Rachel Parker Photography Group K

Home as a definition is ‘The place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.”

However home means a lot more to me that just a place of living, but how I feel there, who I live with and whether I feel comfortable in my environment. In my mind I have different types of home. I have my home which I have lived most of my life back in Kent, when I’m home from university, but along side that I have a theoretical home, which is where I spend most of my time when back in Kent which is the stable. Whether I’m working there, riding the ponies, or looking after them it is a place that I feel happy, comfortable and welcome at.  The I have my home right now, which is permanent for the year which is my university room. However I wouldn’t of called that room home if it wasn’t for the flatmates, friends or love of the Lincoln area, it would of just been a room I slept in. So home to me is a lot more than just a place I stay.

For this i focused on my theoretical home, the stable. As I said it’s a place where I feel happy, comfortable, containing people who I get on with, horses which I’ve schooled from young ages, I’ve worked there and to me I see it as a second home in Kent. However the whole experience at the moment of being away from Kent as I’m at university in Lincoln, makes the idea of it now, distorted and blurry. The longer I’m away from it the more faded it becomes in my memory. I looked at two different method of distorting my images of the horse which I took to represent visually how this home is in my mind when I am in my first home now up in Lincoln.

Artist Research – Pierre Debusschere

Pierre is a Belgium director, photographer and curator. He utilises innovative technologies in his work to create high impact visuals. His work involves a lot of distortion and highly intriguing works which catch your eye, One which I looked at was the image below. This image shows movement but through a static image. But the movement shows a blur and is softer, showing a fade. This gave me the idea to use a series of images of horses and overlay them to show the movement but the fade of the images shows how being away from it fades the memories of this home and it is no longer a strong image in my mind.

Contact Sheet

I started off thinking when taking the images that I wanted to get the movement and put the movement images together but then by the time I got to editing techniques, in Photoshop, I found that overlaying the same images over each other a few times were really effective and worked really well. Instead of showing movement, it showed a horse portrait but the overlays blur it showing the idea of a faded memory of back home in Kent. I think this technique works really well to show the idea of a distant memory. Even though it is distant though it is still regarded at home and is my visual representation of home in Kent.

Edits – In the style of Pierre Debusschere

 

These first three are the strongest coloured horses to show the movement and they consist of two colours which aren’t too dark. This means you are able to see the overlays quite well creating a better blur. For this first image I only did three overlays where it looks like a double blur.

This image is a bit darker and a bit under exposed however it has a brownish tint to it making it look like an older photo. This is quite a good effect to show it being a distant memory swell as with the blur with it.

 

This image is effective again in a different way. It shows the distant memory through the blurriness however it has quite vivid colours which can show the clarity of the stable when I return in the holidays. However I prefer the last image.

I think this image struggled to have a full impact due to the darker coloured horses not being able to see the overlays swell on each other and also the door. As it is uneven it overlays over the pony image and blurs, this makes it hard to distinguish the overlays.

Again this image you struggle to see the overlays due to the colour of the horse being white. However I think is easier to see the the black pony. By doing suite movement with this on you are able to see a blur giving off that faded effect. The door also work in this image as its a straight door and to doesn’t interrupt the pony too much.

Artist Research – Adam Holtzman

He is a photographer and fine art artist from Chicago, doing both his own work and working with others. The shoot which I liked from his work was ‘Absence’. This was a shoot of when his relative died and evxrythignhad been moved out and the absence of colour created a very eerie feeling. The black and white in the images also helps with the image of the images as the absence of colour helps give the feel of absence of life in the house, which strongly put the message across that these were image from a house with no one living there anymore.

I wanted to use this in my shoot for this as this university room is only my home for a year. But I still have a very full room which has been animated by things I brought with me to make it slightly more homely. However in about a month or twos time, the room ill be completely empty again for it to be different students ‘home’ next year. With the images I want to show a holiness but also the fact its only my home for the year and once I move out it will no longer be my home and most likely never see the room ever again. I am going to use the idea of Adam Hotltzman, of emphasising the absence through colour using black and white in my images but still have the busy, homeliness of my room.

Contact Sheet

Edits

 

This images I think the right side of it is stronger with a better contrast however the door is grey and not dark enough to support the rest of the image and make it as string as it could be.

 

This image as a whole isn’t exposed enough so doesn’t have a good balance of darks and light colours.

 

These three images I think would be stronger if I was able to get a stronger contrast between the blacks and whites. I think the greys make the images weaker s they don’t stand out as much as I would like.

 

This image is strong as it is busy, got a good contrast, uses the leading lines with the desk so has a good composition.

 

However this image is stronger than the above as I used a different angle of the desk, looking more downwards and a bit closer to it. I think also the light in this image enhanced the contrast that tiny bit more than the previous image.

 

These three images are a lot stronger as they have a bettie contrast. It makes them stand out more but I also think the contrast livens the images up a bit more emphasising the homeliness but the lack of colour shows the absence of the room once the year is out. The strongest image out of the three i think is the middle one, It has a good balance of white and blacks in it and the contrast is extremely strong. It is also a fairly busy image showing the holiness but again the black and white somehow gives it life but also takes away the warmness of the objects in the image.