They Live on in Light

During the first few weeks of January I spent a great many evenings and nights continually photographing my family slides. It was actually one of the more harder photographic exercises I had involved myself within, simply to due the nature of how I was capturing these slides.  It may sound funny (and perhaps even slightly weak), but holding a camera in one hand at eye height towards a light, with the other holding a slide for hours on end really does take its toll on you; aches and pains as if I had spent countless sessions lifting weights at the gym, as well as Space Invader blotches plaguing my vision from constantly looking at the lamp.  It wasn't easy, put it that way.

Despite these issues, the results were immensely rewarding to begin with, yet there was a part of me that did feel somewhat disappointed.  I always thought that the image of my father (below) taken during my final year at Plymouth College of Art was simply perfect - the lighting, the silhouette of my hand, the crispness of the slide - yet recreating this same atheistic seemed almost impossible a few years on. Perhaps I was trying too hard with this project to replicate the result in the same way; when results didn't quite work out, rather than attempt to understand the problem, I pushed these alternate versions quickly aside and continued repeating the same process, making little or no progress evening after evening.

My father, taken during my final degree project, 'i am Alive'

After a few days of zero progress, I was almost ready to pack this project in.  I became increasingly annoyed with the end result; what I had in my head compared to what was looking back at me from my Mac screen was vastly different.  I took an evening off to clear my thoughts, completely forget about what I was doing or why I was doing this and hope that the following day I would have a better understanding of the direction for this project.  Knowing what I know now, this did seem to work a treat.

The problem I began to note with replication was this was simply down to human error, as opposed to something technical. We can not and will never have the ability of replication that a computer so easily seems to produce, despite the fact that we initially created the machine to begin with; tiny imperfections quickly become giant sized hinderances and no matter how much you strived to recreate, it will never be seen in the same way as it truly began.

With this in mind, I soon realised where I was going wrong and how to direct the project in the right direction.  Looking at the series of images produced so far, much of the problem lay with the idea of far too much empty or unnecessary space. I had already noted this in a previous post, my assumption of cropping the final image in a 1x1 ratio, an improvement would immediately be found. Yet with dozens of images lying side by side, each housed in a black background with a silhouetted hand, the contents with the slide became lost and the full emphasis of this project quickly disappeared.

I called Luke Broadway at Plymouth College of Art the following morning and kindly asked if I could borrow a Macro lens for a limited time and he thankfully obliged.  Using this lens, I was able to completely remove myself from the image and focus solely on the contents of the slide. I didn't need my hand to represent the idea that I was holding onto a memory of someone lost, the Macro, along with how the slide was photographed in front of the lamp affected the picture turned the end result into a true memory within the mind. The produced photos took on a more dream-like state as subtle differences in light and shadow created a wonderful vignette around the subject matter.  What had slowly become a chore over the week, soon became a joyous exercise in bringing the past to an artistic present.

I continued to use the same Instagram styled presets in Instagram I had used during 'i am Alive', while tweaking the exposure and temperature, along with dark and light elements to achieve a look I was ultimately happy with. I decided to capture a few images direct from the camera and showcase the huge difference following various post processing alterations. 
   

The images below represent just a small selection of this final body of work. We often forget just how beautiful our family really is, that our parents and their parents actually did live their own wonderful lives before we came into this world. I still have much to find out and understand about the people in these pictures, where they were and why and what they were doing or feeling at the time. This project has been an immensely cathartic and very rewarding and these photographs go a long way in continuing to connect the dots as to why I am here and who I really am.

I rarely produce work that is on a personal level, yet the way I have conducted myself throughout this project has been very encouraging to see. At some point during the year I will add 'They Live on in Light' to my website, though for the moment this is more for family and friends to embrace in their own time. 

Admittedly this blog post did take a little longer to produce than I had hoped, though I do have a pretty good excuse.  Round two onboard the Brixham trawler Emily Rose happened last week and it has only been just a few days since I have returned back to dry (with exception of the current crazy winds and lashing rain) land.  My next post will be a wonderful insight into the lives and labours of three fishermen during January's cold winter fishing season 30 miles off the south west coast of England. And for the record, I did throw up. Considerably.