Triathlon at Sands Beach Resort today

Triathlon at Sands Beach Resort today

Axis Raisa HAS Introduced in her previous post - my name is Rena, I am a journalism intern, and this is my first blog post on triathlon That firing place at Sands Beach Resort today!

This is my very first day taking photographs at the Sands Beach Resort triathlon.Lovely weather, clear blue sky, warm sunshine and refreshing winds payback from me and athletes enjoy the day. It looks like it's a perfect climate for sports, the wind is a natural air-con!

Sunglasses on, camera out, and I'm ready waiting for the athletes to start running.Intense moods but entertaining environment really works well together as a combination.

It was such a great experience to -improvesleep my photography skills! The weather is beautiful, so it's easy to get gorgeous views without much effort.

My main purpose was to get the emotion of the athlete. If you look into Their faces, you find so much going on. Red cheeks, healthy look, sweaty skin, facial expressions are simply amazing. Someone's tired, someone's full of energy and someone's in a really good mood.

It feels amazing When an athlete runs fit for the fifth time, and you can only imagine how much his muscles must be killing him, and you can only guess how high is his heart rate, and you have no idea how hard it is to perform three sports, so intently one after the other. But the main point is - he is smiling, he is happy, he loves what he does, he loves running in the sun, he loves sweating it out, he loves his body and so his world around him. 

The capture of the very present, very touching and it really Brings in so much motivation.

Despite my standard lens, I managed to seizure the emotion, but I really wish I had a better zoom lens. The close-ups, portraits of the athlete faces would be stunning!

The Active team by the swimming pool are there for the athletes. Together with the sunshine and up-beat music emotionally They Are Encouraging and supportive. I'm trying to capture each moment, but so much is going on. It is another good exercise for me to develop my skills further. Better and quicker reaction, faster pace, awareness and action plays the main role. I'm simply loving it. I feel my personality growing along with it.

RENA

Bookbinding

After long considerations, I have decided to make a book. As it was a kind of a last minute decision, I went straight to the book binding room where I found R. Nash. An absolutely amazing person, gave me some valuable tips, and said, that it is still possible to realize my idea of printing a book. All I had to do is to buy an appropriate paper and stitching materials. Richard suggested me the Shepherds in London, however, I managed to save a journey, ans found some great paper and other needed materials in a local art shop.

As soon as I got back home, I watched all possible tutorials on working with Adobe InDesign, and downloaded a free trial version to experiment working with it. Did not seem to be very difficult, so I felt quite confident with it. Prepared my text and images and, and came back to him next week.

Spend a day adjusting settings and file, converted into a PDF and printed my book! I found it as a great and addictive experience, with a real intention to create some more in the near future. I actually expected the binding to take the huge amount of time, however, I was surprised  a it only took me about ten minutes, and voila, there is my first book !

Received Images Back !

Due to my blog been crashed for a few days I've been working in word to keep up to date.

So I received images back from my grandparents in Lithuania ! They have been absolutely amazing, and I am very happy with what they have written. Both of then described the day photograph was taken, and so I revealed something I did not know. It is absolutely exciting, and I am so happy with this project so far.



They have also sent me a hand written letter, which perhaps was the first one in my life. Feels amazing.



A proof !



The next step is to think, what am I doing with the images !

Choosing Text

I have experimented with text a lot, and finally I have chosen something I like, and something that is much more related to what I am doing.

My digital version of the narrative will create a fragmented narrative structure. The text underneath the photograph will be something my grandparents used to tell me, something I used to tell them, or something I think about them now.

Some of the examples.


This is something my grandma used to tell me all the time.




YOUR EYELASHES ARE REALLY LONG


Something I used to tell her

HOLD MY HAND UNTIL I FALL ASLEEP


Something I used to tell my grandad

CAN I COME WITH YOU

 

These short statements are to be combined together with particular images. 

Soundtrack

I had an idea of having a soundtrack on top of my slideshow. I thought it would be a good idea to accompany with some nostalgic piece of music such as piano. I searched online but I did not see to find anything I liked, I also did not want to make it too recognizable so people would not make unintended associations.

But, I have a neighbor musician who plays piano and violin. I spoke to him and he was more than happy to help me with my project by recording me a piece of music. I have spent some time listening through his music, when finally shortlisted and chosen the one I like, I was going to be recorded within a week.

However, after a tutorial, we have agreed that perhaps soundtrack is not needed as it might just become 'too much'. The images in addition to the text is enough for me to tell the story I want, and any additional sound might become a huge distraction.

Done as decided, but I'm still having my neighbors CD !

John Stezaker

And I found, John Stezaker, one of the first English conceptual artists, who reacted against the idea of pop art. Stezaker preceded avant-garde, Dada, cubism and surrealism as a response to the world of 'photo mechanically produced mass culture'.


His work is surrealistic, combining crop and collage together. Stezakers' source of materials is mainly postcards, film stills, images from photographically illustrated books. His technique is to find, select, crop and put together.













I found some of his work extremely interesting and brave in a sense. brave crop, powerful images and messages. 



Looking at his work I found that there is still loads to explore, but what I am concentrating on is the crop of my families images. I wouldn't dare to combine my grandads' face to somebody else, it would be like deletion of ones identity, and combination of two people, and possibly personalities. I found Stezakers' choice of cropping even harsher than mine. However, I'm sure I could do the same of something even more extreme when working with strangers' images. It would be so much easier. Therefore I work with the images of people who are too important to me to put them together with somebody else.

I thought that perhaps I could collage together my grandad and my grandma, together as one person, as they are in a sense, after over 50 years of life together. That would kind of represent the 'grandparents' as one. Although, what I intend to do with my project at the moment, is to separate one image into several pieces, creating individual images of each body part and highlighting its importance together with the text that I worked on a while, and I believe I'm about at the point where I wanted myself to be.

Back to Image Crop

Looking back at my choice of cropping images; I researched more into the idea of cropping itself. As mentioned before, my crop appeared to be harsher that John Hilliards' and I couldn't really find the reason. A quick reminder, my images are cropped over the body and face, where I mentioned I couldn't write over it, but I could crop. What is the reason behind?