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When taking photos, photographers often have to consider 5 elements – face, pose, outfit, surroundings and props. These combined can give better context to a photograph, and the lack of these can remove any prejudice of the subject. For example, passport photographs require a blank expression, no props, basic clothing and a blank background – this removes all reason to judge the person in the photograph. In artistic forms of photography, these elements give us context to the photograph, especially in marketing photography.

A perfume advertisement for example could show a young woman with flawless skin and makeup, high end clothing, a perfect manicure and holding the perfume bottle in a field of flowers. This would indicate that the perfume is designed for young women, smells floral and that it will make you feel like the woman looks in the photograph.

In the photo below taken by Seamus Nicholson, it shows a woman standing in the street in front of shop. Using the elements to analyse this photograph we can guess what the photographer was thinking when taking the photo. We can see a young woman, dressed in quite revealing clothing on the street on a nighttime. The signs behind her indicate that there is a sale in the shop, but this could be interpreted as the woman is for sale, especially since there is a large bed in the shop which could indicate prostitution. Using the elements we can assume that this is what the photographer had in mind for the viewer to see when looking at the photograph.

After discussing portrait photography, we were tasked with experimenting with taking our own portrait photographs. I looked forward to this task as I have plenty of people to photograph in my life and it should make for a nice portfolio of photographs.

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I love the symmetry of this photo - split the middle window down the middle and its the same on both sides.

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Based in South Yorkshire, Ben Harrison mainly photographs architecture around the UK. He works for large clients for advertisement but some of his work is very artistic. He plays with angles, lines and shapes to create visually pleasing work.

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A lot of artists who photograph architecture use a lot of symmetry in their work – whether it being the same number of windows on either side of a door, using a corner of a building as the center of the photograph or having a standalone building as the shot. These photographs are naturally pleasing to the eye as most people enjoy the appearance of symmetry.

When I went out to take photographs, I kept this in mind and ended up getting some photographs I am happy with in terms of being symmetrical. I used some buildings corners and others I focused on the center of the buildings. I edited all the photographs in SKRWT and VSCO due to the ease of use of the apps and they turn out excellently.

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For these edits I experimented in the app SKRWT - the app I found in the article. In the app there is a section called MRRW which allows mirroring down the centre of an image.

This allows for some interesting angles to be created and shapes that wouldn't be possible by just photographing regular architecture.

It was interesting to experiment with and I really like the results I managed to get from using the app.

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I used adobe photoshop for the editing of this photograph. I wanted to try and use different software for my editing throughout the project to see what I enjoy using the best.

I can say I won't be using photoshop again - it was complicated and I wasn't getting the result I wanted. I ended up watching a YouTube video on basic photoshop photo editing which helped me with the basic editing but I still didn't get the result I wanted.

I tried several attempts to darken the light behind Vicky so that her face wouldn't be competing with the light. I used the lasso tool to draw out and separate her from the light but it honestly looked terrible every time I did it so I settled on basic editing for the photo.

I still like the result but the kind of editing I wanted to achieve for this photo proved to be too advance for my photoshop skills.

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I love this photo - it shows joy in its best form. Vicky was playing on the PlayStation with her brother and he had said something to make her really laugh. Whilst I didn't manage to capture the prop (ps5 controller), I think the other elements show that she is relaxed and happy in her home, in her own clothes and with a happy face.

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This is from the same evening and in this one I got the controller prop in the photo. Her face look serious and concentrative. Her pose is relaxed though so it doesn't feel uncomfortable. I used the portrait mode on my camera which enabled me to focus Vicky in the foreground and blur the background.

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I am really pleased with this photograph - it is quite abstract for a portrait as Vicky isn't necessarily the centre of the photo. I took this from the passenger seat in the car looking into the rear view mirror.

She was concentrating on driving which shows on her face, and the speedometer being in the photo shows how fast she was driving.

I really like the angle that I captured this - it it quite reminiscent for me as when we first started dating, she would drive us around to our destinations and whilst we were in the "honeymoon period", I would catch her looking through the mirror at me and it would make us giggle like little girls.

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Another one that shows pure joy and relaxation - the editing isn't the best but I couldn't get it darker without losing the details.

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Eli and I went out for a meal and he was enjoying his cappuccino after the meal. I like the focus that I managed to get, especially the foreground being out focus as well as the background.

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His expression is so focused on his cappuccino and there was no indication that he knew that he knew I was taking the photo. I like how the photo came out and i didn't have to do any editing on this photo, the lighting was brilliant as were sat at the large windows.

