Evaluation

Over all I am happy with the results of a years work it had been very time consuming going out 2 3 times a week looking for road kill.

The idea behind the project was to show the distraction humans are causing to the landscape around us. Its been on the news and game shows that badgers are the no.1 animal killed on the roadside and the govement is treating it like a badger cull.  Theses animals are often treating as a joke or tossed to the side and forgotten. These images are a reminder of the destruction we are causing on the landscape as population rises and the land animals live in Is destroyed for new houses. We need to take the time to remember the ones lost before they all disappear. I know that’s a little way off but if we start doing something now maybe we don’t have to get there. Kelly Richardson’s work is a vistion of the future something often barren with broken technology showing us glimpsis at the nature once passed. My work is showing the start to the proses.

Looking at other artists and the way they depict animal death I came up with a way to show the animals in their liminal state between life and death. I wanted the project to have punch while keeping the animas beautiful. the idea started of with the consideration of frederic delangle work I loved the way he paints in to the landscape with his car headlight it seemed very appropriate to use headlights an cars are the reason the animals are becoming road kill. This approach to working didn’t work in the way I would have liked I think everything looked to orange the exposure times and flash combination I was using didn’t work. So I changed idea and took inspiration form the crime scene photographers Weegee and Melanie Pullen the use of flash illuminated the subject in a way I didn’t think was possible I though the flash on its own wouldn’t work but when I tried it it worked very well and the fading to black wit in the images was still there so a carries on this tequnec through out the rest of my images   I did have some problems at first working with a camera its something don’t often do I like to work coverless but thought I should push my self to do something different and out of my comfort zone.  Focusing on the animal was probably the hardest thing I had to do on the small screen its so hard to tell if something is in focus I used bex and a torch light to focus each image but some are just a little out of focus it’s the one think I was constantly conserved about. Finding animals was the second problem we went out 3 – times a week and some weeks found nothing we did regular tweets asking people to contact us if the had seen anything but no one responded. Towards the end I still didn’t have ten images that I was happy with so I went back to crow borough where I went out my sister had driven to collage and had seen a fox a pheasant and a rabbit when we went back at night all three had gone so that was very disappointing I don’t know where they had gone perhaps the road kill man had eaten them.  The next day we went over the forest and found three badgers in the same area these completed the last of my images.   I was a bit disappointed we didn’t find a wider variety of animals my mum had told me of 3 occasions there where dear on the rods back in crowborough  but u could not get home because of dilatation hand ins and group crits. If I had more time I’m sure we would have found more animals.     The idea to put the images in to a book seemed more stable than prints it last longer something I really wanted with in my work I didn’t won’t it to be there and then go after 5 days. The book keeps all the images contained together as a collective voice.  The book size is quite small 8x10 I the reason behind this is so you have to look at the image to find the death It not in your face its softer that’s what I am hoping I don’t want to shock people. The captions are trying to give some sort of meaning to the death a personality again I wanted people to feel something with the images I didn’t want them to be cold. The placement and font of he captions is something I put a lot of though I to although I’m not sure I like them as much as I did when I first did them. They are centred to the bottom of the image. I wanted them to be at eye view but not in the centre of the image. But I don’t know how I would do them if I was to re create the book.   The soft back book is something I like its flexible I wanted it to be a little fragile to mimic the animals.  The hard back may have given the wrong meaning that  an animal is indestructible, hard this is something I wanted to stay away from as much as I could I wanted the design of my book to mimic the ideas behind the project. The cover is something I would change if I had the choice I don’t like the gloss I wish it was matt it dose show your reflection but that might not be so bad it shows you with in the image with in the death.  I do like the title again I spent a long time tiring to figure out where to put it and I am happy it doesn’t  over power the rest of the image. The image on the front of the book is also something I was unsure of but looking in to other photo books having an image on the front was comments practice.  The image is not in the book because it is long exposure I did darken the sky to make it fit in with the rest of the imagery. I chose it because the fox is closer up than the others so if people glance at the book cover they will instantly see what’s going on. So over all I am happy with the way the images turned out the only thing holding the project back is the lack of animals I think my book could have dose with 6 more images before the subject became repetitive.  Also the focusing was something I was having trouble with that’s something that did stop me using a few images.  The screen on the camera was very small so it was hard to tell if the image was in focus had been thinking of shooting tethered to be able to see if the images where in focus but I did seem like a lot of hassle to keep hold of the laptop camera and still be able to shoot      

Time passes in moments ... moments which, rushing past, define the path of a life just as surely as they lead towards its end. How rarely do we stop to examine that path, to see the reasons why all things happen, to consider whether the path we take in life is our own making or simply one into which we drift with eyes closed.
But what if we could stop, pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes?

