Grandma's 97th Birthday!

I completely forgot to add these to the blog, they should slot in between my sisters portraits and my the ones taken of my flatmates, but I will put them in now anyway!

I few weekends ago I went back home as it was my Grandma's 97th Birthday, so of course I wanted to pay her a visit and spend some time with her... There was nothing huge planned which is a shame, as this would have been a perfect oppourtunity to capture all my family together at one given time!

Nevertheless I choose to take some portraits of my Gran with her birthday cake, sat where she always sat in the family living room...

Flatmates!

When deciding on how I wanted to photograph my flatmates, I came up with the idea of taking inspiration from Dijkstra's images (post below) of how she tended to make her subjects feel uncomfortable and awkward when capturing their portrait, also the simplicity of the portraits etc....

But I came up with this idea of a 'before and after' technique... I decided to take images of my flatmates before they ventured out on a night at a few clubs, I gave them no direction for the 'before' set of images, other than to stand for me (thus making them feel slightly awkward).

And then when they arrived home at 4am I added my own twist by taking their portrait again, obviously intoxicated, then putting each portrait next to one another resulting in a 'Before and After' set of images! Below is the outcome...

I think this shows a good idea of 'my world' also, because lets face it, us students are at some stage in the year going to get pretty damn drunk! So I guess this is a good view into that side of the lifestyle! Let me know what you think... :)

Rineke Dijkstra

I looked at some of Dijkstra's work as she kept coming up in seminars and recently in a lecture and her work is great! Her portraits are so simply captured but yet are so effective. I have decided to take inspiration from her when taking some photos of my flatmates, whom are a big part of my world at the moment as I see them everyday and I guess we are a little family!

Some of her work below is the sort of style I am going to aim to achieve, just simple, all in the same loaction, all shot exactly the same etc..