Assignment Images & Reflective Commentary

Assignment One

For this assignment I aimed to take around 30 images, but I ended up taking a lot more. I went through them and chose 30 for the preliminary shots. Here they are:

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Contact Sheets

Here are my contact sheets for assignment one.

Contact Sheets

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Reflective Commentary

My first assignment involves making some preliminary shots for my body of work. This has been a good opportunity to try some ideas and get a feel for my initial direction. I am looking at gender inequality. I am using a backdrop of a pilgrimage journey. When this pilgrimage was undertook, it was done by men only, but I am undertaking it as a woman. I have done previous studies into religion and thought this would be a good opportunity to bring my own experience and knowledge into my work. So my aim is to explore the gender inequality not only in landscape photography, but in a global religious, cultural and social sense. 

For this initial assignment, I have solely concentrated on the base images of the pilgrimage. I thought this would be better, as if I can get the base images, I can then work on developing these into my final work along the way. I do not want my images to be ‘perfect’, I want my image to be completely different to the traditional picturesque landscapes we often see. I feel this is important as hopefully it will get the message that all is not right and will catch the viewers attention. When I was looking into landscape photographs, the majority were by men, and they were detail, perfectly composed, very picturesque, I think that is what people usually except when looking at landscape pictures. I want to portray the inequality through my images. I have thought of ways to do this. For example, I have taken blurry, overexposed, underexposed and banal images. I have also tried to taken the images looking up, from a low positions, this is to try and symbolise the unequal footing women are on. 

I choose one location to do this assignment and have experimented with different exposures, compositions and positions. I feel the images have given me a chance to see where I stand. I have choice and can now see what will work for my work. I have chosen one image from each position, these are probably what I will work with. I think this image works well:

It is taken from a low position, is blurry and slightly overexposed. You wouldn’t see this type of image normally. I like the composition, with the gravestone raising up. The church stands proud, and whilst it is out of focus, it is still recognisable. 

I like this image, it is underexposed but I like the framing of the surrounding trees. The sky provides the necessary light to just highlight the church. I think it is effective that way. 

I like this image I took through the gate, as it gives the impression of being locked out and restricted. This is something I could work on to do with gender equality. 

When I first looked at this image, I thought I would delete it but I decided not too. I looked back at it, and yes it is vastly overexposed, and the lighting is casting a motley look onto the building but the more I look at it, the more I like it. The light obscures a lot fo the scene but parts are still visible. You could say it is a banal image, but I like it, and I think this might be one of the images I use later on. 

The problems I had was getting the camera level for the low shots. This was done to my methods, which I can now improve on. 

I do intent to build on this. I want to use text but am unsure at the moment on what. I will experiment with various ones in a later assignment. I might make this into a collage, I think this will be an interesting approach as it could show a variety of viewpoints. I also want to bring an aspect of femininity into my images, this could be in the form of images of women in the collage. These images will be very different from the usual images we see of women in art and in the media. I am thinking at the moment I want them to be presentative of strong women. But I will continue to experiment over time. 

I feel my assignment at the moment covers several genres. It is definitely covers psychogeography, as the pilgrimage is a journey which I am documenting. I also feel it would come under personal Journeys, as this is my personal journey, exploring my own spiritual journey and a journey of landscape photography as a woman. 

In contextual studies I have looked at several visual cultures. I believe mine relates to postmodernism, but going further I believe it fits into the postmodern feminist category. It does have ties to poststructuralism, as I aim to have hidden message and text. It also is relevant to photography in the global age as not only is it covering a global issue, it is also published online and aimed at a global audience. 

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