Kate Watson A Level Photography

Illustrated Project proposal

My Ideas

• Horses
• Nature
• Macro – Plants, Bugs, Eyes, Hair
• Summer time
• Harvest

My Personal investigation is:  to create a visual record of the different seasons. The investigation will explore the countryside in Summer, Autumn and the beginning of winter and the animals, flowers and landscapes in which each season brings. I will record harvest time and what comes with it including the machinery, as well as capturing the physical changes in animals such as Deer as the year progresses.

Background

I’ve decided that I would like to focus on the countryside in different seasons. This idea was inspired by my love for the outdoors and during this topic I plan to travel to different settings such as Wheat, Barley, Flax and Rape seed crops, Rivers, and Woodland areas. I would also like to explore how the weather effects these settings.

I’d like to begin this subject with shooting ‘summer time’, such as the insects (Butterflies, Bees etc.) that are usually only seen in the summer, Crops, and experimenting with how these look in different conditions such as rain (with rain drops). I think that this is a good starting point for me as I can take lots of photos over the summer holidays.

Photographers Research

I have researched some different styles of nature photography, and have found some familiar photographers that I have already studied before, as well as some new photographers such as Edward Weston, Peter Dombrovskis, Art Wolfe and Clyde Butcher. A couple of these photographers shot in the second half of the nineties, using black and white photos which I would be interested to explore. I will use all of these photographers work as inspiration for my own project over the summer.

I plan to approach this project by shooting the main aspect of country living, which is where animals and industrial machines collide, crop fields. I want to explore different animals that find food and seek shelter in the crop fields such as Butterflies and Bees on the flax fields as well as how the light effects the look of the wheat fields.

Illustrations

Whilst researching photographer, I came across a few photographs that have also influenced me as well, such as the images below:

This is the type of image I hope to take of a bee. I like this photo because of the colour, which has made detail in the flower stand out just as much as the bee. I also like this image because of the technique used, macro. This technique, causes the main object in the image to become in focus, however the background is blurred out, this creates an image that is very pleasing to the eye, keeping the colour of the background but loosing the detail.

In both images, above and below, how the light can effect photography is shown, as well as the time of the year. I would like to experiment with what kind of images I can take when they are shot in different times of the day, early in the morning, in the middle of the day and in the evening (sunset).

In the image below, it is similar to that of the Bee, however, it focuses more on the insect that the plant, showing the intricacies of the wings and tiny fibres of hair, making it seem like the fly in not as delicate and as small as it seems in real life.

I would also like to capture some harvest images, I like the contrasting ideas of machinery and nature, showing how humans can adapt and utilise the world around them at the detriment of the animals that without, our crops couldn’t grow.

Techniques

The techniques I intend to explore as part of my project are:

– Macro photography,

– Wide and telephoto photography

– Colour saturation,

– Shallow depth of field,

– Double exposure,

– Retiring to the same location,

– Video footage.