DOCUMENTARY Assignment : Part 2 : Task 1 : Research : Person X

One of the themes we have been given for our Documentary assignment is 'Person X'. Possible ideas for this topic is 'a day in the life' style photography where I follow someone around. I could follow my mum around going about her daily activities and possibly follow her to work.

These photographs taken by Julian Germain are a very good example of 'Person X'. They show an elderly man in his own evnironment at home and in places such as his car. They also show personal objects that obviously mean something to the man in the photographs such as old photo albums.

Richard Billingham:

DISCLAIMER: None of the above images are my own. 

I really love this idea and how the set of images delve into someone's world and show different things about them that someone who just knew them wouldn't normally see. I love the quirky little images in this set that show different objects that describe the subject in the images; such as the garden gnome, the photo albums and the kettle. 

I would really like to work with this style myself and have chosen this theme for my own project on 'Person X'. I think that I will follow my mum around her life, this could be at work, at home, lunch with my grandma, etc. I will also focus in on objects that describe her such as her own old photo albums. 

Test Images :

 

 

Here I have tried to create a depth of feild (like in the Julian Germain images) by adding a gaussian blur to the background of this image. I like this idea, however, I think it looks quite artificial trying to recreate a depth of feild, and now I know to really try and use large apertures when shooting futher images.

I really like the depth of field used here as the sign-in sheet in her reception is in focus and my mum sitting at her computer is blurred out but you can still see that it is her. I really like this because it shows what her job is.

Here are some test and development images on my chosen theme 'Person X'. I have chosen to photograph my mum to illustrate the narrative "What Mum's Do". I have tried to immitate some of Julian Germain's images by editing some of my images in Photoshop, applying a Gaussian blur to an entire image except for a certain aspect, e.g. my mum and the food she was serving in the top image are in focus and the background is blurred. I think for my final images I will try and create this more in camera by using a large aperture to create a narrow depth of field because my images are at risk of looking quite fake if I added too much blur afterwards in Photoshop. I think the effect works quite well with the image of the fax machine because it shows that she uses it a lot in her job as a receptionist.