Auszeit: A Recap
I am now finished with my photo project 'Auszeit' and can now proudly look back at the eight photos that I selected in the end (‘Auszeit’: Final Series). In this third and final part of my blog series (Part 1 & Part 2), I would like to look back at the process of this project, how this process gave me some food for thought myself, as well as talk about the final photos.
As mentioned in my previous blog post, this project wasn't just completed in a few days, but was much more of a process spread out over a few weeks. People take less and less breaks nowadays and if they do take one, it's most likely with a smartphone in hand. Of course, this makes such a project, which is about people doing nothing at all, enormously difficult. But that's exactly what got me thinking for myself and reflecting on how I actually spend my breaks. Unfortunately, I had to realize that I actually spend my breaks mostly with the smartphone or Netflix and co. and have now decided that I will change that in the future and allow myself a real ‘Auszeit’ more often. Maybe one or the other who reads this will take this project to heart and also give themselves a time out!
Now to the final eight photos that I have selected for my project 'Auszeit'. Even though I am very happy with the outcome of the project, there are of course a few things I would like to reflect on. First of all, about the technical factors that changed during the course of the project. Initially, I deliberately shot with a Tilt-Thift lens, which blurs the upper and lower parts of the image and, depending on the angle from which you shoot, makes the image look like a miniature world. The problem with this is that manually adjusting the lens takes time.
Time that you don't usually get with these photos, as these moments only last a few seconds and so I've missed them a time or two. Since this blur effect is also possible in Photoshop, after a few attempts I switched to lenses like the 85mm f/1.2 or the 70-200mm f/2.8 from Canon, which made me faster and more flexible.
In the process of this project, the idea has also slightly changed so that I no longer wanted to create a miniature world around the person through the blur effect, but much more a kind of trance state that surrounds the person, which reflects the thoughts of this very person.
Now to the point that unfortunately I did not succeed with all eight photos. In some of these photos, I don't think it comes out clearly that this person is taking some time off. It's not a dramatically large factor, however it is something that I would definitely criticize about this photo series.
Nevertheless, I am generally very happy with the outcome of 'Auszeit' and hope that when you read this, you might reflect on your own life, maybe look at your problems from a different perspective and just take an 'Auszeit'!