In their liminal space between life and departure, these images are the lasting reminder of the lives now past. Captured with eyes open we see the effect of the humans; the paths we take although not always avoidable should not be forgotten.

Choosing the cover colours was something I spent time over more than I should have white just didn’t seem to work I couldn’t see it working but black matches the images but is it the same shade of black as the images dose that matter is do the images have just one shade of black. I also tried gray as a neutral in-between but that didn’t work at all. Sally mans book has a black cover but the images inside are on white paper I think that works. It would have to be a black matt colour as a gloss just gets very fingerprintey .

The font is something I have also been thinking about I didn’t want it to be to edgy it needed to be smooth and easy to read when small also the colour of the font was something to think about white was to bright so I opted for a grey I am not 100% happy with the grey but other colours seem silly like brown and red I wanted the hole book to be very simple.  And as fine art as I could make it. What would be an idea is to find books with black cover and see what colours they have used and what worked for them.

although i would like the book images to be smaller I think the exhibition images need to be big i don't think you need as many just 2 or 3 I am going to print two to hand in i'm not sure if a3 is going to be to small but a2 is at the top end i don't want price to come in to it but at the same time its a lot on top of the book once you factor in p&p and the price of an archival box it comes to £60 so I think that prhaps a3 might be might be enough to see the quality and i can print bigger for the exhibition.

so I have been writing poems each time we go out and find something  it documents my feelings when i see the animal the state its in ect



text is very important to me and I need to figure out what I am trying to say with the photos.
I have taken them all in the same way with a flash  at night
the photos become dark the further back you look if that makes sense i wanted it to be like fading to blackness like the body shutting down. the flash is all about being quick I'm hoping the death was instant and having tryed out a long exposure it created a different meaning.  the flash just gave it a white light something you asoseate with dying seeing a white flash of light.


so the images are about the impact the car had on the animal i didn't want it to be close but you can see from the images the outline of what's left of the animal i think that's all you need I have looked twords crime scene photographers because they have to document what's in front of them as is. and that's persisly what i wanted to do show the animal in its last resting place as clearly as I could.

I'm not sure how to go about adding in the poems its all about how I felt when I saw the animal do I want people to have that knolage is it too personal are the poems good enough dose it change the meaning. 

my other option is to have the date time location and condition of the animal when found although theses are just cold facts not very interesting 

thinking about it poems could work its about the impacts cars have on animals the death adding a small poem to each image adds another layer of meaning almost giving the animal death an emotion i want people to see the animals death as a bad thing so many animals die on the roads each year adding emotion through words could make the images seem moor human like or is it giving people an emotion to work with when they are viewing the image.

paper size and colour is relay important  I would like to have a small  book sort of 8X10 in size most of the photo books are a4 or slightly larger  the images will be a bit smaller because the ratio  of the  of the images they don't don't fit fully. i did want a border round the images and i like the size of the images the way they are. for a book having the images smaller makes it interesting more personal you have to look for the animal. it will be the same in a galiry evanthough nthe images will be printed bigger people probaly wont get up close to the image so will have so serch for the animal thats what i want tpeople to look and find rather than it be in there face.  as regards to colour i think that whiye works the best its just very clean, simple its not off putting the black just blends in to the images to much and the conitations with black are very much about death and i don't want the book to be all dark the images have enough of that.  I wanted to try out the square paper becuase of How To Touch What by Lawrence Weiner, Eve Sonneman. all the images are on square paper but there images are in twos and the text is on the images so the problem of captions is not there where as with my book captions on squared paper dosen't work also i don't think there is any significance of squared paper. 

harry Callahan was a very influential photographer of the post war era his book layout for new colour is something  I relay like its very simple  and easy to read the captions some of the nooks I have looked at have had extremely  small text its something I find hard to look at. The size of the book is well proportions with the images its a good book size 14.5" x 14.5". there is enough room for text and image to be on the same page with out looking overcrowded the white border is almost like a frame that is  something I would like to have in my book   with regards to hard cover or soft over I think his book works better as a hard cover but I think  that mine would work better as a soft cover because its only going to be a small book and the idea of it being flexible like Clive lanens book makes sence.

