The photographer Ruut Lees Luxemburg's photography was something that I was instantly drawn to, as I really loved the style in which she shot because I loved the she shows light in darkness, I feel that it was really effective in showing normal life take place in terms of habits and routines, for example one shot was of a road at night, which she captured with a large exposure to show the influx of traffic throughout the night. I dedicated a part of my shoot on the london trip to take pictures in the style of luxemburg, all though I didm't use important techniques such as long exposure, I still took similar images that were bright in the dark of night from buildings or cars, this really helped me to progress and think about other topics to shoot.
My technical skills have improved a lot in terms of being able to manually set my camera, to any setting I wanted, learning this has helped greatly improve the type of shots I take. Also within the studio I learnt how to work the lights and the mirrors to make a good quality image. A lot of the ways in which I developed my technical ability, was through trial and error, apart from being taught the functions that aperture, shutter speed and ISO play on the photos that you take, a lot of it was just trying it out my self and seeing the results that I got. Also within the studio, I spent a lot of time taking images trying to create different moods or atmospheres, this can clearly be seen in my portraiture, tone and shape studio shoots.
The formal elements that I studied definitely opened my eyes to the possibilities of photography, it made me think a lot more about the composition of the shot, and all the different factors that make an aesthetically pleasing image, and a technical image. For example learning about line was a massive element of photography that I incorporated into my shots, as I realized how essential it was in creating, diversity in subject matter and focus points and just the overall composing factors of the shot.
Henri-cartier Bresson was also a big photographer that inspired me in my own photography, I linked his work with Sally Mann's as I saw many similarities between the two works, because of the historical significance Breton plays in the world of photography, he has obviously influenced a lot of photographers and just helped me to think about things differently, for example a series of his work was called the decisive moment, he also shot mostly in the style of documentary, seeing his work made me understand the significance of taking the decisive shot, being in the moment, hands on in the place that you wish to take pictures of, and the fact that you only have that one moment to capture it, this definitely developed my style.
My computer experiments and physical experiments were definitely something that I figured out myself and learned about through trial and error, For the physical experiments I was very unsure about what I was going to do but I feel that It really challenged me to be creative and think of art that I could for on my image, despite not being good at art I feel i successfully fulfilled the objective for physical experiments, I tried to vary and just be creative. Fort the Computer experiments I learnt a lot of information on how to use by myself through just learning a little bit about one topic and evolving ideas and accessing more tools and features to make my images better and more interesting to look at.
The only factor I would say that I was least successful in was the ability to focus on photographer's works that I did't find aesthetically pleasing or just interesting tom look at, for example I would only try to mimic in style or be influenced by photographers that I really enjoyed their work. So my overall stubbornness to try different styles and ideas in shooting would be my biggest flaw.
I feel that my photography is developing in the style of documentary more than anything because it is always the documentary photographers that I've been really influenced by and enjoyed researching, so I hope to develop that style further in unit 2 and beyond as I am most interested in it.
