Thursday 16th October - Photography research and early shooting

To develop my ideas about a personal photography project further I began looking up artists who had created their own worlds with their work, as that was something I intended to explore. I began with M. C. Escher, famous for his surreal physics-bending work that transformed everyday situations and concepts into something entirely his own. 

M. C. Escher's Relativity. No object in the image could not exist in an ordinary world, yet Escher's toying with perspective and gravity creates an image totally divorced from reality.

Though I find Escher's work inspiring and fascinating, I didn't want to pursue the route he takes of stepping away from reality. Rather, I wanted to take reality and shape it to my own end, creating something new within the world rather than a new world entirely. I began taking early photographs with this concept in mind, looking for abstract shapes that I thought could be developed into new ideas in post-production using Photoshop. 

 A selection of the photos I took during this lesson. I tried to set up interesting close-up shots that could be taken further with Photoshop so that I could superimpose my own ideas onto them as I went on. The first picture is reminiscent of Terry Richardson, now that I look back on it - I suspect I was at least somewhat subconsciously influenced by his photography, which goes to show how powerful his work is.