My project brief was ‘architecture’. I wanted to explore this by looking at interiors and how the way light enters buildings can be seen metaphorically.In the biblical sense light is seen as a positive and as hope.This initial thought led me to the route of religion, exploring the interior architecture of churches and the light that comes through stained glass windows. I found when looking at Rochester cathedral the design of the building and all the details were striking, everything is symmetrical and perfectly lined up.
After taking a few test images in Rochester cathedral I came across a church photographer Andy Marshall. He focused on the slow movements of light that highlighted certain elements across the church. ‘vessel of light’ is a collection that inspired my project, I liked the way he captured the natural light falling on objects, this caught my attention as with the location inside a church the natural beams of light seem very spiritual and created an uplifting feeling, this was something I wanted to recreate in my own project.In everyday life when people view light it can be quite personal to them, it can represent a feeling and create a nice atmosphere.
Uta Barth was another artist that influenced my project.She photographed a collection of light.The focal point of her work was the narratives of light and its presence in life.Her images where very minimalist which I liked as it draws the viewers attention to the light. From this research I started experimenting with creating light in a room.
As I was still interested in stained glass, I created my own taking the ray of coloured lights outside the church.In doing this I put gel colours on one side of a window and had a flash on the other side.I enjoyed how these aesthetically looked but I came across problems throughout my test shoots where the coloured gel would light up the room instead of creating the ray.However where I was originally taking wide angled images I started to zoom in and experiment with close crops making my images more abstract. Although I liked these images and would explore this further, I didn’t feel like the images i created worked well as a series as the conditions where very different each time.
After reflecting on my progress I wanted to continue looking at coloured lights, after exploring how different colours can psychological have an effect i wanted to cross over metaphorical light with the psychology of colours. When reassessing the location I wanted to test Rochester cathedral again , seeing if the stained glass would shine colours naturally. As my project has a religious feel I felt the images would work well inside the church linking the aesthetics to the concept. As previously noted I also found the details in the actual architecture beautiful which I wanted to include as an aspect in my images.
Unfortunately I found the stained glass didn’t portray coloured light through the windows, However i found the white light interesting and decided to focus my images throughout the church on different perspectives where the light was the main focal point.In my final 6 images I choose the ones that where all different view points but had a connection as the light was centered attention. As a continuation on researching coloured light i decided i wanted to create each of my images with a different colour surrounding the patterned light similarly to my previous test shoots. I did this on photo shop and represented each colour to each colour i researched. Pink was to represent calmness.
Throughout the project I used the Hassleblad camera, at the begging I found it difficult especially focusing around light but i found in my final images where there was details surrounding the light the hassleblad allowed me to create in depth focus which I liked.
As a whole my exploration of light has taught me a lot and i am happy how the final images worked.
abigailedwards 