos were taken in colour, with the use of front lighting and key lighting to create different shadows on the body and bone structure, and different colour backgrounds In all this Project would have to be my favourite of all time. The way each artist was able to express themselves naturally and however they wanted, with whatever medium they chose. Ranging from oil paints, thread, red markers and nail varnish is really inspiring, it gave his work more emotion, more intimacy and a new meaning.

Initial Digital Photographs.

Digital Photographs.

All these photos were taken over a period of time. these are several different photoshoots and random photo taking all around london. I took these photos with my Fujifilm HS30 EXR Camera. I used various settings in order to take these photographs. For the night time scenery photographs I used manual (m) To adjust the aperture and shutter speed myself, Along with the EXR setting.

For the dying flowers I used the landscape setting (SP2) and I also used the Adv. setting. These same settings applied when taking the landscape forest photographs, in addition to using the SP1 setting (portrait and skin tone setting). Although I won't be using all these photos, I wanted to have a variety to work from.