Holmes' Dunes and The Golden Hour

I like the use of foreground, middleground and background... It gives this picture more depth and makes it more life like. I love it because I always thought that boats like this one look like toys; the colour of it enhances that idea. It looks a bit surreal as well, as it rests on sand and has a little river flowing past it to the sea. 

This needs editing... Possibly a curves adjustment and a bit of a vignette would be nice. I wish that the wheat was backlit a little bit, as I think it would look quite interesting with more texture, and a light behind the wheat would highlight the texture of it more... From the photos below, you will also probably realise that I have a penchant for photographing with a more golden-y tone to it. I like things warmer... Also, this is starting to annoy me a little bit because, while my friend is on the third, she isn't immediate and clear in this photo which I think is caused by the fact that the wheat kind of dominates the photo. I could possibly try to make this better with brightening her up and making her 'pop' out of the photo, but I think it's almost irreparable, regardless of her being in focus and everything else not.

I love the depth in this and it almost has a notion that the dogs are leading the way, connoting that they're braver and more powerful than their owners. It seems very Alpha-Beta to me, even the relationship between the dogs. The way that there are only three things in this photo makes it seems more even and balanced out - discarding any feeling of symmetry. It seems more natural.
I liked getting down low and crouching on the floor (and having muddy, orange knees as a result) and photographing at their level; I had to wait for the exact time to press the shutter down, as it is very easy to make things look awkward when someone/thing is moving towards you.  It was all timing and levels with this one... 

I like both this one, and the very similar one above it... but I can't decide between the texture of the sand in the first one, or the bird silhouette in the second. Regardless, I like the way that the sun makes the middle of the picture look lighter, almost as if there was a vignette around it when, in fact, I didn't edit this at all.

love the reflections in this one, and the contrast between the fluffy, pink flowers and the harsh barbed wire. I was tempted to edit this a lot to bring out the pink a lot more to add a bit more punch to the photo, but I've grown to love it the way that it is.

I feel magical when I point my camera into the sun and see the little circles and colourful smudges that it causes to appear. It's almost like I'm really little again, confronted with something that I really can't explain and really don't care to - I think they are beautiful and I accept, unlike most other things, that they are just there. Make fun of me for making a big deal out of something that a lot of photographers would try to edit out or try to take another picture without it in, fine, but it's just one of those things that I've fallen in love with... Maybe from my love of the sun or surreality, I don't know, but I'm not about to stop and try to figure that out either.

Because I don't have photoshop, and only a Macintosh variant of it, I didn't do a vignette per se, but I did a smudgy thing around the edges, which I really don't regret because I feel like making this photo any darker would only take away from it, as the picture has a golden, wholesome quality to it at the moment, and making the edges just smudged goes with the theme of the colours blending in the sunset and it doesn't add any more darkness which more goes with the wholesome quality I was talking about. It also feels more lighthearted and childish... It feels like he's going on an adventure; and I don't want to make his adventure have any darkness in it.  

Again with the magical, lovely, colourful circle smudgey things. This child has beautiful hair.

Ending with a picture of myself; taken by the lovely N.Street.  How strange the feat of death is - we never fear sunset. 

Looking at these pictures I just can't help but feel an optimism. Summer is coming. I'm soon off to boarding school. This is my clear horizon; it can't be obscured by anything, not anymore. Not even clouds. They come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.


I've learned from this photo shoot the effect that shooting into the light has, and I've realised that it's easier to photograph when you're really passionate about something.  This was such an enjoyable experience.. Though I don't see how it could have gone badly  - in such a beautiful place with my best friend. It's a new kind of beginning for me... For so long I've felt like I've been stuck in one place, going nowhere; doing nothing of value, but this symbolises clarity and endless horizon for me. 

Heart Full of Fire

 These photos are the outcome of my earlier photographs of fire and self portraits. These photos actually went better than I thought they originally would.
The idea behind them is that, when taking a self portrait, I don't want to be a person who just looks at the camera and pouts and looks pretty - I want people to see me; who I really am (forgive the cheesiness, please).
Now, who really am I? My thought process went as follows: *Look in the mirror* That's me - my reflection. I carried on with my day. As I was taking off my makeup and brushing my teeth that night, I looked in the mirror again and saw someone different. Now, how could it be that my reflection is me if it constantly changes? I know that I change a lot, but there's got to be something more cement about me... Right? I think that the cemented things are on the inside. You can dye your hair, you can insert silicon into your chest, you can cake makeup on your face until you're barely recognisable, but you can't cover up what you are inside. So, from there, I decided to photograph souls... Fire, and shadows, are what I imagine a soul would be like... A fire, moving, hot, powerful and bright... Seemingly alive, but not confined to a body.