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In this set of photos that I took when we visited my Mam and Dad in Durham, we had a "chill night" on the sofas after being busy through the day. The result of this was that most of us were sat in silence on our phones. It looks very anti-social but we were all sharing things we were finding online and it ended up being quite a funny evening. Most of the photos show faces of concentration but everyones poses are relaxed. I edited these quite heavily due to the low lighting in the room, I used preset filters on them too but not at full strength.

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This photo reminds me slightly of Richard Billinghams work. His unposed, everyday life with his family is reminiscent of this photograph where you can see my dad giving the animals treats which has the attention on my brother. There isn't really a focus point in this photo which I like. I will try some heavier editing of this photo to see if I can get it to more to the likes of Billingham.

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I went a bit heavier on the editing in this photo to actually dull down the colours a bit more than what they were originally. I like the "older" feeling of the photo, almost like it was took on a polaroid camera in the 90s.

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I took these photos at a family meal. In this one, Chris was the focus point as he had caught me taking photos so smiled for the camera. I like how I focused on Chris and the others are out of focus, it really draws the eye to Chris. I did some light editing on all of these photos that I took at the meal - just to fix the lighting mainly because we were sat in front on windows so the main source of light was behind everyone.

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I love this photo of the kids - I think it's a great photo that shows the playfulness that kids have, even as they are getting older. It is a posed photo but not with any direction, I simply asked them to look into the camera and this is what they did. It

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These photos were all taken on a day where the sun had just started to shine and warm up for the first time of the year. We took advantage of the warmth and I took advantage of full sun lighting to take some photos. I did do some light editing but not much was needed as the lighting was so good from the sun - the most I needed to do was increase the contrast and the tone of the images. I took them all in portrait mode so the background was out of focus.

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In this video I showed how I edited my phone with the simple photo editing feature that comes with my iphone. I can change the focus of the photo, brightness, contrast, tone, highlights/shadows, hue and clarity. I experimented with all of these features with most of the photos I took to achieve a better result.

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I have decided to veer away from family photography - whilst I was enjoying it I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to get very creative with it or get “an angle” that would make it very interesting.

Architecture come with lines and shapes that can create other shapes. Open windows can create differences that draw the eyes to certain spaces in the photo. Age has an effect on architecture that can be of interest. I am going to play with lines and cropping to see what I can come up with.

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For the sound component of this brief I really wanted to have a sound file that compiled my children saying “Mam” but when I tried to do this it proved impossible unless I was recording for hours on end - so that idea was quickly dampened.

I decided in the end, edit the sound from clips I had taken of home life and “smush” them together to have a sound file that shows my home life with my family.

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I am really excited about this module - I love photography and I have studied it in the past. I know it won’t be the same as my previous studies but I know I enjoyed the processes of traditional photography so I am hoping I can incorporate some of that into this project.

Starting of with portraits is something I haven’t really ventured into - I was a street photographer when I worked with photography last - taking photos of the streets I grew up on, graffiti, the distinct differences between the “nice parts” of town and the council estates. I am looking forward to seeing what I can come up with!

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I am not enjoying this module as much as I hoped I would. I am struggling to find the motivation to take portraits and the work I am producing is just fine - the photos are lovely photographs with good technical skill but they are just that; there isn’t anything about them really. I have hit a wall with sound and film - I am going to upload the movies I have taken but I don’t think anything of them.

Moving into and towards the end I want to focus on the high street I think - I can focus on the shop fronts, the people of the high street and the culture of the streets. Being in Hull means diversity, there are many backgrounds that live here and it shines on the high street. I need to find some artists that focus on the shops and people of the high street so I can gather some ideas for my work.

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Not much of a difference between the two but I slightly altered the definition and contrast.

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I love this photograph I captured of my daughter Ava turning 13. The editing was basic as it has been for most of my works but it really brought the photo to life and improved the lighting and contrast greatly.

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I changed quite a bit in this photo. I cropped the person out on the left more so that the kids are more obviously the subject of the photo. Improvements made with the lighting, contrast and I think i changed the depth of this photo slightly too - which is a neat feature of the iPhone.

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With this one, I changed the depth slightly so that my Mam didn’t have a halo of weird sharpness around her hair, changed the contrast, the warmth and the black point to create more depth.

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I did a lot with this photograph - I increased the contrast, lowered shadows and the black point. I changed the depth to focus on his face more to become the

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Not much changed with this photo of my brother. I decreased the warmth because was looking a bit pink in the photo - changed the contrast and black point again.

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I edited most of the portrait shots in a similar way to show the subjects loudly. A lot of the editing was increasing the contrast of the images, changing the warmth and the black point of the photos. When I was editing the photos, it almost became muscle memory, that’s how similar the editing was between the photos.

