To Master - Sony Awards
Ideas:
I've been aware of this unit and the competition for a few months now, so I've had a bit of time to marinate and think about the brief/theme of it. I have 2 main ideas I'm juggling at the moment.
Idea 1:
My first idea was to have a subject (more specifically my brother) and take different portrait pictures of him here in England and in Hungary and morph them together, the best way I could describe the look I imagined in my head would be to imagine it as a crack in a mirror, I thought about morphing 2 to 5 images together but now having seen the specifications around the brief I think I might be leaning on the side of my 2nd idea more, but ultimately I do believe this would be a very good way to tell a story. I'm still thinking as to what kind of story I want to tell, wether I want to make it very personal or from someone else's point of view.
Idea 2:
I thought of this idea very recently (today) so it's quite barebones but I think it would work quite well. It would have a similar set up to my last shoot which had a very similar theme to home. I'm thinking about doing a mix of landscape and portrait, but for this one I would want more people in the portraits not just my brother, and I want to ask them what Home means for them.
Idea 3:
Thinking about "Home" in a more literal sense, I plan to go around and take pictures of different houses and house fronts or home fronts to show what different people think of home and how different people make their living space a home. I will be taking pictures from the side of the road to avoid any kind of legal issues, there is arguably a moral issue with this shoot in terms of an invasion of privacy.
I had a talk with my tutor and they recommended that I should probably stick with the 3rd idea for this unit in particular and I tend to agree, it should provide me with plenty of time to prepare and I will be shooting the other 2 ideas towards my FMP while I'm away for a week and a half. I have a few different ideas on how to go about this unit but I will be talking with my tutor about it. (One idea is to shoot different doors but I feel a negative of that would be that it is toot tight and not much to interpret into a story).
I have changed my mind on a few things and also some things have not gone according to plan regarding my shoots in Hungary and my ideas also shifted a bit. For this unit I will be taking pictures if my family, I ended up shifting to a more personal project because of a few talks I had with my tutors. The conversation started with talking about taking a group photo of my family but considering that I don't have a living room I thought of taking a picture of everyone in their own respective spaces.
I'm thinking of telling a story of how migration affects families, you might go from a more spacious family home to a more cramped and smaller space than you were in before.
100 word statement:
Originally from Hungary, my family moved to London 10 years ago due to financial duress. Back in Hungary we had a smaller family home with a living room, but as we moved to London we have had to live in rented properties. As of today we live in Stratford, East London, we don't have a living room in the house we rent, so all of us have our own rooms and spaces, therefore those rooms and spaces serve as the new living room or at least where we spend most of our time. In this project I want to focus on how family dynamics can shift when bigger families are forced to adapt.
Photographer Analysis:
Photographer 1: Emma Hardy, Source: http://www.emmahardy.com
Emma Hardy is a London based photographer who focuses on the nuances of everyday life.
These images I picked from her portfolio are from a personal project that was of her family, but Emma has had several shoots for different companies such as Airbnb, Canon, Robinsons etc.
Her work has been featured in several galleries across London throughout the years, e.g. in 2006 and 2011 it was featured in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Emma has stated that for her personal projects she uses a film camera so I assume that in these examples she did the same as it is a personal project of hers and also the images do feel like film, there is some grain and also all of them have a hint of a yellow hue on them. They are all shot on location and use natural lighting. In terms of lens, all the shots are quite tight so I think it's something like a 50 or 55mm. The subjects in the images are the photographers family members. The images are very sharp and clear and focused on both the subjects and the environment.
The images in this example are all quite dark, I assume that is because of it being a film camera and the photographer mainly relying on natural lighting. These images to me seem like the saturation has been lifted. The image has not been tempered with to make it look older.
The reason these images caught my eye was because they looked interesting and calming to me at least. For my own work I will try and use this kind of tight framing that these images use and also try and get better at colour balance for my work to try and get a sense of calm and maybe nostalgia.
Photographer 2: Hannah Altman, Source: https://www.hannahaltmanphoto.com
Hannah Altman is a Jewish-American artist from New Jersey and now based in Boston, she is a portrait photographer.
Her work has been exhibited and published to many organisations such as New York Times, Vanity Fair, British Journal of Photography and Artforum, her photo book Kavana (2020) is permanently housed in places such as the MoMa Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I think for this series of images the photographer used a digital camera, but I don't know what type, the images are shot on location and are lit by natural lighting. I think they are digital images because they are very detailed and very clear which is uncharacteristic of film cameras/images. The models in the image are the photographer and her mother. The images are composed in a way where the models are very close together except for one, but it still represents the love and close connections to one another, the reason I think these images are striking in their composition is because of that closeness, it feels intimate and sweet.
The images use even tones and have quite a high contrast, also they use quite warm tones and no real changes in saturation.
The reason I liked these images was stated earlier that being the fact that they feel intimate and sweet, and I really like that, and I want to be able to incorporate that into my work with my family going forward.
Photographer 3: Sadie Catt, Source: https://www.sadiecatt.com
Sadie Catt is a British photographer based between Brighton and Bristol, she has worked with clients such as the National Portrait Gallery, Financial Times, Notion, Port and Q-P Magazine. Her personal work has been published by The British Journal of Photography, Booooooom, C41 and Splash & Grab Magazine. Sadie’s first solo exhibition ‘Beekeeper’ was hosted by Serchia Gallery in 2022.
I think in this section of work that I chose she used a digital camera with something like a 50 or 60 mm lens, she used natural lighting for all images and all were shot on location. I think all images are digital and what grain we see on one of them has been digitally added or is simply the use of too much ISO, the reason I think they are digital is because all of them are very clear and sharp. The models in this image are I believe Sadies family members, both men are seemingly in their workwear as we can see some wear and tear on both of their jackets, and they are posed to face the camera. I like the way the second image is composed, we are very close to the subject and he is staring straight into the camera/us.