Published by Aperture in 1982 and long unavailable, Stephen Shore's legendary Uncommon Places has influenced a generation of photographers. Among the first artists to take color beyond advertising and fashion photography, Shore's large-format color work on the American vernacular landscape stands at the root of what has become a vital photographic tradition. Uncommon Places: The Complete Works presents a definitive collection of the original series, much of it never before published or exhibited. Like Robert Frank and Walker Evans before him, Shore discovered a hitherto unarticulated version of America via highway and camera. Approaching his subjects with cool objectivity, Shore's images retain precise internal systems of gestures in composition and light through which the objects before his lens assume both an archetypal aura and an ambiguously personal importance. In contrast to Shore's signature landscapes with which 'Uncommon Places' is often associated, this expanded survey reveals equally remarkable collections of interiors and portraits. As a new generation of artists expands on the projects of the New Topographic and New Color photographers of the seventies-Thomas Struth (whose first book was titled Unconscious Places), Andreas Gursky, and Catherine Opie among them-Uncommon Places: The Complete Works provides a timely opportunity to reexamine the diverse implications of Shore's project and offers a fundamental primer for the last thirty years of large-format color photography.

This was the last image I took in Thanet this was one of three badgers In a row. The mangled state of the corpse was evidence of its time spent at the roadside. The decomposing stages had already started. The smell was not very nice I tried not to keep Bex next to the badger for to long when focusing.  Again the roadside was very buzzy so we di have to keep moving.  At this point we did stop for a little while as I had managed to walk in to a signpost on the long walk to the badger and was forming a large lump and an unwanted headache.  I keep going back to the fox with the curve in the road although there is no curve in the road I tried to creating a slight angle to the image in the hope it will make it more visually interesting.  At this point you cannot see anything on the other side of the road it dose add this ominous blackness. I like the way it feels like it is creeping in further to the image like the darkness is going to take over the badgers being. The exposure was F4 and with a shutter of 1/160 this brings as much light in to the image as possible while freezing the flash.    The focusing was difficult with this image because of the constant moving.

so this is the 3rd badger i have found yesterday i cane bleve they are all with in the same area. this one is hard to see again its on the verge how did a car get to it.  we do think they have been moved of the road so cars don't run over them any more. but are still left out i wonder if it was because they couldn't figer out how to despiosde of it or was is a reminder to the traffic that animals can be on the road.


i love the trees with in this image looming over the badgers body again I did try to take the image at slight angle to have that line drawing eyes on to the badger.

now I know this badger has been moved its back is very broken so it must have been hit there but its head is facing the road I am guessing someone moved it out of the road.  this is just another one of the images I'm not sure about focus wise i relay though it was in focus when i was shooting I checked 4 times on the small screen this was the best in focus one out of the 25 i took the curve in the road was something that didn't come out as much with in the image as i had hoped. i do like the fact there is a speed sign next to the badger it is another reminder of the car presents.

this was the first of 3 badgers I had found yesterday this one was very fresh I looked like it had just been hit.

The landscape around the badger was quite barren we where on top of the forest so there where no trees only small amounts of gorse and heather. i did try to angle the image but the road is a very bussy one and i had to stand on the verge i think the image is in focus its something i have been having consent trouble with but in this image i can clearly see that it is an animal so i am not to worried I just need to get images at this point i just have ten images that are usable but one is a little out of focus i wish i could take more but it has been hard finding the animals to photography I suppose thats not a bad thing.

This was an existing find for us the road was very buzzy so it was hard to stop. We had to walk along the roadside quite along way from the car this was a challenge in its self as the bank was very wet and slippery. The animal its self was quit hole crumpled In to a coil. Since we set up we did find that we had to keep moving to make way for cars.  I did try 2 angles and I likes this one better than dead on because of the curve in the road it slides of in to the darkness. It was quite windy so the grass was blowing to the time of the trees.  The golden grass on the other side of the road is quite dreamy.