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The shapes on the side of this building create shadows that trick my eyes. It’s very maze like and it feels like I want to try and work out a way from the bottom to the top.

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This building is fantastic, it does the strange lines for you but Ben has captured it wonderfully making it look weird and wonky

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Lots of leading lines, symmetry and the B&W lends to the aged look of the building.

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Keith Dotson is a contemporary photographer living in the Nashville, Tennessee metro area who creates art for a global audience.

Specializing in black and white photography, his favorite subjects include landscapes, cityscapes, and abstractions from nature. He is especially drawn to places with intrinsic mystique: historic places, old houses, and the soft light of gloomy days. (https://keithdotson.com/pages/about-keith-dotson)

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I like the out of context feel of this - it’s not clear what the building is but the lines are fabulous. A mixture of “bouncy”, straight and boxed lines are pleasing to look at.

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I am sensing a pattern that I like the buildings central to the shot. I enjoy odd angles and lines but I really enjoy looking at single, central buildings. I will try to get some shots like this in my work since I like to look at them.

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I also like the B&W features of Keiths work - it adds higher contrast and age to the buildings even if the buildings are more modern.

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I found this interesting article on IPhone architectural photography and how to edit/ what apps to use. I found it useful for post photo processing.

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I decided to use Ava, my daughter, as my film subject as she is OUT THERE. She is dramatic, fun and doesn’t mind the camera. I took a few videos of her for experiments sake - and filming is not something I really enjoy doing.

I played with the editing features on my iPhone, made some films shorter, played with the volume and effects so that they appear more visually pleasing to watch. I won’t be carrying on with filming further into the project as I can’t see it fitting in with my brief.

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This is audio from a video I took of my dog playing in the living room. The taps of her feet on the floor are off rhythm and it can be a little off putting to listen to but it was an interesting experiment to do after failing to do what I originally wanted to do.

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I used the apps that were mentioned in the article I read on iPhone architecture photography to edit this photo.

I used SKRWT to change the perspective slightly so it was more symmetrical and cropped it down so it is less visually busy. I also wanted to crop the bottom out as you can see I took this photo out of the car as we stood in traffic. You can see the angles are slightly off and the skwrt app was great for fixing those angles.

I then went into VSCO which has a lot of preset filters. It has smart technology which recommends filters for the photo however I didn’t choose to use this and chose to edit the photo manually. It gave a more professional result whereas the filter was a bit “instagram”. It would have looked great with those filters on social media.

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Another inspired by Keith Dotson.

This building is unique in that it is triangular in shape which gives this lovely corner to photograph. The angle is a bit off but to get it would have included me standing in the middle of a busy road to achieve. I would have also preferred for the cars to be out of the shot but this wasn't possible due to them being parked right next to the building.

I also decided to crop this photo down to be a lot more like one of Dotson's photos which I included in my research.

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I actually used AI to remove the lamp post from this photo before I changed it to B&W, i also increased the clarity to show the brick pattern a bit more as it got lost when I changed it to B&W. I love the way it came out and I think it's one of my best shots.

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I took the photo with symmetry being the focus of the photo. Inspired by Ben Harrison, I liked the symmetrical look so I tried to recreate it with this building.

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Arches are popular in photography as they can almost become frames for what is on the other side of them. In architecture, arches can quite frequently be decorative features that show the age of a building and give the building character.

The arches that I chose for my portfolio do just this - decorate the building and frame other things. They provide vanishing points in the centre the photographs and leading lines that the eyes can track through the photograph. I really like the photograph I got of the alley way that has arches going down in - when looking at it and tracking those lines, you see little details like the flag that aren’t necessarily obvious upon first glance.

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The age of this building was my inspiration for using a B&W filter on this image - it almost adds more age to the photo. I changed the skew - I took the photo a bit wonky so it looked strange but the edit looks much better.

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This photo was inspired heavily by Keith Dotson, as are a few of my other photographs. I love the fact that the building is a detached building that used to be a part of a row. It stands strong alone but you can see the age on the building - the paint is flaking off, the original wood is still holding the window panes and there are plants growing from the awnings. I decided to include this one twice in my work - one in colour and one in b&w. I edited it slightly to fix the skew from the original so the lines were straighter and better fixed to the a grid.

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Drypool Bridge opened in 1961, replacing an old swing bridge. The design of the bridge is a Scherzer Rolling Bascule bridge - which features a large metal “wheel” with negative notches that catch onto positive notches to pick the bridge up vertically to allow traffic in the water flow safely.

It has a heavy metal look to it with crossing metal frames and supports - it’s almost cage like. With my photos I really wanted to capture the web of metal that keeps the bridge held together but also to feature some more abstract shots of the metal web. I am thrilled with the shots I got of the bridge and they made for some really fantastic FX shots where I mirrored the images to create even more intricacy. I took a great shot of the large wheels that pick the bridge up where you can really see the mechanisms which was fascinating to really look at whilst I was out taking the photos.

