Photography Project for Uni

1. Laura Wallace
300252990
stream 2
adenahunter.tumblr.com
damage

2. proposal
For this second photography project I will be taking photos with a Holga camera
using 120 film/slide film. From this use of physical film, I will take the physical into
the digital and then back to physical for the handin.
I am going to explore the idea of ‘generational degradation’ in the remediations
of my film. I am planning to explore several different avenues of this theme. These
will include uploading my images to hosting sites like imgur, another route I
will also be exploring is what happens to an image after several dozen/hundred
compression e.g. through emails. These will not be the only routes I explore I still
have yet to determine what my other iterations will be to my images.
I am planning to stick to mostly black and white film for my images but will
not completely rule out colour at this point in time. I feel that with the idea
visualisation I have in my mind for my finals, black and white images will further
the theme and tone I am aiming for.

3. Compression

4. Insta-death

5. Text Edit

6. Physical Handin

7. Evaluation
I am pleased with how the project turned went, and with the photos I have produced. I was very excited when it was
announced that we were going to be using real film cameras. Although I can still remember shooting on a film camera,
I do realise that not everyone has had that experience and I think every photographer should at least once in their life
time. Even though it is ‘outdated’, it is still good to know where the digital camera came from and what it developed
from.
For my film I was focusing on boring everyday images, styled of the image of feet that seems to popup everywhere
when you are researching ‘lomo’. From this I think I created some really interestingly boring photos.
My original idea was to upload my images to sites like imgur, tumblr and possibly reddit. I had hoped that other people
would edit and in their own way ‘degrade’ my images but unfortunately I did not get any results from this ‘experiment’.
I had underestimated the laziness of the internet.
Moving on, from the failed idea I concentrated on different ways to ‘degrade’ an image. Specifically - Compression,
Instagram and Text Edits.
Compression : Through the use of ‘Microsoft Office 2010’ I have continuously compressed this single image. I used
the -Compress Pictures function and the -Email Messages compression rate to give me the biggest leap backwards in
quality. I think that this image although it could have been done through Photoshop or a filter holds real meaning to
me knowing that I created it ‘manually’.
Insta-Death: I do not like Instagram, so this was perfect opportunity to “mock” the clichés and ‘filters’ that everyone
seems to be crazy about. For this image I took the approach that people themselves were the ones ‘degrading’ their
images. I put my image into a filters program and applied anything that ‘looked cool’. I think that this turned out
perfectly. The filters have completely ‘degraded’ the image to the point of not being able to even recognise it anymore;
this showcases my point completely.
Text Edits: For this image I was looking at almost the same ‘degradation’ as the compression image but going about
it in a different way. Instead of letting a program compress the image I took the approach of what happens if you just
delete some of the file to make it smaller. This was easiest done in a text editor i.e. Notepad. It was only once I had
already posted the first draft to Tumblr that I realised that I had unintentionally created a ‘glitch’ image. Though this
does fall under the ‘Glitch category’ I think this image fully incorporates my theme of degrade.
I am disappointed that my very first idea did not work out but Overall I think that the aspects that I focused on resulted
in pictures that fully incorporate and displays my theme.