Module 4 – Week 4 – Webinar 2 – Andrews Masters Journey

Feeling again enthused and inspired by this second webinar of module 4. Many comments both positive and constructive with considerations and research to follow up on.

Firstly the below gallery contains the images of my shoot with ‘Nagini’ I presented at this webinar on Tuesday 23rd June.

The images were very well received with comments of construction and positivity.

The images of the snake were found to be too busy and too much going on making it difficult to focus and maintain a stable depth of field. Maybe removing or lessening the flowers in the scene could help here. I also want to experiment on a black background as well as these previous shots on a white background.

One suggestion from a peer came to just have a singular skull and then photograph the snake with that skull. The first thing that springs to mind with here is combining the snake with the previous images I had taken of skulls on black.

In this next gallery are images I took in direct response to guidance from the first webinar to try and use more of the image space considering background subject and foreground.

The reception of these images was agains strong with positive comments and constructive critique. The image space was possibly too busy and the flowers too numerous in colour causing a distraction for the viewer.

I need to consider removing items and reducing their present in the frame. Reducing elements and making the space less full.

Guidance from Laura came through creating this idea of a stage space with different elements throughout the scene and lighting it like this. This could be done by using redheads and honeycomb grids as well as making a modifier for the LED panel.

Using solitary intensive colours such as reds in the darkness would really help to create that isolation and separation.

My final set of images displayed in this webinar were the images of the rats on colour paper. These are shown in the gallery below.

These were also well received by the group with one person questions if these had been scanned rather than photographed which makes me wonder if this could be a side experiment to use a scanner to capture images of the rats.

From here I need to make some decisions on direction and commit. I feel flowers have been done a lot and maybe it is time to reduce and move away from using flowers. I still have many ARTIST copy images to create and I feel this is an important process as it well rounds my investigations but also springboards towards my own practice.

There were some artist recommendations from this webinar and an image for each of their works is shown below. There were also some recommendations to seek out photographers and artists who work with skulls with a focus on their lighting.