Photographic Story Project
Exploring Brighton, the Fashion Communication course as well as our expectations, ambitions, desires and hopes for these two things as one of our first projects was helpful in immersing me in the city of Brighton, getting myself comfortable in this project and allowing me to take ownership in my first small project as this was focused on us individuals/partners rather than a group resulting in me having more of a personal direction which is ideal for a first project. Partnering up with someone in the project gave me the confidence to share my ideas and build upon someone else’s ideas to merge them together in one result that we were proud of.
Harley Weir’s exhibition ‘Homes’ at Fabrica in Brighton as part of the Brighton Photo Biennial was a successful starting point for me to gain some general artistic direction and inspiration to guide me in this project. A sense of place and environment is thoroughly explored within her photography as she eliminates the idea of having a person as the focal point of her images, allowing me to sense the atmosphere of the environment from what people have left behind through the materials, objects and colours she captures.
This helped me progress my idea development of what area i could focus on in my images as I realised that I wanted to focus more on colour and the moods I can convey from more colourful images therefore this led me to brainstorm and with my partner; we wanted to display the progress of a night out in Brighton. Both sociable people ourselves, this was ideal in our project and relates to the brief as it’s personal to us and an expectation of our experience in Brighton.
Initially my photographs were of my friends in our flat before the night out however these weren’t successful to me as they were too staged; I feel as if candid photographs were more effective in conveying the positive emotions relating to the brief as they would be more authentic and less forced, also there wasn’t a clear narrative as it was simple photographs of my friends with no story behind it. Improving on from my attempts that I wasn’t as happy with, I went to a nightclub to take photographs instead. My usual style in art and design is something a bit more abstract, usually involving a lot of colour meaning that I didn’t want to stray from this as this project was about myself as a creative individual as well as my ambitions for the course. This led me to taking a large amount of photographs in the nightclub, capturing the blur of the fast movement of dancing, the various colours emitted from the club lights and the positivity and atmosphere of the club, taking inspiration from Harley Weir’s approach to photography but applying to my project instead.
Overall, I was really pleased with the outcome, working in a pair was useful in gaining new perspective on the brief and tying our two different styles of working together which is essential as when I get to industry there will be frequent collaborations within a company. Our tutor also agreed that our work looked fun and exciting and portrayed the night out aspect of Brighton successfully but we both agreed that we could have thought about an interesting layout to harmonise our images together as we literally displayed them on our laptops in no particular order. Experimenting with a layout is something I will have to consider in future projects as it can help portray a narrative clearer than simply displaying them all in the same size in a row.
