What did you know about Lucy's practice before the workshop? What kind of art does he make and what is he interested in exploring?
I didn't know anything about the workshop beforehand, I heard a few opinions but not enough to know what exactly the workshop was based on and what we were going to do. I know that the artist that had come in creates photographic pieces however we didn't really get to know too much about them.
What expectations did you have about the workshop? What were you hoping to learn? How did you feel beforehand?
I was really excited for the workshop, I liked the idea of being able to work with another artist from out of school. I was hoping to learn a few new techniques that I would be able to implement in my work in this project (unusual portraiture).
What did Lucy say about the way people usually make photographs? What did she want you to try to do differently?
Lucy said that people don't tend to explore the act of taking photos as much as they could, they often limit themselves to certain angles and perspectives never fully exploring the subject. In order to explore taking photos differently, Lucy made us tape our phone/camera to a random part of our body and take a video, I taped my phone to my forearm therefore resulting in a video taken from a angle that we're not used to seeing.
What was your role - disrupting the cameras's view, making a hand structure, experimenting with textures or creating a performance that was recorded?
My role was to experiment with different hand positions, whilst the people that I had been working with captured the movement of my hand against backgrounds of different textures and colours.
What kinds of materials and tools did you use - torches, string, fabric, paper, plasticine, iPads/iPhones, bridge cameras, DSLR, digital projector etc?
In the group that I was working in, we used a torch, string, plasticine, phones, etc. The project was quite mixed media as we were using many different materials in order to create interesting photos.
What kinds of pictures did you make during the workshop - still/moving, documents, portraits, experimental abstractions etc?
During the workshop, we had taken many photos, some were still, others were moving. I had taken both portraits and experimental abstraction photos, the point is that we took a wide range of photos, the point of it was to make sure that we were being innovative and experimental with our work.
What activities did you take part in on the day? What was new or surprising? What did you find challenging? What did you enjoy most?
The first activity that we did was creating a video of our hands against a interesting background, this was influenced by an artist called Yvonne Rainer. The second activity that we did was exploring how we can take the idea of the first activity and turn it into something more fun and creative, we took different materials (plasticine, paper clips, ribbon, etc.) and found ways to attach them onto our hand. The third activity that we did was exploring movement, we were taken outside and told to take a video of us running on the school walk way, this resulted in a unusual video that you wouldn't usually decide to take. We also photographed other students as they threw a bunch of green sticks into the air. I like how unexpected and imaginative these activities were, they have helped me in exploring my ideas.
What connections have you made between the experiments in Tuesday's workshop and your chosen investigation? How might you use one or more of the ideas from the workshop in your ongoing investigation?
The workshop didn't really involve a lot of portraiture work however I like the ideas that were proposed to us throughout the day, I am going to make sure that I try to be more experimental with my photographs. I am going to use the idea of finding new and different ways to take photos in order to create abstract portraits.
Unusual Portraiture What happens when you photograph someone obstructing the viewfinder?
By obstructing the viewfinder, you're preventing yourself from seeing the subject as a whole and therefore get to focus on one specific part of the image.
How could capture someone's hand gestures so that we might understand something about their thoughts or personality?
Different hand gestures could represent different emotions, for example a fist could represent anger whilst something more open and relaxed could represent a calm emotion.
What happens when you disrupt the view of your subject?
By disrupting the view of your subject you are preventing them from being able to see how and where you are taking the photo.