As for the actual photographs, I love the orange - and, although I know many people think it's tacky to have everything in monochrome except one thing in colour, but I think that these photos are possibly an exception as they are not just made up of one photograph, but two layered on top of each other using photoshop... So all is hopefully forgiven on that front?
As you can see, I have used two of the same self-portraits in the background of these first photos, but I couldn't decide which one I like better... In the one above, I like the shape that the fire makes, and the dramatic bright yellows; it reminds me of fireworks, yet is subtle in the way that it doesn't consume my face like the other picture below does. Also, I like the contrast that the photo above has that is caused by the sudden and dramatic bursts of fire, whereas the other photo with the same face isn't nearly as contrasting - the entire photo is pretty much tinged in oranges and yellows. I also used the rule of thirds as my face is off-centre and the majority of the flame is on the third.
I have to say that, even though the photograph of a face is the same one used in the photograph above, I dislike the second photo's expression - there's something about the shadows and textures that make my mouth seem a little bit weird... Though, that being said, I think that the photo would probably die without the shadows and textures. I like this photo a lot pretty much purely because of the concept behind it - it's taken of the heart of the fire. You can even see the blue heart of it just above my eyebrow. I think it's relevant to the topic, because it's all about what's inside of us (for me, anyway) and this photo is taken of what's inside the fire; and just looking at it makes me feel a bit special, because it's not something that you see every day and, without my camera, I would never have been able to get as close to the flames as I had to to take this photo (thank God for zoom). Compositionally, maybe not my finest work, but, like I said, it's more about the concept for me. I think this photo would probably work better if my face was a little bit more dominant, meaning it was darker; creating more of a contrast, or if the background was less busy. I think, after writing all of this, I like the other photo more... There's something about simplicity that I just love.

Next up we have a slightly different one... The first, actually, that I'd done. It was just a trial, really, to see if it would work, and I guess it did because I decided to try my hand at photoshopping more of them. This one I like a lot because you can't really tell that it's a fire at first. I also like the way that, on my cheek, is a completely burned out piece of wood so that it looks like my cheek has a different texture to the rest of my face.. Like it's cracked, or something. With this photo, I altered the opacity of the face, attempting to make it the precise colour of ash which would, in turn, link in with the fire and ember-y quality of the texture on my cheek.

At any rate, I put these photos in monochrome with the obvious goal of 1) being able to clearly see the fire in the background, 2) so that there were no colours that clashed, and 3) to add simplicity and contrast to the photos. There are more to come, but I have no photoshop at home so I'm going to have to wait for a little while before I can do anything more with them.

I'm thinking that I might actually use this sort of idea for my final project of 'I, me, mine' but, also, touching on my other ideas of souls - that they're kind of shadowy, disembodied versions of ourselves - I thought that I could take photos on a slow shutter speed of myself and slowly move the camera around so that I come out a bit smudgy looking and ghosty-like... Maybe I could mix the two ideas together? I don't know if that would work, but it's worth a shot. I could also do things with smoke, which is a less literal mixture of the 'fire idea' and the 'ghost idea'. Let's see how this turns out.

Two Sides to Every Coin

 These two photos have a very narrow depth of field, because (more for this reason than most), I hide behind my hair a lot, which, I feel is easier to let people see than my face. I have problems with making eye contact, even with a camera, which I initially thought was going to pose a problem when taking a self portrait. Luckily, I was wrong.


...At least with these photos.


I put these photos in inverse because I want to show that there are two sides to every coin, and, when I was trying to do the 'What Makes Me, Me?' brainstorm in my sketchbook, I kept thinking of how hard it is to define a person - something that is ever changing; ever growing. 


I put these photos in black and white to add simplicity and make you concentrate on the shadows and the shapes created by the light and the heightening of contrast on photoshop. 


Also, for me, I think that seeing things in inverse makes you notice things that you hadn't noticed before; for example, in the normal photo it's hard to see the shape of my nose, but in the other photo it's easier because the shadow underneath it is white and more eye-catching.


