#secondproject

Project Title - Crane-craze

(How did this develop from your working title and what was involved in the decision making process?)

The title came from the collage assemblage of the photos - because of the ongoing pop-up of building sites and cranes in London, one cannot take a landscape photo of the city without excluding them from the frame - the title can also represent the fury of one’s who’s trying to retouch their photo in order to eliminate the cranes of their image!

Subject

(Reflect on the subject matter of your project and the background research on this subject)

Embracing the presence of cranes and building sites is the only choice a photographer can have in London - taking the idea one step further, creating a new college-crane out of my photos seemed like a fun way of presenting my early fascination with cranes back when I’ve moved to London.

The idea have developed when I was approaching the O2 Arena in order to do my project of the dome by North Greenwich but I have realised that I am more drawned to the cranes laid around next to it - even looking back my phone’s gallery, my contact sheets from my previous project I had to come to the conclusion that I am naturally attracted to this bird like construction equipments - coming from a small Hungarian city with flat land and landscape as a newbie in a big city I was loving this whole buzz and growing cityscape around me.

Aims, Objectives, Concept

(How and to what extent have you have achieved the aims and objectives of your project? Describe the main concept driving your project.)

The main concept was to embrace the site of cranes and create aesthetically pleasing photos; I was lucky enough to have gone out shooting mostly on sunny days so I had a lot of light to work with. I was trying to alienate single cranes and aiming for minimalistic look, although I wasn’t sure about how I would connect the series, I had a rough idea of build up a single crane at the very beginning but only until I have come down to print 32 photos in A5’s and start to play around with them realised my potentials with the project.

To achieve a various and interesting layout I have been shooting in different locations - North Greenwich, Wembley, Southwark and Central London.

I should have been experimenting taking photos at night too but the winter cold was not so inviting - as well as should have use tripod even at daytime to eliminate the fuzzy and blurry photos and should have take my time and concentrate on achieving well exposed photos and not just taking my chance on ‘shooting from the hip, even though I have spent a lot of time shooting on the streets.

Form, medium, presentation

(What is the final form and method of presentation of your work and why did you make these decisions?)

(What methods did you use to research this work and how did this research inform your project?)

I will present 6 photographs in a photo collage format, having a protagonist on the very bottom photo ( I’ll call him Dave for the sake of identifying ), as the messy construction would be his work, if he’d be looking at the next step of creating the highest clumsiest crane London would’ve ever seen.

Joking and fooling around plays a big part in my life, so this project is a great collab between my favourite things  -  humour and photography.

I choose semi-gloss paper as I was quite disappointed with the matt paper at the previous project - the colours are vivid and overall I am quite satisfied with the quality of the prints.

I think it would have been more beneficial if I would have print out my images before and play around with them - it’s hard to visualise them on the wall from the screen.

I have used websites to conduct various ( mostly not relatable ) research for this project as well as I have attended a few photographer’s talks and galleries in the last month. (evidence in journal).

I have to be very honest and say I cannot put my finger on how I got into developing my project the way it turned out.

References

(How useful were the references you explored – the artists, writers and filmmakers and how do you they helped in the development of your ideas?)

Polly Braden, Barbara Kruger, Hannah Hoch

Kruger’s collages are straight forward and witty, although the design is quite simple comparing to my project - Braden’s images offwere definitely in my head as I was walking through Southwark - and from our other module I have remembered Hannah Hoch’s collages too - my ones are obviously not politically charged but definitely chaotic.