Photography Project - It's a small, sad, world
This is one of Thomas’s first photography projects and was submitted as a final-year piece at Queen Margaret University. Created at the start of lockdown, these moody images tell the story of isolation and natural beauty.
Originally I wanted to use this style of photography to highly the fear and terror surrounding the Australian and Brazilian fires. Though there are no fires like that in Scotland, I wanted to discuss the regular burning of the heather and show off the fear of fire through burning the prints themselves. I would have liked to have gone more into depth about the impact that this would have had on the environment and, most importantly, had taken double the number of photos. Due to the lockdown, I was only able to manage 1 out of 3 intended shoots, leaving me with a third of the images I intended to take. The original plan was to keep this style (high contrast, natural light) and create physical prints. With these prints, I would mostly burn them- having a collection of burnt and crumbling prints as the final piece.
Due to the lack of images originally taken, I have added a few more (from my tester shoots) to add to the body of this piece of work. I ended up with 15 images, though I wanted 30-50. I feel they do express and look how I wanted them too, but it -overall- feels a bit lacking. Clearly, though the style has not, my theme then had to change to better reflect the images I had, whilst also then representing the feeling I was projecting onto the images. The idea, now, was of the captured feelings of isolation and hopelessness through the lens of covid. Not only was I trapped inside, but the plants were also trapped- either in empty glasshouses or alone outside. The expressionist style and macro technique of the collection allowed me to shift and explore more whilst keeping the bulk of the theory I had been studying the same.
The style I had chosen to explore was hard. The technique I was using to create the high contact effect is extremely hard to capture outside (or in uncontrolled conditions). With the sun constantly changing and the background being unpredictable, I took a lot more photos than I would normally, which yielded less than on a normal shoot. You need the ISO to be as low as possible, as we want to avoid any grain in the images, to retain as much detail as possible. You then want the aperture as wide as possible, not just to let in the maximum amount of light but to get that very shallow depth of field required of the style. So, your most fluid setting becomes the shutter speed- which is not always the best way to shoot. You want the camera as stable as possible to keep the shutter speed slow in order to, again, get as much light as possible onto the sensor. Because even the tiniest movement can make the image blurry. All these elements combined make for moody and high focus images. Things like wind can ruin a photo. But, it’s this ephemerality which makes for such haunting photos.
I set about shooting in Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Gardens as they have an amazing collection of plants and a glasshouse- which would lead to more controlled, natural, conditions. This allowed me to get such still and perfect shots without wind or rain.
Overall this piece has evolved a lot and the collection of images has informed my later work. If you would like to know more please contact us.
