Contextualising my Project

I have decided to write this entry which describes a little about why I chose to study stars and the night sky for my Major Study Project.

Freedom
Whenever I see stars above, I feel a certain degree of freedom from the life in which I live, I can look up and ignore any happenings on Earth, any problems, any issues or any deadlines or anything which is happening in my life can all be ignored for a moment while I look into the sky to see the most amazing natural spectacle, which many people ignore day to day, throughout their lives.

I find myself to be a photographer who likes to have a cartain plan on what I want to produce and also be fully aware of the type of photograph I should come away with, although I am not afraid to photograph any changing subjects as I also have an interest in journalism photography, I just find it more relaxing and rewarding to take photographs which require lots of subtle techniqal skill, but result in a very mysterious and detailed image at the end.

When I am out shooting these photographs, I experience a type of freedom from daily life which is only matched by a holiday away from my hometown, so I do feel very relaxed and do enjoy to shoot these photographs, so that everyone can see the amazing sky which is visible when many people have gone to sleep.

Meaning
My photographs have a deep meaning attached to them which presents how we live in our world today. We still appreciate landmarks, important sculptures and natural monuments across the UK, but often if you live nearby, the importance of the site is lost, so with my photography, I want to bring back the importance of various monuments and structures byt presenting them in a much more mysterious way, by using the night sky and blanket of darkness to bring mystery to the locations.

Anyway each of my photographs has it's own meaning which should leap from the picture itself, but as a set of images I have tried to intertwine a strong presence of how the objects I have photographed, all have a connection with the sky above by essentially pointing up at it; the rock formations, the building and the pylon all point towards the large expanse of the sky and stars above, essentially bringing the expanse into perspective with our real world object. As each star is as big as our sun, but when put alongside a stone structure or man made object, they all look so small and insignificant, so the composition also plays with the appearance of perspective and scale.

Similarities
My work relates closely to that of Christel Lebas, who I looked at a little earlier in my project. Her work is very much about being at one with her environment and features different parts of Europe in a surreal lighting setup, normally at night. She uses long shutter speeds to produce light trails as I have done in my work.

From Lebas' work I can see that she has an eye for a surreal image and has the ability to shoot a mysterious photograph with little in terms of foreground interest, but still the photograph captures enough of the 'mystery' which is in the situation at the time. This is how I have presented my images, with a fixed but small amount of foreground interest, but the viewer is led almost directly into the vortex that is the star trails above the foreground, which intially grabs the viewer's attention.