Maria's assignment.

Home!
For this task we have been asked to create a zine on the theme of home and what it means to us. To me, home means a place where you feel safe, and that it doesn't specifically have to be a traditional house, I first thought about photographing places that I felt safe, but I ended up quickly changing my idea when my cat was sat on a pair of trousers and he looked so happy, so I decided that I wanted to show where animals feel safe because to them it can be anywhere and lots of different places. 


Task one
Series of images with different camera settings when I get sheet from teacher
I was given the task to take two sets of images, the first showing the effects of shallow and large depths of fields.

He's a photo with a large depth of field. 

He's a picture with a shallow depth of field.  

Shallow depth of field.

Large depth of field.

And next is a panning shot of a vehicle going past with camera settings. Manual setting with shutter speed 250, ISO 125 - 400 and an F number of 8 - 11

Panning shots of my boyfriend running :) I'm really proud of these pics

Fast shutter speeds.

Because I used such a fast shutter speed and no flash I had to use a really high ISO so that the picture didn't underexpose. 

My ideas for my photography zine on the theme of 'home' is to look into the home of my pets, I plan to take lots of images of my cats in different parts and aspects of their home. I plan to show what a home is to a cat.

Task two

Four photographers that relate to my ideas. 

Alan Robinson

I picked Alan Robinson as my first photographer because I admire what clear photographs he took of the cats, cats being really hard to photograph because they constantly move around and it's hard to keep them still. So even though of these problems, Robinson has managed to get amazing pictures of cats. In the two photographs where you can see the cats eyes, I love how in focus and clear they are, in my images I would like to make sure that my cats eyes are in focus. 

Terry Gruber 

I picked Terry Gruber as my second photographer because I liked his black and white images of cats. I like the chaos in the second picture, and how comfortable and at home the cats seem in the picture. I also really like the black and white images, I think that in my photography book I'd like to do some in black and white, and some in colour.

Lomo Photography.

Instead of looking up another cat photographer, I decided to look up a few different styles of photography that I could do in my zine. While looking up different styles of photography, I found the style lomo, I really loved the look of these photographs, as well as black and white, I would like to do images with this effect in my zine.

Tim Flach

I picked Tim Flach for my last photographer, after I watched 'How to take stunning pictures' a tv program, in one episode on photographing animals it featured Tim, who talked about how important he thought it was to capture the animals personalities in the photo. I think you can really see how much thought was put into each of his photographs. For my set of images, I plan to try and capture as much of my cats personality as I can.

I found his images really inspiring.

I was thinking about how I'd like my zine to be set out, I think I have decided to either do one image on a page or do one main image then maybe have two or three little images of close ups.

My power point.

Task Three.

.Here I followed my cats around for a bit testing out the best and easiest way to photograph them, since my cats move about alot. At first I had a problem getting a clear picture of my cat because he was moving about so much, as you can see here.

So I then tried to take the picture of my cat sparkey with flash hoping it would get a sharper image. But, as you can see from the image below, with the pop up flash in my camera, my cat looks absolutely terrified. So I decided that I'd have to take my images with lights instead placed where I needed them.

I also had the opportunity to take some pictures of my boyfriends neighbours new puppy, so I also took some pictures of my boyfriends dog :)

After taking some pictures of the dogs, then taking images of my cats, here are the contact sheets from them.

After going through them all I decided to make a mock up of what I wanted to make my zine look like, although I might change what images I used and the wording I wanted my zine to go like the pictures I've put below. 

After taking these photographs, I have just bought a new camera and a flash gun so I intend to have a go at re doing some of these photos before I class them as my final ones, I intend to make them clearer using my flash gun and bouncing the flash on the ceiling. I think my photos before weren't so clear because I had trouble with the lighting, I had to lean a lamp over to be able to take them, so using a flash gun shall be alot easier. 

Here are some test shots I did of my cats trying out my new camera.

Photo done under electric lighting, with the curtains still open and still some natural light coming in. 

Photo done with flash gun, bouncing the flash off the ceiling

Photo done with electric light, when there was no natural light coming through the window.

Done with the pop up flash on my camera.

 I am really happy with how detailed and clear they are, so I intend to re do a few of the photos I have done. 

I found that the best way was to bounce the flash other wise you ended up with an evil looking cat, like in the last photo. 