All images have light tones and are not darkened and I don't see a use of contrast, I don't see wether the saturation has been altered in any way but the images do have a warm tone to them. None of the images look to be edited too much except maybe the image of the girl, where Sadie seems to have tweaked the grain or maybe just used a bit too much ISO to try and get the image to look brighter.
It was the second image that caught my eye mainly, I really liked the composition of it and how the subject is looking straight at the viewer, the subject also adds a calming presence for me, I'm not really sure why. All the images seem to be mainly lit by natural light, in my work I also want to be able to use natural lighting more, and I also want to get better at using it to spice up my photos.
Photographer 4: Tori Ferenc, Source: https://toriferenc.com
Tori Ferenc is a portrait and documentary photographer, born in Poland in 1989. In her work, Tori is focusing on the themes of identity, community, and family dynamics. She is based in London and available to work worldwide.
Some examples of where Tori has worked and where her work has been published, and her achievements:
She has worked with Adidas, AnOther, Bloomberg, British Journal of Photography, Cardhu Whisky and FT Weekend Magazine.
Her work has been exhibited in these locations and what awards she has been given: 2023 - Lucie Foundation Scholarship - finalist
2023 - Women Photograph Project Grants - shortlist
2023 - Rencontres d’Arles, Night of the Year (Arles, France)
2022 - Prix Virginia - Jury’s choice
2022 - Hamburg Portfolio Review
2022 - ShowOff, Photomonth (Krakow, Poland)
2022 - Hellerau Portraits (Dresden, Germany)
2023 - Women Photograph Project Grants - shortlist
2023 - Rencontres d’Arles, Night of the Year (Arles, France)
2022 - Prix Virginia - Jury’s choice
2022 - Hamburg Portfolio Review
2022 - ShowOff, Photomonth (Krakow, Poland)
2022 - Hellerau Portraits (Dresden, Germany)
I think for the images I selected Tori has used a digital camera and a 30 to 50 mm lens, all the images are shot on location and expertly use natural lighting to light up the subjects and some of the space around them, it looks amazing, the reason I thought these are digital images is because there is no visible grain on them, and what can be seen looks more like use of ISO. The models in the image are I believe Toris family, they are all looking away from the camera so it gives the viewer a candid feeling, as if we are looking into their lives, they are also all posed in a way which looks as if they are just going about their day which adds to the candid feeling. The images are all framed quite tightly and all of them use the available natural light to light up the subjects and it looks stunning.
All the images are quite dark with warm tones due to the natural lighting, which I think is most likely the setting sun, they don't seem to be edited in too many ways, maybe some exposure settings were increased or decreased but I'm not entirely sure.
The reason I chose these images was because of the use of natural lighting in them, I really like the way Tori used it to make us focus on the subject and at the same time give it an amazing atmosphere. In my work going forward I would like to get better using natural lighting in the ways that Tori is doing as well, also I like that her photos seem a bit underexposed, I do like to shoot a bit underexposed, it allows me to capture images with good focus and I can fix it later on during editing, but I do realise that that can be a bad way of capturing images.
Photographer 5: Shi San Fan, Source: https://www.lensculture.com/shi-san-fan
Shi San Fan (Original name Fan Lei) is a Chinese photographer, born in 1983 in Sichuan Province, southwest of China. He now lives and works in Shanghai as a freelance photographer.
Awards:
Top 20: 2013 China Contemporary Photo Award
Top 20: 2013 China Contemporary Photo Award
Exhibitions:
2014 Hungry Still, QUAD Gallery, Derby, UK
2014 The Temporary, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, UK
2012 A Lecture Upon The Shadow, Shanghart Gallery, Shanghai, China
2012 Three Shadows Photography Awards Exhibition, Beijing, China
2011 Two of Us, Pingyao Photography Festival, Shanxi, China
2014 Hungry Still, QUAD Gallery, Derby, UK
2014 The Temporary, Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, Manchester, UK
2012 A Lecture Upon The Shadow, Shanghart Gallery, Shanghai, China
2012 Three Shadows Photography Awards Exhibition, Beijing, China
2011 Two of Us, Pingyao Photography Festival, Shanxi, China
I want to talk about some context here for the 2 images as it will explain a bit more about them and it also makes them more striking that way. The idea behind the project was to document the those who were born during the era of the 1 child policy in China. A lot of people from the 80s including Fan himself are only children so growing up they never even had a chance of having a brother or sister.
The 2 images I picked are part of a series that was started in 2009 by Fan and I think that he probably used a film camera in the 2 examples, they don't look sharp like a digital image would look, there is some grain that I can see as well, but as to what type I wouldn't be able to say. In terms of lens I think it could be a 40 to 50 mm lens. All images are on location and use natural lighting, the first one might be a lamp inside the room. The models in the images are only children so they are not twins as one would believe at first glance, they were born during the 1 child policy in China, I think Fan took 2 photos of the models and put the 2 images together, (although in the first image the left image of the model does look like it has been just edited in with photoshop but I'm not 100% sure) that would probably be the easiest way to pull something like this off, the reason these photos are striking to me is because they are framed tightly and there is a lot of focus on the subjects and we can get a glimpse of how they feel.
The images use even tones and are quite warm, I don't think that there was much tweaking in terms of saturation or contrast. I do like the texture of the images, it seems like they were made with an older camera.
The reason these images got my attention was I like the story behind the project and also these ones in particular are quite pleasant to the eyes, I prefer the 2nd one, I like the framing and composition of the left imaginary twin. Going forward I would like to get better at using natural lighting to light my images.
