First Photoshoot

I spent a week in Texas, but struggled to find a location to match the project outlined in my proposal. I did, however, take the opportunity to practice taking images, despite the likelihood of them not being used.

I have spent some time researching what pictorialism meant in the 19th century.Stieglitz pioneered the movement but photographers like Steichen and Emerson made significant contributions to this field also, among others. Steichen postulated that the eye focuses on the subject, producing a sharper plane of view, which results in the remaining vision being softly focused in comparison and having a more 'dreamy' feel. This naturalistic style of photography was later denounced as many photographer's who went on to adopt this method, produced out-of-focus, blurred images.

The process of producing a pictorial image is not, therefore, an easy task. It is this process which I wish to interrogate and endeavour to achieve. A narrow depth of field is one option, but this will ultimately lose much of the detail of the overall landscape, as too much will make the image background appear unrecognisable and too little will result in a well focused image overall.

Striking the balance will therefore be difficult, I have discovered. This is by no means the only problem facing me, as composition, choice of subject, mood, lighting and form all contribute towards creating 'pictorial' art.

Is photography art? Much debate has centered on this topic for 120 years or more, one which I am currently researching in my dissertation.

I have also found that there is a danger that the image resembles a postcard picture perfect style image, which loses the whole point of what the project is trying to achieve.