Laetoli Footsteps

Laetoli is not a photographer or a artist, it’s a place in Tanzania where footprints were excavated. These footsteps are believed to be the earliest direct evidence of human-like bipedal biomechanics. I decided that to explore the exam title ‘Evidence’ to would take into account the historic evidence of human life it’s self. I think that sometimes we (as human beings) forget that we are just another animal trying their best to survive on this fantastic earth. If we realise that we are just another species of this earth, then maybe we will notice the footsteps that we leave behind and look up at where we have walked and how far we have come. Once we see our footsteps we can see the lives we're living and see the activities we've done. A footprint is a very symbolic mark of the past and I really want my pictures to show that we forever moving on. Our footsteps are still going to change the shape of our earth...

Contact Sheet

I want to make sure that this picture suggested the surroundings with the snowy mountains and snowy trees as well as have a clear focus on the footsteps. Some of the shots were over exposed and others just didn't has the footsteps in the frame, making the picture pointless with this project. Then I looked to see if the footsteps and background were both framed nicely and gave equal attention to both the footsteps and the landscape. I then had a few lovely pictures, but only one had the unique, eye catching factor, I chose image 'DSC_0038 (2)' because of it powerful attention on the footsteps yet packs a beautiful landscape picture in the background which definitely suggests the location..

I found this amazing location and thought it just has to use if for my photograph work using Laetoli footsteps as the focus. I took me a while to find the perfect picture because it was on a extremely steep will, so the angle was different to frame. Some of the shots I used flash, this did look good a lot, so I decided to not choose them, then I filtered out all the pictures which didn't has the blue sky because I found that they didn't quite work for me and didn't express my project powerfully enough. Then I looked at the remaining picture's focal length to make sure that the foreground footstep were in focus and finally came to a decision that DSC_0140 (2) was the best picture.