CHOSEN TEXT

Ludens by Bring Me the Horizon

“Sticks and stones may break my bones but soon this thing will pass but names can dig so many graves you won’t know where to stand”

“Do you know why the flowers never bloom?

Will you retry or let the pain resume?”

For the song, I only chose this part of the lyrics because I feel they are the relevant ones for this theme. As for the first part, I think that even though the person is hurt they are sure they will get better. For the second part, it feels like it’s an encouragement to others who feel the same or are in a bad state. A rhetorical question is asked twice. The first question makes someone wonder about the situation they are in and for the second is asking what will you do with the pain you are feeling? will you seek help or let yourself down?

My interpretation of the text includes a reference to the flower. It is getting larger and smaller as if it is waiting for you to answer the question, will you retry or let the pain resume? When the flower is small it has more of a sketchy design as if it is crumbling and turning into just confusion. I am very happy with the outcome as this is the first time I created a gif. 

ABANDONMENT BRAINSTORMING

ABANDONMENT

Everyone is so proud of their hometown but we don't take care of it and appreciate it as much as we should. While doing some research I came across a Polish proverb that goes 'not my circus, not my monkeys' and I connected it to what I think our mentality is. I went out with the idea to show how the place is improving but realized that some of these places have been abandoned for a very long time. But we are not improving, we are slowly abandoning out home.

HOW TO DO STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

Our lecturer gave us some ideas on how to do street photography to better go around our hometown. He suggested flipping a coin to decide if you should turn right or left, follow someone around or follow a different map. When I was doing my research I came across the street photographer Eric Kim and he has great advice on how to do street photography. Kim (n.d.) gives 30 such as photographing people while they are talking, look for leading lines and one which I think could really help a beginner is to pretend like you are shooting what is behind the person you want to photograph. other things he mentions are to shoot in elevators, malls, hotel lobbies, and subways but for this task, it is more site-specific. When I will take my photographs for this task I will be following a friend who is not familiar with my hometown and I will take Kims’ tips on how to improve my work.

OSAKA by SEIKI HAYASHI

Part of our task was to choose an image and interpret it. I began by getting a feel of the images of the series and I chose one.

My thoughts on this one are:

• Relatable to people from and not from the place.
• They seem like tourists.
• Because it is black and white, it makes me think that they are lost and frustrated.
• Could look like a normal day to people who are from the place.
• More interesting to an outsider because they don't know the place.
• They don't look like they are ready for walking because they have a child with them and the woman is wearing just sandals,

LAZY CORNER BY THERESE DEBONO

 

We did an exercise in class to create ideas and narratives from images. We ere given the ones by Therese Debono.


 Image #1

• Judging
• makes you feel small
• waiting for drugs
• balconies
• waiting - for what?
• balcony might fall
• watchtower for old folk

 Image #2

• not afraid to hide
• where to pick up drugs
• bulky refuse
• lazy
• very red - labour party - sides
• they take care of their house - well kept

Image #3

• died
• retired
• abandoned - forgotten 
• alone
• old
• shut down - after drugs?
• waiting for a day to live again 

 Image #4

• Sunday
• journey
• hot day - strolling in the shade
• uphill
• transporting drugs
• following - undercover
• going from good to bad - chipped building to glass

 Image #5

• daily - routine 
• carefree
• hiding something in the bad - drugs
• weird fashion - old fashion
• stop!
• shopping - for who? - family - herself

 Image #6

• carefree
• stray
• up to no good
• in the shade

 Image #7

• gossip
• short women or big door
• vodafone bag - old people using technology
• got caught - off guard
• they look small - Tolkien - dwarfs

 Image #8

• old school - laundry
• balconies
• colours - racism - Maltese - Luqa - riots
• woman hiding - from who?

Image #9

• waiting - for what?
• image #3 - old woman - old shop
• off-guard - judging
• carefree
• cowboy behavior 

Final Concept

Old School

• old building
• old people
• old mentality
• hint of technology
• CCTV
• chipped paint

STREET PHOTOGRAPHY

(Gray, 2019)

In our lesson on visual thinking we were told that we will be focusing on street photography and I wanted to know more about it. Personally, I never did street photography or possibly I did and didn’t realise I was. When I hear the words ‘street photography’ the first thing that pops into my head are teenagers and skateboards. I also wrote down skatepark as a note and idea to work on. But what is street photography about and how do you do it?

Street photography is, as Elizabeth Gray (2019) describes it, one of the hardest types of photography. It’s when a photo shows everyday life and it doesn’t only happen in the street. But this is not just a point and shoot situation, Gray says that even street photography has sort of guidelines. Some points she mentions to do in street photography are for example shoot people from the back, shoot from a distance, capture silhouettes, learn how to approach people, etc.

(Kim, 2012)

Another article I stumbled on was of the photographer Eric Kim, who I became fond of when I researched street photography. He says “[t]he most important thing in street photography is to capture emotion, humanity and soul.” (Kim n.d.) These things can’t only be captured when you have people in a photo because I think even a building or object can show emotion and have a soul. Kim suggests similar things as Gray like the decisive moment and elements.

In conclusion I think street photography is a very open subject to play with. You do not have a limit on subjects and location. I think everyone can create their own thing in street photography and truly express themselves.

WHAT IS VISUAL THINKING?

During our first lesson, we were asked “What is visual thinking?” I think that visual thinking is when you, for example, use a mood board to generate ideas, but there is more to it than that. The definition of the word ‘visual’ according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is “something (such as a graphic) that appeals to the sight and is used for effect or illustration.” Therefore, visual thinking could be any form of thinking that you can see. It’s when you take note of a thought using either simple words or images and more.  

When researching visual thinking I came across a TED talk by Todd Cherches (2019) about the power of visual thinking. In the talk, Todd Cherches mentions two phrases which I understand their meaning better now that I have a better understanding of visual thinking. Cherches uses the phrases “I can see what you’re saying” and “a picture is worth a thousand words”. In the TED talk, he talks about the importance of visual thinking in our life and references to when he was in China and the only way to communicate was visually because of the language barrier.  He goes on to say that now a day's visuals are very important to get the attention you want because people are focused a lot on digital media. Cherches also says that it helps us remember and referencing the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words”.  

Mathias Jakobsen (2016), a writer for the website Medium, says “Visual thinking is not illustration! Visual thinking does not mean replacing the word “car” with a drawing of a car. And being a good visual thinker has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to draw.” As I said before you take note of a thought using words or images because words count as visual thinking. Jakobsen suggests practicing visual thinking by ‘putting things on paper’.

Page from my personal sketchbook.