Evaluation

I really enjoyed this project, having never looked at typologies before it was a good chance to familiarise myself with the work of photographs such as Kevin Newark and Bernd and Hilla Becher. I think using the blurb plug in really helped speed things up in this project, it was also good to see my book on the blurb website with the interactive preview. This helped me on several instances as I found it hard to visualise the book in InDesign.

I’m happy with my images and the number of final images in my book. Overall I used 40+ images and I think this was a good number, any less and I risked not giving the viewer enough to work with and it would seem like a pointless publication. There was also a danger of using too many images, I think this is very easy in the modern day DSLR world, I can snap 1000+ images on one card and there’s no real implications. I was careful when I was out shooting I tried to find floors that shared similar textures and composition but tried to not use the exact same floor, or if I did have 2 similar images they were placed into different sets in the book. I think this helps keep things fresh in the book and each set is a totally different texture than the one before. Some of the sets are more abstract and it takes a few seconds to register what you are looking at, some of the photos are clearly of a floor again I think this was a hard balance to strike. I wanted people to recognise spaces and visualise where they would expect to find a floor like that.

When I had chosen my initial idea I was trying to look for a reason behind it. Why had I chosen floors? I thought about the fact people are usually too busy to look down and they are always looking ahead but I didn’t want to try and push a meaning onto my project if it wasn’t there. So after a talk with a few tutors and peers I decided to narrow my locations down and focus on neglected spaces. I think this was enough to keep my project tight without trying to get too conceptual.

While laying out my book I sometimes felt it was a little bare. At first I was experimenting with full bleed images to show the detail in the shots but this soon got very repetitive and so I decided to put the images into grids. I was initially putting them into random grids and orders but after placing 4 images together I began to notice links between them and this is how I decided to put the images into sets of 5.
Overall I’m happy with how my book has turned out. I've tried to keep the book content minimal apart from the images. I prefer things looking clean which is why I've chosen a white background with black text, I think a lot of text or colour would detract away from the grid/set system. There’s probably not much I would do differently for this project. I would maybe try and get out and shoot a wider range of locations and I might even carry this work on a personal project as I have enjoyed it. It’s been a great chance to see how easy it is to use the Blurb website and have a book published, it’s a great way to display work for a portfolio and it’s something I’ll bare in mind for my upcoming work.

Final Layout

I have now decided on a final layout for my book. I have put the photos into sets of 5 leaving me with around 8 sets. I didn't want to do much more than this as I feel after 40+ images the book could get very repetitive  I've tried to organise the photos into sets but finding links between them in colour, texture and composition. I feel this has worked out quite well. The book is quite minimal but I think it works given the content. The grid system is very neat and the photographs themselves are quite uniform so I wanted this to transfer into the layout of the book.

I've tried to keep the book content minimal apart from the images. I prefer things looking clean which is why I've chosen a white background with black text, I think a lot of text or colour would detract away from the grid/set system. I've also chosen to have a page in between the sets with 16 images set in a grid, the images are repeated throughout the book but in a different order. This adds a sense of familiarity and lets the viewer make there own links between the images before being shown the links I wanted them to see in the form of sets.

More Photographs

This is a few more of the photos I'm planning on using in my book. I think I have a good selection of over 50+ images now so I'm going to focus efforts on organising the layout for my book using the blurb In Design plug in.

Kevin Newark

I have recently been tipped onto the work of 'Kevin Newark'. One of his projects involves photographing plastic bags in the canals of East London. The photographs are quite abstract and remind me of star constellations, there is an element of space about them and they're very fascinating.

This has got me thinking about my own work and has led me back to thinking about creating sets within my book. Initially I was going to lay the photos out in a grid system and keep that throughout the book but since seeing Newarks work I want to try and start the book with an organised set of photos that are quite abstract. The reason for doing this is that I don't want to give away the subject matter straight away, I want people to think about what the photos could be of. As the book goes on people will see clear signs that what they are looking at of photographs of floors but some of the images I've taken already are very texturised and don't actually give much away in terms of location and this is something I want to investigate. 

"Their boundaries of scale can be breached in our allegorical thoughts allowing these photographs to be equally expandable or retractable; the electromagnetic imaging of micro-science and the radio imagery of space are seemingly alike; the Petri dish and the cosmos. "

http://www.pavilion.org.uk/gallery.php?gid=15

Initial photographs

Here are my first real set of photographs for this project. I have cropped them in photoshop and straightened some of them out but other than that there's no editing. I'm really happy with how they have turned out especially when placed into a set. Initially I shot some inside floor spaces but upon reviewing my idea I've decided to only photograph outside to keep things consistant.

I've also decided on a book title: Flaws. I chose this name because I think the world play is quite ironic, I'm photographing the flaws on floors. The places I'm visiting are derelict  neglected or abandoned all together so the floors are often old, disused and in a pretty sorry state and this is what I'm trying to capture. As well as creating some abstract photos in the process.