During the Google Hangout with my tutor last week, he commented that the digital montage I created for Assignment One was not as convincing as the work conducted against my war-hero Photomontages. We discussed some ideas on how I could improve this image and for the past couple of days I have been reworking my shot to see if I can get a better representation of my scene. Below is an update of the image and my thoughts surrounding it.
I feel that the biggest issue with the original image was the hardness of the lines between each strip as well as the fact that there was no flow within the frame; the images I selected were not ordered in any particular way and I chose those I preferred over those that chronicled time, date or weather patterns.
Rethinking my reworked image, I decided on a few changes;
- The scene should represent some order.
- The passing of time should also be present within the frame.
- The transition between each time slice should be smoother.
Taken over a five-month period, during my photoshoots, I shot three seasons, winter being the first and summer the third; each scene not only captured the changes in fauna and flora, but also weather conditions, people’s habits as well as changes to the landscape along the river.
In my original work, I took slices from my chosen images and abutted them together on a blank canvas whereas in my new frame I placed each sliver over a base image; this was tricky as I had to use the transform application to align the elements within each slice to produce a convincing scene that was not too blurred or out of alignment. I decided that summer would be my base image for this final montage and moving from left to right included ten images that represented the transition through to winter. Each slice was placed and the opacity and fill of each reduced, this allowed for the original image to be seen along with the overlay; this artistic decision allows for a smoother transition between each time slice, which was the biggest issue in my original digital-montage.
This final image, although in the style of Richard Silver’s charming photography is more a kin to the work of Corrine Vionnet or Idris Khan as it shows a definite outline of the landscape but with blurred lines that represent the passage of time; if you look in detail you can see changes in the landscape, especially to the right of the frame where I captured the construction of a tower block. I really do like this final shot and in hindsight wish that I had taken the time to set myself specific parameters before the original work commenced – lesson learnt.
Photography 2: Digital Image and Culture 