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The tangles of metal above the bridge made for some really interesting shots. The contrast between the yellow and blue is visually pleasing too.

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I decided that whilst I was taking photos of the whole building itself, the details of the panels on the buildings were what gave the building some of its character. I used the macro setting on my phone to capture these photos and the focused on one area to blur the rest out. This gave great depth of field and I think the results are some of my favourite shots.

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The app VSCO allows for FX editing in terms of adding flares and burns to photos as if the photographs were taken on a 35mm film that have been burned before taking the photo. I really like this feature and it adds a layer of interest that otherwise wouldn't be on the photo that was taken on an iphone camera.

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This was another shot I was inspired by Keith Dotson to create. I originally took a photograph of the full building but whilst I was editing, I decided to try cropping it down to create something like Dotson’s work and I think it came out great. There’s a lack of context - What building is it from? Where is the building? Why was the rest of the building left out?

I also edited it to look slightly more moody than the original - the windows next to the door are actually painted panels and it felt a bit uneasy so I wanted to get that across in the editing.

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Vanishing points - I took this photo so that the building corner was in line with the wall corner. I took it at an angle where the sides of the building would line up to create a vanishing point off the photo.

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I pass this building everyday on the bus and I absolutely love it - it is charming and has great character. I love how this photo came out - the contrast between the sky and building is my favourite part and also how the red doors really stand out from the building. I wanted to get more of the reflection of the building in the water but my iPhone camera could only capture so much in one shot - I could have included less sky but it was such a beautiful day that I couldn’t not include the blue sky.

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Indirect self portrait

We sat in a lecture regarding portrait photography and the subject of indirect self-portraits was taught to us. I liked the idea of compiling everything that I liked into a collage for my self-portrait, so I used the Canva program to achieve this. I used the graphic feature to find logos of brands and hobbies that I enjoy and incorporated some of my own photographs that I have taken of the people and animals in my life.

I then took a photograph of my side profile and used procreate on my iPad to black it out to create a silhouette of my face. After printing and cutting out the graphics I chose, I arranged them and stuck them down and finally cut out the shape of my profile to give it the shape of me.

I really enjoyed this process, it not only felt creative and fun in the sense of it being quite a childlike activity – the cut and stick process- but I really had to reflect on what I really enjoy doing in life and what means most to me – something that gets forgotten in the busy schedule that I call my everyday.

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Heavily edited version

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I enjoyed this project once I got into it but it really took some time to do so - I’m not sure why either as I was really excited to get into it and I had lots of ideas but that quickly dwindled away. I had some personal health problems this semester which took a toll on me and really stopped everything for a couple of weeks and whilst that doesn’t seem like a lot, starting up again and trying to get restarted proved harder than I thought.

In the end I feel like I have produced a body of work that I am happy to turn in however, going forward, I need to plan my time better and use it wisely as I never know when something might happen that throws me “off course” when I am already not really “on course.”

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What did I enjoy:

Family photography - I really enjoyed photographing my family and capturing their emotions through the lens. I now have some lovely photos for myself and my family to look at.

Architecture photography - Now that I have spent some time taking photos of buildings, I notice them a lot more now. I notice their shapes, sizes and angles or how they’re placed with other buildings. It’s interesting to see things I usually look straight past and some of the architecture in Hull is really quite extraordinary.

Indirect self portrait - I mentioned the enjoyment I felt with the work previously but the crafting element of producing that work was nostalgic and therapeutic.

Editing - I really enjoyed editing the photos I took, I would say it was my favourite part of the project. I liked seeing the photos come to life with better contrast and clarity or changing the colours with tones. I especially enjoyed the FX editing that produced the mirrored images - I am really proud of the editing I did on my photos.

Things I didn’t enjoy

Sound art - I really struggled to find inspiration for this or see the point in it when I tried it. Some of the examples show to us were interesting but I just couldn’t get into it at all.

Filming - Taking movies is something else I didn’t really enjoy - again a lack of inspiration didn’t help and the examples I did see were strange. I just don’t think it was for me.

Cyanotype - I didn’t include my cyanotype process in this unit. Whilst I did try it I couldn’t really get into it and the results were lacklustre. I can see for some forms of art how it could be used but for my project it wasn’t suitable.

Things I wish I’d done but didn’t

35mm photography - I didn’t plan my time well enough to be able to explore with using a film camera. I am disappointed that I didn’t plan well enough but I have the camera at home and I may use it in my personal time to create some shots.