P | P4 | Ex4: Personal Voice

Make a Google Images search for ‘landscape’, ‘portrait’, or any ordinary subject such as ‘apple’ or ‘sunset’. Add a screengrab of a representative page to your learning log and note down the similarities you find between the images.

Now take a number of your own photographs of the same subject, paying special attention to the ‘Creativity’ criteria at the end of Part One. You might like to make the subject appear ‘incidental’, for instance by using focus or framing. Or you might begin with the observation of Ernst Haas, or the ‘camera vision’ of Bill Brandt. Or if you’re feeling bold you might forget about your camera completely and think about the tricky question of originality in a different way - http://penelopeumbrico.net/index.php/project/suns/

Add a final image to your learning log, together with a selection of preparatory shots. In your notes describe how your photograph or representation differs from your Google Images source images of the same subject.

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I wanted to check a google search about seaweed as I would like to take some photos of seaweeds at the beach.

I can see how most images are either in the very deep blue sea or for cooking purposes.

I wanted to be more creative so I went down the beach and wanted to see what I can catch.

I was mesmarised by how beautifully the seaweed dances in the shallow water and how the sparkle of the sun on the crystal clear ocean is.

We happen to be on a really nice trip down south where the water is even more clear than here (here is pretty clear! but over there is the great southern ocean which comes all the way from Antartica).

My favourite shots are:

I think it is not so much about being complicated in order to be creative, in order to be creative we just need to open our minds and think differently.

I think using the shallow water movement, the sun rays (creating sparkles and rainbows), and the seaweed, makes a bit of a kaleidoscope like look, where it is not so much the seaweed only, crips and clear, it is a combination of how the water and sun makes it look - therefore it is not just a seaweed, it is a seaweed combined with the sea and the sun into a whole new thing.

These images are pretty incidental as i didn't really plan anything I was just taking images of beauty of nature through my lens.