Client Expectations.

The brief I choose is on photography and is called ‘Reflecting your world’. It asked me to create a series of 12 images looking at the aspects of my region with emphasis on history, landscape or architecture. The brief also said I must include actual reflections.

I decided my region was the town I lived in, Peebles, and decided to look into the town’s history, landscapes and architecture and how these are linked together. I wrote down a list of historical buildings and idea’s for reflection sources. 

I then looked at other artists for inspiration; I looked at the works of M.C Esher. Esher’s work influenced my early stages of this unit and experimentation with a glass ball, how reflections work, and how to use them in  a scene that is already there. For example my images with sunglasses were influenced by Esher, having them set up on a wall or bench, rather than on a face. I also looked at a painter called Simon Hennessey who painted reflections in sunglasses. Hennessy’s paintings influenced my photographs a lot because I used my own sunglasses as a reflection source in quite a few images. I then looked at photographer Richard Heeks, his work was focused around the reflection in bubbles and this is another thing I tried out for myself. Another artist I looked at was Daniel Kukla, who used mirrors on an easel to give the illusion of a painting. I liked this idea and it adapted it to using broken mirrors to distort the subjects in the images. All these artists helped getting the ball rolling for my work in this unit.

Because the brief I choose is photography based I spent most of my time taking photographs. I researched a lot about composition and learned a lot about line, shape and how they play apart in the composition of an image. I was quite interested in texture and pattern and how I could capturing it, I did this in a lot of my images, for example where I placed the sunglasses or the drops of rain on the mirror  or wine glass I was using. 

I also did a few drawings from primary and secondary sources, and sketched a few ideas I had. I used the grid on my phone camera to help with the composition in my images, and edited them on IPhoto just playing with contrast and highlights. I tried to use my eye when taking the images so I would not need to crop them as much later.

I did have a few problems with coming up with reflection sources in places I wanted to photograph, but tried to get around that the best I could by doing more research and trying out new techniques. I did question myself a lot on how much of a reflection do I need in an image, in the end I just went with my gut feeling and if I thought an image was strong or not. 

A few times I did feel a bit lost and was very aware that I was a novice at photography but again I just did more research on composition, lighting, line, shape and texture.

I do think my final images are fit for purpose, as they all contain actual reflections and are of historic, architectural or scenic places in Peebles. 

The brief did not give me an age range but I tried to add a mixture of images that would appeal to all ages. I was also asked to have images to attract business as well as tourism and I tried to make sure I added some images that showed tourists, locals and business’s that are already in Peebles and have been for years.

I think if i could do this again , i would have taken more images and tried the same buildings in multiple different ways, using different sources of reflection. 

I would also have tried to find more reflection sources and come up with more creative ways to capture Peebles. My final images are presented digitally but I have also printed out 3 of my strongest ones as I think having both gives you a better feel for the image. As well as shows how it will look either way, depending on if the clients would want to print them or not.