There is very little Photoshop used in this image I processed it through camera raw keeping the white balance the same the exposure was as shot in camera I did remove

The exposure was F4 and with a shutter of 1/160 this brings as much light in to the image as possible while freezing the flash.    The focusing was difficult with this image because of the constant moving.

Time passes in moments ... moments which, rushing past, define the path of a life just as surely as they lead towards its end. How rarely do we stop to examine that path, to see the reasons why all things happen, to consider whether the path we take in life is our own making or simply one into which we drift with eyes closed.
But what if we could stop, pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes?

In their liminal space between life and departure, these images are the lasting reminder of the lives now past. Captured with eyes open we see the effect of the humans; the paths we take although not always avoidable should not be forgotten.

this is one of the images I like most out of all of them I think its the position of the rabbit that dose it  the legs up in the air.
the road is so clear and clean it dose make the image seem more apeling than a road filled with rubbish and dirt.
the blood is very clearly staining the road its a head kill. I do like it when there is blood  it dose at a murder element but the image is still beautiful  thats very impotent.
the angle of the road is perfect it has a long curve and the light tralie of with it  it dose draw your eyes over the rabbit that something I keep wanting to do I want peoples eyes to be drawn over the animal I want them to see it but i don't want it so in your face.

mark power's book is something i have been looking at for other projects but its very relevant to this project the book layout is something I have been looking at I wanted to get the layout right. what is intresting is he has an image on both the front and back something i hadent thought about.  the text is very very small and in a difrent place to most books i have seen, top left.  from the images i almost didn't see it.  it dose work it makes a change to the normal text in the bottom of the left side of the image. i think the wight page in between each image is key it adds a barrier so you can look at each image individually but still see them as a collective
 

Kelly Richardson has been an inspiration to my work in ways i had not though of i didnt think her work was that reverent until i wrote an essay for mixed media and i released she influenced my original idea far more than i had thought. so hears my essay the importent part is the grate destroyer i see my work as the first stages before the grate destroyer and Orion Tide

Kelly Richardson: Life After Nature

Kelly Richardson’s hyper-real digital landscapes are as poignant as they are striking.  Working with advanced digital technologies intermingled with a façade of organic landscapes she constructs a distorted intricate imagery that depicts a post-apocalyptic future in which we see the developments of human technologies that have permanently altered the natural state of the organic environment.

The use of large wide screen high-definition video creates immersive filmic installations which evoke a number of emotions, awe, fear and excitement. It can often make you feel like you’re a stranger taking your first steps onto a new planet.

Each space has its unique qualities that create the atmosphere; the polished floors often found in the gallery space create a mirrored image almost like a parallel universe showing a familiar but distorted version of the post apocalyptic imagery above.   

“Every space has its own challenges and limitations (budget, size, light bleed, audio bleed, etc.) But white box gallery spaces still offer the best, controlled environments to present the work, where it's not otherwise informed by distractive elements around it or restrictive of how viewers engage with the work as it would be within a cinema, for instance. The works operate like moving paintings or filmic set extensions in a way, without a traditional narrative, inviting the viewer to spend as little or as long with the work as they like.”( http://ca.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/897672/kelly-richardsons-portent-is-having-an-effect) Most films Richardson creates use footage from real landscapes giving each of her films a sense of reality grounding them firmly in the realm of humanity.  With no narrative provided it is up to the viewer to create their own story drawing from their past experiences and merging it with the physical landscapes Richardson films to produce an individually crafted narrative.

The Great Destroyer is a series of 7-12 screens hung in a darkened room. As with all of her work we step in to a familiar distorted landscape, in this piece we see details of the Canadian wilderness. Recorded from the depths of the landscape we witness a series of close up footage of lush green inviting habitats. The title is quite ironic, The Great Destroyer implies that something or someone is destroying theses landscapes but humankind has not yet sculpted the landscape for colonization.  The sound within this work is essential to the understanding of the piece.  The work is woven with natural sounds of the landscape, a mesh of bird’s, insects, frogs and trickling water immerse the senses. As the sounds develop we start to hear the city movements sporadically scattered throughout the landscape, it’s as if humankind are gradually encroaching on the un-spoilt wilderness.  as the time passes we are slowly introduced to the sounds of a car alarm and we might even catch the tones of a chainsaw or an echoing of a gun shot interjecting through the natural sounds of the forest.  The signs are almost hidden within the sounds very much like the reality of the world around us, as we are not always aware of the alterations we as people are creating within the landscape and hence, the damage we are doing.

