First Book Publication

I'm absolutely delighted to have finally published my first photobook, called Sandringham: Walks With My Human. I self-published it under the 'HaVe' name, using the online publishing company, Blurb (the book can be viewed online by clicking on the Blurb link). I have been working on the images for the book for several months (a bit at a time - fitting in the work around my day-job, studies, and other photographic projects), so it was in some way a relief to finally see it in print. Blurb have, once again, delivered an excellent product, and the book now holds pride of place on my bookshelf (albeit over-shadowed by the exhalted company of the 'professional' photobooks on display).

The completion of the book is a key moment in my life. It is something I have wanted to do for a long time, and to sustain a project for a long period of time in order to collect the images was a real lesson in concentration and dedication to an idea. It was also an incredibly useful exercise in choosing what images to display, in what order, and in what format/size. I'm not saying that I have got it completely right, but it is certainly the first step on a long ladder of learning on which I wish to climb. Whilst the project may never see the light of day (in terms of an exhibition), it has provided the motivation to work on future, long-term projects, which I hope to one day exhibit and publish professionally.

Sandringham - Walks With My Human

I have been working away on the final selection of my project 'Sandringham - Walks With My Human' and have whittled my way down to 97 images (although my intention is to select 70 - which is going to be extremely difficult). As discussed in previous postings, the project stemmed from the idea of exploring my local area through the eyes of my dog (hence the point of view and image tones) in order to investigate the detail that is so often missed within the landscape. With my dog's sense of smell, the images not only give the viewer an intensified view of the 'micro-landscape' but also provides an olfactory journey (with smell being the main reason for my dog being interested in the subject of the photographs). The final selection of images will be self-published through Blurb in the next couple of months, but a few examples are shown below.

OCA - A Walk With My Human

I have been working on a new project for my OCA Creative Arts degree (exploring the presentation of a 'Persuasive Document'). This project explores what my local landscape would look like from the eyes of my dog. All too often we ignore the specific detail of a place (especially in the countryside, where our eyes are drawn to the beauty of the landscape as a whole) and I wanted to capture the essence of this detail through an animal that is thorough in his approach to exploration (and my dog is a very 'nosy' animal).

Through research into how dogs see, I shot the images in colour, but then converted them to black-and-white, whilst leaving any shades of blue remaining within the shot (dogs do have slight colour-vision, centred around shades of blue). I also shot the images in as wide an angle as possible (24mm on the lens that I have) to take into account his increased field of vision. I shot the images from my dog's point-of-view, thereby being close to the ground, extremely close-up to the subject and often 'tilted' to simulate the way he would move his head to explore what he found.

Whenever he stopped at something specific, I photographed what he was 'sniffing' out. In this way I hoped to capture not only the detailed sights of the countryside, but also aspects of smell (which drew my dog to the images taken), thereby creating a journey that is both visual and olfactory. It also enabled the decision-making aspect of when to take a photograph determined by my dog; ie, when he decided there was something worth stopping for, then I took a picture.

The shot at the top of this post was one selected from 8 that I chose for the Project, taken on a single walk in Sandringham; however, I intend to take the study further and explore this concept in greater depth.