I spent a few hours yesterday looking and collecting images for assignment 5. Most of my looking was near to home, I didn’t go to far in the end. I remember hearing that photography is a bit like panning for gold, you get your sieve in the stream and start panning. Most of what you find is not gold. Eventually you find what you think is a nugget and you take it home, shine it up and sit it on the mantle piece to gaze at it for a while. You continue panning until you find your next piece of gold. I think this is a great description of the process.
Like the analogy above most of what I found yesterday was not gold. The light was pretty flat but I still went out and wandered. I actually shot a roll of medium format film that I need to develop and started a second roll too. But I did shoot a few digital files too.
This is an image I like. I have decided to start an ongoing vision board or vision wall for this assignment in my office here. This will be going up on it today. It has an element of drama from the colours of the vegetation (weeds), the sky and the light, which was exceptional last night. It is also quite ambiguous, its not clear exactly what it means which I like. To me it is the antithesis of the imagined pastoral landscape of Ireland that people arrive in Ireland – it is not green for a start, it is not manicured, its wild and unruly.
This has an added layer of ambiguity with the two shadows. To me the people represent the influence of man on the landscape.
I found this yesterday, its a discarded table football set, dumped by the side of the road. Ironic that the world cup is running at the moment. I think it is interesting from the perspective of ambiguity and also that it is rubbish dumped in the landscape.
Here it is the ambiguity that I find interesting. The image itself is not one that I would use for this project though.
A landscape learning log 