Collected Shots

Whitstable was somewhat how I expected it. I expected to see more and be able to get a wider variety of shots. Used to shooting on the beach in the summer this cold, out of season town came somewhat as a surprise.

When we think about out of season holiday towns, typically we would think of closed Ice Cream Parlours, closed guest houses and a general absence of people as locals sit at home in front of the fire to escape until the 'emmits' return.

But that isn't exactly what I saw. This place is commutable from Central London, as I expected the rich kids in their fast cars did have a part to play in this out of season, and somewhat desolate town. Holiday homes, chain bars, weekend cottages and modern architecture was all built into the coastal line but why? How did this make the locals feel? How would I feel if I grew up in little Whistable and this happened? Would I get rich one day and suddenly take my flash sports car, park it by the beech so I could leisurely sit sipping champagne and eating oysters?

Whitstable

Tommorrow we will be vi sting Whitstable to take photos for our next assessment. One of my my aims for this project is to work to a brief, we need to develop a theme and portray that in our photographic essay.

So what's my theme? Well Whiststable appears to be a working class seaside town in North Kent. We're going there so I suspect it is an easy commute from London, I wouldn't be surprised if there are weekend homes and a few appealing bars and restaurants.

I might try to keep my theme simple. Maybe shoot natural forms along the coastal walks and see if it's possible to capture any shots of wildlife. We'll see when I get there.

Man Ray

Out of the photographers I have looked at in this project Man Ray's pin whole work inspired me the least.






From what I can see he appears to be somewhat of a surrealist, I havn't managed to link any of his work to mine.





Man Ray's pin hole work seems to be quite typical, the sort of basic shot which is being produced in our lessons. What was inspiring about the others photographers was their effort to change the norms of pin hole prints adding some demension to their work.





Man Ray appears to have an outstanding reputation for his fashion and portrait photography. He seems to be much more of an artist than just a photographer. He has produced work with much more meaning which I imagine would be quite expiring in other projects.



From my research I have found that Man Ray seems to be one of the most experimental photographers of the era. His work now considered historical would have been a whole new concept during his era. Man Ray did indeed distort and manipulate standard techniqes and stepped away from typical forwards portrait shots.
However with more photographers taking up Pin Hole photography much more recetnely I think that without investigation I was lead to belive Man Ray's work could be disregarded as historical and frankly somewhat borning.

Jeff Fletcher

Jeff Fletcher's work is evidently unique from the other artists I have been exploring.

The picture shown on the right from http://www.pinholeresource.com shows some of Fletcher's work. What's intresting is the way Flecther exibits his pin hole work. Here we can see that Flecther has used egg shells which have been wiped with a photo sensitive laquer in order to achieve prints on the inside of egg shells. Abstract alone I find the the way that Flectcher positions his work bag into an egg box and then exibits a black and white photograph much more intresting than a 2d print.

Justin Qinnell

Justin Quinnell creates very abstract images through his use of pin hole photography.

His ideas seem to be summed up by a statement he made "The Taj Mahal taken by a fat tourist with Diarrhoea and a point and shoot camera can be the flattest, dullest".

I like Justin's work it shows how pinhole photography can be exciting and different and he has used it to make typical boring photographs come to life with his abstract and different techniques. Example from http://www.pinholephotography.org/ shown left.

Wolf Howard

Wolf Howard seems to be a pin hole photography expert.

The work exibited on Howard's website seems to be somewhat selective and stick to a certain theme. He has exibited shots of older items, which look like artifacts of war time. I imagine this is because the old effect cast over pin hole shots matches best with objects associated with those times.

He said "There is something special about a pinhole camera. There is a beauty in its simplicity and rawness that technology has not been able to better.". I understand this statement, I like his work.

The photo pictured left, courtosey of www.stuckism.com shows a somewhat simple picture taken with a pin hole camera. I find the process of producing prints with a pinhole frustrating as I find it difficult to achieve good, clear shots like this one.

But I envy Howard as he has mastered the art of pin hole photography with his purpose-built and very effective 4" x 4"pinhole camera. He has produced great shots which are arguably more exciting & simple than digital or film shots and his simplicity has inspired me to believe that maybe the importantance behind pin hole photography is the quality of simplicity, not neccessarily the objects in it. Coversley, is it not possible to turn modern day objects into shots with with a much more dated theme using a pin hole camera?