For all these photos I used the automatic setting on my camera but still with manual focus, because my cats kept moving around to different rooms and things so much, I didn't have time to change all the settings unfortunately, but I plan to put them into the camera myself on my final photos and still use manual focus. 

Here is another idea for one of the pages :)

Home is... in a paper bag. 

home... is lazing around in bed. 

After having a go with my camera and taking a few more shots, I decided that I really liked my new images but also liked my old shots too, too fit the 20 image picture limit, I decided to cut a few of the shots from my first set of images so I could fit these few extra images in. 
I have decided to edit the pictures of my black cat in black and white because when you take an image  of him his fur looks better, but then with the pictures of my ginger cat, I wanted to show off the amazing colours in her fur so I might have a go at editing them like the lomo effect like what I said in an earlier task
Here is an image where I had a go with editing an image with a lomo effect.

 I looked at online tutorials on how to do this on photoshop but the effect it gave wasn't as nice as the lomo effect on the online editing program. I have decided to edit my ginger cat pictures like this and my cat pictures black and white. 

With the images of the puppy and the dog, I have decided to do the images of the dog in black and white like I did before and try out the ones of the puppy in the lomo effect. 

Task four

Here are my final twenty images 

Here is the order I want my images to go in in my book, after setting them out I decided to change a set of the images, the last few images up above of the black cat will go in the place of the middle pictures in the diagram of my book. 

Chosen font - from picnic.

Task Six

Ways in which zines are made and distributed 

''A zine /ˈziːn/ zeen; an abbreviation of fanzine, or magazine) is most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier.''

How are zines made?

Zines are usually made by folding paper printed with images in half then stapled together in the centre, they can also be stitched and tied with string, and put together with a rubber band and stick. 

Here's a few different ways a zine can be made.

How are zines distributed? 

Some zines are given out for free, some are sold for a couple of pounds in shops, some are sold online, some are shown at art shows then copies can be bought there. 

How much do zines cost?

The cost of the zine depends on alot of things really, the price can change with what type and quality paper you use to create the zine, which method you use to print the images on, how you put your zine together for example stitching it together. 

What is the history of the zine?

The popularity of the zine has boomed in the last twenty years, with them containing a variety of different topics from photography to music to fashion ect. Most zines are made very cheaply, the pages being photocopied and then handmade into a book, but there are certain people who create very expensive produced zines. A zine in 1930 called 'The comet' Was believed to be the first zine ever created. 

Final page layout.

Evaluation.

I am really happy with how this project went, I think I managed to clearly show that I took influence from my research into photographers. Through this project I learnt a lot of things, I learnt how to bind/ create a book and folding paper to make a book, editing a picture Lomo and how to take better pictures of animals. I learnt about different lighting techniques and how to light up animals in different ways to make them look good, for example dark coloured animals. I felt the text I chose fit in well too, I think it looked like a hand drawn font, which fit in with the home made zine and the home feel. If I did this again I would maybe be able to redo some of the images a little better, knowing what I know now. My favourite set of images from this project was the last one of my black cat sat on the sofa, I really liked the lighting in the photograph and the close up of his whiskers. The lay out of the zine was hard to come up with working out where the pictures were in the book but I am really happy with it in the end. I managed to be able to do it all with the time frame, even though I changed some of my photos were changed half way through to newly taken ones, because I'd got a new camera and flash through the project. Although we didn't get to make the zines ourself in the end due to time, we did get to lay it all out and we did learn book binding in practise. At first I wasn't sure what to do for this project, but then after taking pictures of my cats I decided that they class different places as homes too so that I'd like to show that to people. After looking through my contact sheets I decided that my white balance was a problem in the photos because when I'd taken pictures under electric light the pictures came out orange. Some of the shots I did had the christmas tree in the background and it created a lovely bokeh effect, if I did this again I'd love to use bokeh in the background of my cats but actually manage to get the cats in focus this time. Also from looking through contact sheets I found out that it was better to take the images in natural light because the pictures under electric light messed with the white balance in the photograph, so I nearly did most of mine under natural light or electric light but one with a bright white lightbulb so it didn't effect my photos colours. I also had planned to use images of the black dog, but after re doing some of my other images I didn't feel it fit in with the quality of the others as it was quite grainy and dark compared. I did like the pictures but next time I'd try and take the pictures with a flash. Looking at all the contact sheets, it helped me easily pick which angle of the photo I liked best and which to pick.