Critical Appraisal for Object

The irony of studying a course which utilizes technology at it s fullest is not lost on me. We present our work here in Blogs, and use Websites to try and communicate large amounts of information. This is all good, except when we become too dependent. I see people around me in groups together, butindividually using their phones to communicate withothers over text or through Facebook, and with the risingpopularity of Smartphones, this is only going to increase.There are many factors I could touch upon, but I will focuson the Mobile Communications and Social Networkingaspects of this project, as that seems to be the biggestone I observe on a daily basis. I, myself, may be guilty.

Todd has done a series of photographs where he dissembles objects and lays them all out in an ordered manner. The idea behind this seems to show a passion for how things work, a desire to see what makes up these objects - among them is a Pentax camera. If you look closely at all the tiny parts, you can see he has deconstructed it right down to the smallest of pieces, even the bolts are individually placed on the canvas. This shows a great attention to detail, you could say he was obsessed with seeing every part of the object to specify exactly what it fully consisted of. This obsession ties in quite nicely with what I'm trying to trying to achieve with my own project, although there are differences obviously.

Through looking at Todd s style, I attempted to implement this myself through my own idea of displaying mobile phones in a similar manner, but found the result to be ineffective. At this point, I reevaluated his work and tried to represent the same concept but from a totally different angle. His relevance to my work can be seen through the literal display of each piece of the puzzle that constructs the idea. His pieces represent an object in full, and my pieces represent a collection of devices that used to communicate endlessly.

My attempt to capture Todd s style in a similar manner did not satisfy my needs and I went with something a bit more abstract that focused on the learnt studio practices more than just laying things out on a plain canvas.

After playing around with depth of field, my ideas were forming around the studio practice and I began to fine tune how my final images were to look. The quality of this negative isn t too great I hope it suffices.

Critical Appraisal for Object

Upon receiving my body unit brief, I searched for and found a young lady within UCA that so happened to be both volunteering for the NSPCC whilst also doing a fashion course. This dedication to both lifestyles fascinated me in my search for a model, so I asked if she would let me capture the essence of both parts of her within one photograph.

Through the studying of diCorcia s work, I found that he captured the essence of the true personality within people walking along the streets. This idea of capturing somebody s true look without posing brings a sense of truth to the photograph, and that idea was what I wanted to focus on. Showing my model for who she is was exactly my aim.

Cindy Sherman s portraiture shows great detail and attention towards the expression. Especially here as the woman gazes beyond the frame leaving us guessing. I wanted to capture similarly in my portrait the significance of expression.

My object unit is to be seen as a social issue rather to be fixed within people themselves, at least in the aspects I focused on. My body shoot however, goes to provide exposure towards an individual worth being seen, especially when it comes to her dedications. I would place my object unit within the context of human interaction and it s gradual fading of face to face interaction, I feel like it is our duty to keep social activity for physical presence, not online ones, or we may lose ourselves in the grab for attention that online life sometimes bestows upon people, through the innovations technology companies provide. My body shoot was to provide two sides to her life that she must be expected to give her time too, and even through a brave face, that there can be difficulty. I would say my ideas translates fluently from idea to physicality through my references, although my portrait final may not fully translate how I wanted the shoot to appear. For my object, the focus is put upon the technology Communications and the blur of phones connected towards the laptop in the background incinuate the connection that has been adopted for many of the people living in the richer parts of the world, my body shoot provides exposure upon a student within the campus, that otherwise may not have shown both sides of her story.