I like the pensive quality to this photo, which is created by the third of space in front of my face. Also, having this space around me makes me the only focus of this photo... On top of this, the matte, plain background contrasts nicely with the texture of my hair and my skin colour.

 These next two photos were more difficult for me to have taken... I felt like I was looking into a giant eye when looking into the lens. I kept finding that either my concentration wandered, or I thought of those people on Facebook and Twitter who pull stupid faces in their profile pictures and kept smiling, feeling like a wannabe.


I decided that that would never be me... At least not anymore. The emotion in this photo is real. Why take a photo of yourself if it's not of yourself?


I have come to the conclusion that my favourite contrast in the two photos is in the eye... There is something haunting about an inverse eye - more haunting than say, an inverse ear, or an inverse toe. It has an emptiness in it, but, at the same time, it also makes you notice (upon comparing them) the different shades in the eye more and, on top of that, the little reflections of light that give the eye more life. Though in spite of noticing the eye twinkling livelihood of the eye through this, the inverse one I have decided looks quite dead. So it seems that the shades and tones were not the only things to have been reversed in this photo...

I was pleasantly surprised with these photos, as usually whenever I see a 'posed' photo of myself, I cringe internally (being the insecure fifteen-year-old-girl that I am).


Once again, my hair is partially covering my face, like in the previous photos and only part of my face is shown because I don't like my mouth and, besides, I wouldn't know what to do with it in a photo (it's crooked and my natural mouth position is not quite covering my teeth).


I also like the fact that my face is actually the only component of this picture... My face is completely surrounded by black (or white, in the inverse), which draws attention to my face and nothing distracting in the background.


However, the inverse showed the shiny-ness on my nose as a black splodge, which I'm not quite satisfied with, but I guess you can't have everything. Just goes to show you that putting photos in inverse, even temporarily, can make you notice things you didn't know were there. That is a lesson learned for next time... That, and get rid of shine before you do curves & levels on photoshop... It can get pretty nasty if you don't.


Also, I don't quite know how this happened, but next time I will do all I can to avoid it, but there is a dark splodge under my left eye... (your right) I don't know how it got there, but now it's had its fun and needs to leave my photograph alone.

So. Light me or Dark me? First we must decide which is which.

Original? Please.

I had another epiphany today when thinking about the title 'I, Me, Mine'. I was thinking about belongings and what actually belonged to me, and no one else?

It dawned on me that nothing is actually ours forever - it can all be taken away from us:

Our health
Our appearance
Our possessions
Our loved ones

These are all things that I had originally thought were mine. But no. The only things that are truly mine and mine alone and can never be anyone else's, are my soul (if you believe in that sort of thing), and my past.

When I think of my past, I immediately think of my childhood (because I'm not really even past that stage of life yet) and how much it was influenced by my parents; their relationships, their ideas, their aspirations and, in the end, their divorce. I was hauled around from continent to continent, country to country, house to house, depending on where they wanted to go next. My stability was my family, and now even that's been taken away.

So now, whenever I see my little brothers' toys strewn around the garden, or their baby photos hanging on the walls, I feel a gaping hole inside me. I feel like I have been robbed of something that is a basic right - the right to grow up slowly.

This is the outcome of my childhood idea:

The four pictures above were taken in the (attempted) style of Sophie Calle (see research in sketchbook or short photo and explanation below). Now, personally I hate using ideas or techniques from other artists or photographers and I really don't like that the GCSE curriculum encourages you to do that. That being said, however, Sophie Calle's work is a bit too scandalous not to get caught up in.

...Kind of trying to be like this with the harsh light (taken with flash) as I think that a harsh light makes you concentrate on the things in the photograph more, making the objects seem so much more flawed and the situation more chaotic or, in my case, decrepit and my so-called 'childhood' hasn't been thought about in a long, long time, and has broken with abandonment and disuse.

These next two photos aren't really in the style of anyone... I just love the innocence on my brother's face in the first one; I think that extreme close-ups should only really be done frequently on innocent faces. It's hard to get a bad photo when all of his emotions are on the surface, almost touchable. He's not hiding anything. Except maybe a few Haribo.

I think that these photos are nice together because, while they're both sweet (not shown in the dark with harsh lighting to make it seem disturbing), they both have a very small depth of field and both contrast nicely with each other as one is in monochrome whilst the other is very colourful. They both are quite child-like in the sense that they really don't have an ulterior meaning, they are just them, as they are, because a child doesn't see the point in being anyone else, much less know how to do it.

