Photography

For photography I decided to look at the second group of collected items I had from over summer as it was hard to bring my Lolita items into a photography situation, and so I looked at my figure collection, particularly the vintage Gen. 1 My Little Pony toys that I had.

From this I decided to of course look at toy photographers, the first one being Slinkachu's 'Little People' project.

I felt this was a good starting point as we were going to take photos in town as part of our project, and that I could possibly make them interact with the surroundings. I also particularly enjoy how they look out of place as small clean figures when placed in dirty urban locations.

While looking for other photographers I came across Sasha's Lab (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sashabratz/) who photographs figurines, particularly those of anime characters. Her work also appealed to me in that the figures were similar to some that I own, and the situations they were placed in were comedic or bright. I also like, with her work, that the background does not particularly detract from the objects, and in some of her work, it does not add to the 'situation' they are placed in and simply works as a frame for the figures, such as in the piece below.

'Even More Cheerful' using a figure of Hatsune Miku

The piece Hide and Go Seek is more reminiscent of Slinkachu's work, whereby they are interacting with the background, and it is definitely a part of the composition of the photo.

'Hide and Go Seek' - Haruhi and Kyon from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

I then went into town with a selection of My Little Pony figures and took pictures of them in various locations, originally focusing on looking at the object from different angles although eventually slipping it into certain situations such as with McDonalds left overs as seen in the contact sheet below.

I also experimented with taking pictures of the ponies in groups in the Photography Studio, however the SD card failed to load and those, as well as most of the other photos taken in town were erased. The remaining photos are below.

I liked the photos that focused on close up parts of the object, although the ones that looked at it as a whole in an urban environment tied in well with my artist influence.

Evaluation:

I feel that photography was perhaps my weakest area, due to the lost photos and the fact that I could not mount them properly/get them printed professionally. I also feel that they split up my portfolio weirdly, as the project was only presented on one sheet. I enjoyed working with the camera though, and learning how to take photos will come in useful in future projects. I felt that being able to decide the composition for yourself and how objects were positioned is a good skill to have for using photography for reference photos for future work therefore I very much enjoyed photography and felt it was a useful subject area on the rolling programme. I would possibly try to incorporate more than one object if I were to tackle this project again, and have more interaction between them as well as with the surroundings.