By characterization, The Erudition suggests that the spectators are onlookers to a significant message, the identity of the educator and the content of its meaning are left mysteriously open-ended.

The peculiar panorama is supplemented by the sounds crackling noises, as each tree appears into view the loud gentle rumbling of what sounds like wind blowing through an uninhabited space emphasizes the abnormal characteristic of the trees digital disruption.

Each tree fizzles in and out of the film, this being a particularly unnerving vision of nature being apart of faulty software, in turn this makes us hesitant as to whether the trees were once here or are yet to come. 

Orion Tide is almost like a commentary to The Great Destroyer In the motionless moments of perpetual twilight, the feeling cannot be shaken that all is not well. The barren landscape is strewn with lifeless undergrowth.  The unnerving outburst of sound fills the room creating an uneasy feeling as the gradual upsurge of fire from the sterile landscape pushes forth something deliberately ambiguous. The trail of smouldering ash and fire ascends in to the sky and out of eyesight, as soon as the first has flown the screen, more fly high pushing on up as more and more move forth.  Whatever is happening is happening en-masse, this could be missiles being fired from the earth to other parts of the world or through the atmosphere to alien intruders. Conversely with the earth being so desolate, this could be the start of a mass evacuation.  When experienced following on after The Great Destroyer it does start to hit home, the destructive nature of humans as a race conquering and colonizing everything we see with little regard for the nature around us. Only when it is gone do we start to see the impact, which we had on the environment.

In the far future one could see works like Richardson’s in 12-floor office building’s across the country with the nature we know today has long since been eroded from the landscape and replaced with man made technology, high rise buildings in a concrete jungle and scientific experiments. The videos she creates are only a view of the nature that was once thriving throughout the earth, now lost to the destructive nature of the human society. In the future this type of installation could be pared with an advanced form of not requiring the use of headphones as it dose today. The immersive nature of binaural sound would add a sense of other worldly reality.   

again we have been going out twice a week over dec and jan but we have not found much we have tried the larger roads rob and sam have suggested with no success eather it has been very cold but with all the increased traffic over the holiday period i would have though there would have been more.


i have started to look in to book macking with i the project. i am not confident with the idea of hand making  a book yet we have just had a book binding lecture which was very good but its not how i see my book i see it as more of a soft back.


my realy looked hand made it was a little wonky so i think if i  am to make a book i might use blurb that way it will not look messy and i can create the soft cover i want also dubble sides photo paper is hard to come buy and dosent come in the paper style i would like.

last night was a long trip we did find this rabbit. just  before we where going to go home 

it was very fresh when we came across it the road

was mildly bizzy the problem was we where outside a  house so we didn't want to stay to long as the man had already come outside to see if we where ok he did have a very nosy dog the hole exsperence was very unerving this issure was focusing it was very light rain so it look a while to focus the camera the water driplits where getting on the lens evan with a lense hood the rain was still falling on the glass  in this image you can see one o the dots  on the image this is something i didn't see when first editing i am using the uni macs and my mac must be different screen brightness or something.  there is a pole in the image something that i am tempted to Photoshop out of the final image. i think the rabbit is in focus with in this image although I'm not 100% sure  i think it dosent matter with in this image if its on the line because i can clearly see what the animal is.     

this image was taken on the same day as the bird a squirrel lying by the houses. houses have not been with in any of my images and i don't think it works  as well the animal dosent feel so isolated but it dose show the links between animal and human having the death right o there door step . again visual it dosent tiy in with the rest of my work i think the light  bounces of the fence and gate to much it seems to green the grave yard on the other side of the road is mildly illuminated it dosent have the same affect as the other images the fading to darkness is not as obvious as before 

i do like the way this image looks although the bird was so small i was unable to see what it was I'm still unsure what bird it could have been the fetehrs where a light grey though most if it was covered in blood. the lighting works well with in the image the right hand side just fades in to black the tunnel affect dose seem to be sucking in the bird if anything i think i needed to put a little bit more light on the bird.