I always imagine a soul as like an inner flame - something moving, hot, seemingly alive but with no body or cells.

SO I photographed fire:

This one is probably my favourite of the bunch (and it's a close call)... I just love the textures in it, and the patterns in the wood. To me, it feels like a heart... It was the centre of the fire, and, without my camera, I would never have been able to see into it (it was too bright and too hot for me to get that close to it). I think it's beautiful, and that it's been made even more beautiful in the way that 1) most people ignore this sort of thing and 2) it's not something that you see every day. I love the contrasts of shadows in this picture and the way that the fire tricks you into thinking that it is out of focus, but the solid pieces of wood assure you that the photo really isn't out of focus at all.

My next idea, carrying on from this: 

I think, after this went quite well, I am going to try and put monochrome photos of faces (those of my family, friends and me) behind the photos of fire and then change the opacity of the fire pictures so that you can still see the faces behind. I thought that would be a good idea because instead of just being pictures of fire, like they are now, they will represent a soul more and it will have more relation to 'I, Me, Mine'.

Liquid Sunshine

After it pretty much raining continuously for about two weeks, I have been from screaming to crying to receding into myself to finally convincing myself that rain was just 'liquid sunshine'. I put on a brave face and walked my dog a few days ago... It was not pretty. My wellies - which are knee-high (yes, I'm Californian and own wellies... I know, it's wrong on so many levels, right?) - nearly flooded with water as I sloshed along the path that I usually walk my dog on. It is no longer a path but a small river and I am left drenched, unhappy and feeling like I want to sue someone for this weather. 

At least it's nice and green here... If it wasn't, I would find somebody to sue.

But, hey, it's liquid sunshine. Kind of. Not really. Good photo-ops though.

Sign outside the front of our house... Still not sure who put it there. We have crazy neighbours... 

These ducks climbed into my house through my dog's dog-door.

Hiro

Finally a bit of sun. California girl and England do not mix well. I've never been this pale before in my life.

Moss and a snail I found. The snail looked comfy so I took a picture of him.

My Face Isn't a Canvas, Thanks

Recently, I've begun a mission to un-educate myself (as some of you may know from my other blog), meaning, basically, to do what I want to do, instead of agreeing to stuff that I think is stupid just because I'm a teenager.

I started my mission by deleting my Facebook and Twitter. Now I'm a real person, through and through. Not a virtual one. I mean, how superficial are those sites? The basis of Twitter is basically to post multiple statuses (stati? ....statuses) about menial (....)stuff and expect people to care about it. Facebook is basically now a popularity competition about who can get the most 'friends' or 'likes' or whatever.

I don't have any problem with people who do use these sites, but personally I feel ridiculous sharing statuses about all the menial things that are going on in my pretty uninteresting life. I also hate the sense of popularity and friendship that it lulls you into... I have talked to people on Facebook that I've never talked to once in my life. It makes friendships easy; friendships aren't meant to be easy. You're meant to work for them, and it's the work that you both put into a friendship that makes it strong and comfortable and stops people from just turning away.

It's a whole world that exists that doesn't exist. I know that doesn't make any sense literally, but I cannot think of any other way to describe the social phenomenon that is the virtual social network of 2012.

The thing that scares me most about things like Facebook and Twitter is not that it's all that a lot of people talk about, or that there's more people on Facebook today than there was people on Earth 400 years ago, it's that there are now gatherings and parties that are designed for people to go to specifically exchange names with people so they can pick them up as friends on Facebook. It's like this virtual world is seeping into the real one.

So, now that you've caught up and I have finished ranting about social networking sites, the next step to my un-education is not wearing foundation. It's bad for your skin and, I think, bad for your self esteem. It's hard for me to give it up; my skin is my biggest insecurity, but I can't help but feel guilty when I put make up on in the morning - I feel like I'm being dishonest. And for what? For who? I don't care what random people I see on the street think about my skin, and the people that I would like to surround myself with wouldn't care what my skin looks like anyway.

I get that it's expected now for women to wear makeup, but why? How can makeup cover up ugliness? It cuts clean to the bone.

So I have decided to become someone, not something.

My Face Is Not A Canvas

Life's too short to waste time on pretense. Laugh, and enjoy life the way you want to. Because, in the end, if you don't love yourself, then who will? There is beauty in imperfection, and until you realise that, you will never be able to truly love or be loved. If you love me, you're going to have to take the good with the bad.