Evaluation
I have enjoyed shooting my photographs for the Major Study project over the last several months, even though I have had periods when I have felt my work isn't progressing quickly enough, but I believe that now, looking back to my initial research and recce stages, I believe that I have improved massively with this star photography technique since I started out in March.
As for my final photographs, I am happy with how they have come out, particularly after some work with Photoshop, the images really do stand out and give an accurate idea of what i saw when I went out in the evenings, which each time I went out, was something completely different, even though the same stars were always above me, the sky always looked different than it did the previous time I went out. As a result shooting the images was made incredibly hard as it was difficult to understand what settings were required in the camera to get the best photograph.
Most of the photoshoots went according to plan but as I wrote about in the blog entries, some didn't. Variables arose such as the intrusion of other people with torches, the appearance of Quad bikes and also the lens steaming issue I had back along. All these problems had to be overcome to make sure I produced some excellent images for the final submission, although it was difficult to go on after you realise that around 30 minutes of photographs have been ruined by a single quad bike going through your composition, quite irritating indeed!
But even with all the issues I had, considering the unreliable time frame I had to produce these images (waiting for clear evenings to shoot the photographs), I have produced some amazing images which show the full expanse of the sky above us, which many people just don't pay any attention to.
As for a contextual background and reason why I have shot the photographs, I would like to say that it has been a type of photography that i have waited a long time to do. As i already have an interest in astronomy and the night sky, I thought it would be appropriate for me to go out there and try to get a photograph which captures the mystery that is our night sky. I say 'mystery' because we pretty much know nothing, in reality, about what is up there and many people aren;t even aware of some of the name of the different constellations which are above us, so my reasoning for shooting my photographs by way of star trails rather than jsut the stars themselves, is to present the mystery of space and continue that idea the space is mysterious and largely unexplored by humans on earth.
As I described early on in my blog, my family have had an interest in Astronomy which has probably led me to have the interest I have today, so I want to present my work to my family and also as a new type of fine art photography which can be displayed in a gallery format for many people to see.
While I have worked on this project, I have looked at several different artists which have helped give contextual reasoning to my photographs, such as the work by Van Gogh, as I discussed in the blog entry, he uses a similar composition technique to me, even in a totally different artistic creation of a painting. So it is true that artworks can link, even when they are created by different means.
Bibliography
This section contains all of the links and books which I used throughout my project for research and illustration purposes:
Web sources
Chrystel Lebas
www.chrystellebas.com
Various Photographers
www.danheller.com
Illustrational Images
http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/stars/polaris.html
www.wikimedia.com
http://graemesdesigns.com/lsdartmoor.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon
http://www.artquotes.net/masters/salvador-dali/the-persistence-of-memory.jpg
Arnoud Quanjer
www.wildlifephotography.nl
Mapping
Microsoft Live Search
Multimap
Google Maps
Linda Connor
www.afterimagegallery.com
Books
Surrealism: Vilo Publishing 2001
The Photo Book: Phaidon 1997
The complete guide to Night and Low Light Photography: D&C 1999
The complete guide to Night and Low Light Digital Photography: Micheal Freeman - Ilex 2008
Lighting the Landscape: Berkhauser 2004
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