Jo Blogz Version of a David Hockney Joiner

I am loving learning more about photography. And I am finding myself getting a bit frustrated with those who think it's just about recording something that happened. I do accept that we are all different beings though. Last week at college we interestingly looked at some of the work of a professional photographer who got frustrated with photography itself. And that was the famous photographer David Hockney.

One of Hockney's frustrations was with the the lack of time in a photograph. That is does just take one moment, and that in reality these are just instances within a series of events. He still loved photography though, and was not about to give up in it all together. His solution was to create a "joiner" to capture the greater feeling of time and space than any traditional photograph would. What his technique involved was taking a series of photographs of elements of the moment and then literally joining them together like a big jigsaw to capture the event. This technique was done pre-photoshop, and rather than creating one smooth image, it captures lots of moments, which when joined together demonstrate what has happened.

We watched a video to show this technique - which showed a movie camera shooting the same scene as he photographed. He argues that his result was more powerful than a movie as it allows the viewer to linger on different moments, rather than them just passing. For example the expression on someones face when they had solved a crossword clue, and the expression when puzzled - rather than these moment just passing as they would in real time. I found this technique quite fascinating.

Good job I was interested, our homework was to go away and create a joiner for ourselves. So, last weekend I headed up to St Paul's, and stood taking many many photographs of the building itself and of people sitting on the steps, passing buses, police cars etc. I took 222 photographs in total - the joy of digital! Individually each of these photographs will mean nothing but I hope when I piece them all together to create a big image of that Sunday lunchtime at St Paul's. I will add a picture of the homework when it is done.