Weeds
The aim of this project is to highlight nature within our immediate landscape. The landscape I have used is the school landscape. During this project I have decided to focus on the unseen or unwanted nature in the school grounds. Photography can help us see what we would normally ignore, making the familiar unfamiliar. Weeds are "flowers in the wrong place". Most people think of them, if they think of them at all, as unwelcome or a nuisance. My feeling is that they deserve more respect and this is something photography can do.
These are photos of the process, I spray painted over a plant, using its shape like a stencil in order to obtain its outline. I changed the distance from the spray paint to the card, the amount of paint used and also the colour of the card, this created many different outcomes.
These 6 images are my personal favourites and the examples that worked the best. The bottom left is one of my personal favourites, I decided to see what the orange paint on white card would look like. I also sprayed the cad from a closer distance, making the outline sharper and more defined.
Here below is the first attempted at the idea. I came up with the idea of essentially making 'plant portraits. I was originally going to try to make portraits of multiple smaller plants on the same piece of card, using masking tape as borders to created a frame like effect. As you can see it did not go to plan. I found that spraying smaller areas was much more difficult, and that the smaller plants' outlines didn't stand out that much.
Weeds (Part 2)
This is my second attempt at drawing attention to weeds in the landscape. This time I decided to take my idea outside of school, in an attempt to highlight nature in my local area. I made few, impactful, changes to the process of making these images.
What were my aims for this second round of attempts?
My first attempt at this did not exactly go to plan, with me eventually making to many changes to the core ideas behind this project something that in my opinion, were not changes for the better. So naturally in my second attempt I was adamant on making positive changes. This was one of the main reasons behind my choice to take this project outside of school and onto the streets, and car parks. One very noticeable difference between attempt 1 and attempt 2 you will see are the different colours of paint. For attempt one I used a bright orange, in attempt 2 I used a sky blue, not necessarily a bright colour that stands out. You may wonder why I decided to change the colour of paint and your first guess may be that I had ran out of orange paint, now that isn't too far from the truth, yes I needed some more paint. But much like the whole reason behind making another attempt I made sure to take a lot of care regarding my materials I used for the project. First my choice in paint colour, I chose blue, why? Well that is for 3 main reasons, I wanted a colour different to orange so that you, the person viewing this could easily tell what work is attempt one and what work is attempt 2, but also so that the colour would stand out to people passing by as this attempt was done in public place. |
WHY BLUE?
The process of choosing blue was thought about more than you may expect. I noticed when out looking for locations that there was lots of red brickwork, this would mean choosing a red based colour for my paint would not stand out as much as desired and potentially defeating the whole point of this project and making small green plants blend in even more rather than standing out.
Weeds (Part 3)
The third part of this project was the creation of photograms and lumen prints. It took a while to get the exposure and composition right.
Here are the photograms:
And here are the lumen prints: