FMP Final Statement

I am pretty pleased with my final outcome despite it being drastically different from what I had initially envisioned. Initially I thought I would produce a much more complex, story driven piece but I ended up with two simple, beautiful pictures that don't have a defined story. I feel I managed to get it to a point where I leave my viewers with questions instead of answers- something which I was striving for with this project.

I feel that I have learnt a lot of things not just about photography and art but also about where my true passions lie and where I want to take my photography in future. When I first started the lens based media pathway my approach was very broad and I wasn't quite sure where my photography was headed, now I have discovered a love for fine art photography and know that I am going to pursue it further in the future.

This project really has pivoted on experimentation. I now know I really like this approach, it's a very natural and spontaneous way of coming up with ideas. This project has given me new experiences such as working with a hair/makeup artist and using the female form more in my photography. I am really excited to further explore photography using the female form in delicate, vulnerable, fragile, pure and beautiful ways.

I found it quite hard to get started and wasn't quite sure what to research initially but I think my gallery visits were very helpful and inspired me quite a bit. In future I will make sure to prioritise gallery visits as the first thing I do.

I feel like I would have liked to spend more time planning for the gallery space but instead I had to use the time I had planned for that to re-shoot my final images. I don’t know whether I would have been able to see this coming but perhaps I should give myself more time in future at the end in case this happens again. Despite being unable to in this project, I want to look into immersive and interactive gallery spaces when I have enough time as I feel it really changes the game if you are able to transport your audience into a different world.

I felt that I did well in embracing change and new ideas as there were many points where I had to switch the track of where I was headed even though that meant me sacrificing many hours of editing in order to better and simplify my final images. I was even able to change my plans at the last minute for displaying them; I removed an image and scrapped my initial framing idea in order to make sure my images were as strong as they could be.

After have countless confusing conversations with Tom I figured some things out. I now know that I don't have to explain the 'deep meaning' behind my images because I'm not that kind of guy- I don't really enjoy getting hung up on philosophy. All I want to do is create beautiful images that I love making and provoke a reaction in my audience- I think people appreciate beautiful things that make their day a little better rather than some deep art that's saying we're all truly empty inside or something! I'm really interested exploring the female form more in my images and creating new characters and fantastical worlds. It's why I love games like the Legend of Zelda so much, you can just get so involved and captivated by the interesting, enchanting, magical, expansive worlds and realities they create. It makes you appreciate the magical things in real life!
It took a while to understand this, but now I'm excited for new things that await me in photography!

If I was to give advice to anyone else doing this course I would say that continually communicating with tutors/peers throughout the project is invaluable. They bring fresh eyes and ideas to the project and often will spot things that you do not. Often this will result in having to make painful changes and backing down from coveted ideas but it is definitely worth it and will spur you to create something truly compelling, instead of just another pretty picture.

FMP Final Week

Weekend-

Finished editing pics. I had to make sure that the colours and black levels were consistent between all the images. Harder than it looks as the sun was changing a lot when we shot the images.

I decided to order 16”x16” Photorag instead of pearl as the blacks are slightly more compressed and smooth.

Monday-

Ailsa was round my house and she pointed out that the texture on pearl, although nice, may be too shiny for skin- I guess that means I made the right decision!

I picked up my prints and they looked fantastic, on the way I picked up a can of gold spray paint for some framing experiments.

I tested the spray paint on some flowers, it looks great and has a nice sparkly finish so I will use this for my frame. I also tested some scale layouts for my display board in Photoshop- I think I'm going to display my three images in a triangle as that will give a sort of magical, mystical look to them.

Wednesday-

In the morning I gathered some flowers together for the framing and did some test layouts both natural and sprayed with gold. I decided to take both sprayed and natural flowers up with me to Ravensbourne.

When I went up to mount my images I first had a chat with Tom. Tom convinced me to ditch the flowers, saying “People are going to remember you by your flowery frame and not your actual images”. I agreed with him and decided to let the images speak for themselves despite my desire to 'immerse my audience' with extra bits. Perhaps all that's needed to immerse your audience is just solid images rather than 3D spaces or extra objects outside the frame. As I was now not doing the frame we decided to keep the grey square around the circles as it would help define the gold circles rather than having them disappear into the white display board. This also would make the images much easier to cut out!

Tom also suggested that the images of the legs and arm were strong enough by themselves and didn't need the full body shot, he said the full body shot gave away too much and answered too many questions. I also agreed with this.

My prints being fragile, I made sure to stay with them during the mounting and trimming process- luckily everything went to plan. I'm pretty glad I took Tom's advice and kept the images in a square format as it was already pretty hard to cut a clean edge with the Photorag, let alone a perfect circle!

Thursday-

As I ran out of time yesterday I put my pictures up today. It was very hard to align them as they were both perfect squares, your eye notices any slight angle/size difference- I will keep in mind for future that this happens.

From now on I just powered on through until I finished all of the work to hand in! Project complete and a success!

FMP Week 7

Weekend-

Today I did my final final shoot with Ailsa! I had a quick scout around Ashtead Park where I usually shoot my photos but it turned out that right now considering my garden is so overgrown it actually made a great location for this shoot! Luckily the sun came out and we got some awesome speckled light on her skin, something quite different from my other images which pretty much all have super soft, even lighting. I reckon this will make the images a little more relate-able to the real world as opposed to the super clean studio shots. I shot quite a lot of the same images to increase my chance of the sun being in the right places. We both enjoyed the shoot and already I was confident that it was a good idea to re-shoot despite having to scrap the other images.

When we finished I started by editing one of the spur of the moment images- her hand touching the paint on her neck. I was wondering whether to keep the scenery green or to change it to match the gold paint/blood. I decided, at least for this first edit, gold suited more as it unified the colours well and brought the image together. I may change my mind later though as having a green background could make the gold paint stick out a bit more. I used a vignette to draw attention to the gold paint.

With this edit I decided to hold back on the tone evening as I usually do on my other images; instead I accentuated the different variations of tone in the skin. I think it really added to the vulnerable look and made the fairy much more relatable with the ‘real world’.

Monday-

I finished editing the first image and did a test print, it came out pretty good and I only noticed a few detail changes I would make. Moses pointed out that the gold paint looked a little bit too dry (which it was) and I may need to go back in and make it look a little more liquid like.

I really like the first image ‘Marked’ but I’m not sure how I would fit it in with the rest as it is the only non-square format image, it may turn out to be another nice standalone image to add to the collection (which is definitely not a bad thing!).

I started editing a couple other photos from the shoot, currently they are in a circle format but I may change my mind about that soon.

After spending a little time with these images I am pretty pleased that I decided to simplify my idea even if it meant leaving my previous work behind- it was a sacrifice I had to make. These images evoke curiosity instead of giving you the story on a plate.

Wednesday-

I finished editing ‘Wounded’ (the legs image), I settled on the turquoise-green rather than gold as I feel it draws more attention to the gold paint- you can see it’s a different colour to everything else.
I kept the circle format; I think it works very well to produce an old fashioned fairy tale feel and not a modern, boxy feel. I added grey outside of the circle but this may get removed when I mount it.

Thursday-

I went to The Print Space and had a chat with one of the staff there- she showed me all of the papers I could print on, both C-Type and Giclee. Giclee seemed the more obvious choice for fine art as the papers had a much more textural feel. The lady helping me suggested Photorag as she thought the the more soft dreamy look would suit my work. The only downside to Photorag is that it is very fragile and if you run your nail along the surface the ink comes off- so I chose another paper to test as well (Pearl) that had a similar nice texture but was far less fragile.
I went home and ordered test strips of one of my images on both of these papers- I will decide which is better when I get them back tomorrow.

The test strips I ordered are 20” long, but thinking about the size of 3 of these it’s quite big. I may get 15” or 12” prints instead depending on the size of our display. (I still haven’t got the accurate dimensions of the display yet!)

I will talk to Tom about whether he feels photorag would survive the mounting process as it’s being done at Ravensbourne.

Friday-

I picked up my prints- looks like the Pearl has a nicer, more obvious texture than the Photorag. We also got the dimensions of the display boards- I worked out that the best print size would be 15”x15”. I made some sketches of layouts that I might use, at the moment I think a triangle arrangement would look best- the layout determines whether things are looked at as a story or a hierarchy or as one image. I also found out about the mounting process, it looks like it won’t harm the paper. Also thinking about border, I could do it with flowers (have to be careful with getting good gold paint) or I could do it with gold leaf.

FMP Week 6

Weekend
Did my final shoot for the second image of Mae, it was quite hard to get the hair looking right so we decided in the end to cover it mostly with flowers- I think after some touching up in Photoshop it should look fine. I think I definitely need to be more invested in planning the hair beforehand as it is a very important part of the image. After we had shot the pictures I needed we made use of the makeup and the sun outside and did a few more shots just for fun of fairies in the wild. Shooting outdoors is great because it allows much more room for spontaneous ideas and inspiration because of the environment you're in. It differs a lot from being stuck in a studio, but of course then you can meticulously plan your photos and lighting which yields a different kind of result.

Tuesday-
Did more editing and had a conversation with Tom. We had a pretty long conversation about what I wanted to say with my art. He brought up the fact that I shouldn't just be regurgitating what I hear in the media etc but actually show my own views- something that really makes me tick. I had a think about it and I came up with this:

In fact I'm not really going to go in to details as the reason I'm a photographer is to communicate through imagery and not through writing this blog post! I tried to write it out many times but it just felt kind of wrong and wasn't me, the short story is I got thinking about my real motives for this project and I'm now considering that while editing these images.

Wed/Thurs-
More editing today- now I'm getting so far into it I'm starting to be less happy with the images. Perhaps I'm overdoing it or heading down the wrong path? I will talk to the tutors again tomorrow.

Friday-
Talk with Othello and Chris- realised I need to reshoot with a simpler concept. Othello was saying he really liked my 'Bleed' and 'Flightless' images for their simplicity in visuals and concept. I decided to look through my Pinterest board where I save all of my inspiration and noticed that most of the pictures I've pinned recently are simple, delicate portrayals of the female form. I then got sketching and came up with the idea to put the gold liquid like I had for the 'Flightless' image on the female form in different positions- and no extra frills. I think this should work much better and raise more questions. Luckily Ailsa is free to shoot over the weekend, so fingers crossed this goes well!

FMP Week 5

Tuesday-
Today was a tube strike so I decided to stay at home and get on with editing the picture of Ailsa and the flowers. It took quite a while to fake all the skin where her bra originally was, I think if I'm going to keep doing more of these nearly-nude photos then perhaps I need to find another model who would be comfortable showing a bit more as it would take forever if I had to do this on every shoot. I think it's okay for now though. I had to add in a few extra flowers to cover up her chest a bit more as during the shoot it was quite hard to balance the flowers around there. I used the same drip photos as before to add some coming out of the flowers on her chest.


Wednesday-
I had originally planned another shoot with Ailsa to possibly get a 'fairy in natural environment before everything went wrong' picture but the weather was not that great so we decided to postpone it until the weekend. I could have shot the images but I wouldn't have gotten the lovely speckled sun coming through the trees.

Friday- Today I went back to the Natural History Museum to get a cleaner, sharper picture of the cicada wings to possibly use on the current picture. I also popped in to the Science Museum to look at pipes/steam powered contraptions. I had ideas to possibly put some pipes and machinery at the edge of the picture to look like Ailsa was lying on some sort of steampunk operating table, I'm not super sure about this idea- it could be too much.

FMP Week 4

Tues-

Today I had a jam-packed day of gallery visits. I first went to the Barbican to see the current installation 'experience' they had at the moment, I wanted to see how other artists were engaging their audiences. When I entered the room it was completely dark and I instantly lost my sense of direction, but as my eyes adjusted I could see faint lights in the distance. As I walked towards the lights I could make out the silhouettes of other people in the light, there were also faint sounds coming from the lights, the swinging of the lights was mesmerising, I could go on. Basically, it was pretty great experience that successfully captivated me and transported me to another world- I could definitely take a leaf out of this book.

Next I went to the Ronchini to go see some photography, I have to say this experience was far less exciting and immersive as the Barbican. The shop front was really the only redeeming feature, it was completely filled with on of the photographer's images which was nice and invited you in. When I got inside things weren't as great, everything was very squashed together in a very small space and there was an office space that was practically merged with the gallery space. There also wasn't enough interesting detail in the images to actually warrant seeing them in full size, to be honest I got exactly the same experience just viewing the same images on the website! The one funny thing was that this gallery was situated just off Oxford St and if I'm honest the clothing stores were a much better experience than the gallery!

Wed-

Today I did a shoot with Ailsa- this one was quite experimental. We tried out different poses that were inspired by sculptures I had seen at the V&A, it was quite hard to get it right when using an actual human with all the inflexibility, kinks and bulges of a human body. In the end we opted for a simpler pose which wouldn't squash or contort any part of the body, in the end it turned out to be quite effective. One challenge I had to overcome was the trouble with getting the angle of view right when taking a picture straight down, also the challenge of fitting most of Ailsa in the frame without going too wide angle. I managed to stand right on the top of a ladder positioned at her knee level and stretched my camera out to her chest level, pointed straight down to avoid enlarging her lower body. I used a 35mm (50mm eqiv.) lens to get adequate compression for this type of shot. We took shots of the flowers separately for each part of her body to multiply the few flowers I had so they could cover enough of her body.

Thurs-

Edited 'Bleed' image, main shot would be 3/4 length- but I liked the framing of this shot with central focus on flowers. Had good idea with running paint when I had time to sit down with the images. I often find myself coming up with new ideas after I've finished the shoot.

Shot paint running down my arm and shopped it in.

Friday-
Today we had interim assessments but instead of being assessed by tutors we did peer assessments. I was put with Alice and Greta, both of whom had very different projects. When I was looking at Alice's work I noticed her sketchbook was very in depth and she had done a lot of research into psychology and other theoretical things. I could definitely take a leaf out of her book in that area, I don't think I work in quite the same way as her but I can definitely be inspired by her process. It was quite helpful having the crit with Alice as she had strong research but weaker experimentation while I had strong experimentation but weaker research- we swapped tips. Greta had an interesting project. She was creating a website, which is all fine and dandy, but she was in the Lens Based pathway so we weren't too sure how this fit. She was also focusing more on the coding side rather than the design side, we gave her some advice that she might need to focus a bit more on the design as that's what will actually be marked- fingers crossed she did some good design stuff after that!

FMP Week 3

Day 1-
Today I finished editing my image titled ‘Vulnerable’ which was one of the spur of the moment shots from the shoot with Ailsa. I often find that a lot of good ideas come when I least expect them- I should remember to not get too hung up on necessarily meticulously planning everything in advance and leave some room to be freely creative.

One thing I had to tackle while editing today was the fact that initially your eye was lead to the top of the frame to the dress as it was the brightest point; I wanted the viewer to instead be drawn to the flowers at the bottom. I tried various ways of drawing attention to the flowers, initially I created a glow behind the flowers but that ended up just washing the flowers out. What ended up working was increasing the saturation in the flowers as your eye is not only drawn to the brightest and biggest element in the image but also the most saturated. I learnt this concept in Lindsay Adler’s posing video, it will be especially handy when I come to do more busy compositions.

When I initially exported the image to upload online I did my standard thing of raising the black levels to give the image a more painterly feel but after looking at similar images with deeper blacks I decided I might have been taking too much black out. I uploaded a few different versions and I eventually settled on a version where the blacks were still raised but to a lesser degree than before. The image with pure black was just a bit too modern-looking for my liking.

Easter Weekend- 

Shot 'Scandal of Grace' playing off the same theme as my gold fairy tears/blood
You could look at the Easter story as being similar to my story of the fairies, they are innocent but yet abused- just as Jesus was.

FMP Week 2 (Creative Making)

Tuesday-

As I was away on the first day I joined a group who had already been doing stuff, they were looking at fear and blindness. I suggested that together fear and blindness could be similar to claustrophobia. We discussed various ideas for environments that might make you feel this way. We then decided as it was quite hard to just pluck an idea out of thin air we would see what materials we had to work with. When we looked at all the materials and objects we had it became a lot easier to put together an idea around the theme. Perhaps if I’m stuck for ideas in future I could carry out a similar exercise where I challenge myself to make something out of a set of materials or using a particular location or theme- often putting limits and constraints in place can spark creativity.

Friday- Crits

When looking back on this week I have now learned a few things about installations and, with my project hopefully ending up in a physical gallery space, gave me some good ideas to start looking in to. We noticed various things such as the fact that the mask worked very well as people walking past were curious to look through and how that the experience could be much better if we affected multiple senses (using music etc).

This was not a final piece by far but a good experiment to lead to greater things.

The way that we arranged the rope with the wings suspended in between gave me an idea of a fairy with shattered wings, once beautiful but now mistreated and broken. This translated into a new shoot idea involving gold paint symbolising blood where wings used to be- bringing up the exploitation/torture again.

Chris suggested to look in to stereoscopic photography- could be a way to immerse viewers in my world more; I shall need to investigate ways of practically achieving that.

Weekend-

I planned a shoot today to respond to the initial ideas that I got from the creative making week. When I woke up in the morning it was the usual case of worrying whether my ideas would work or were good enough, luckily when Ailsa arrived things went smoothly. I am finding that no matter if I have a fantastic idea beforehand or not the pressure of having someone round to do the shoot usually kicks my mind in to creative mode, the best thing to do before a shoot is probably get a good night’s sleep. I remember watching an interview with Gregory Crewdson where he said that there wasn’t a morning where he woke up before a shoot and didn’t feel sick to his stomach about whether things would go to plan.

Today’s shoot was interesting as I was working with more bare body and human form than I usually do- it forced me to think about posing and posture in regards to the spine and shoulder blades as they would be important to get right in the image. I had just watched a tutorial series on posing essentials with Lindsay Adler on creative live; she brought up many useful points on foreshortening, negative space, camera angles etc. I tried to put some of these tips in to practise and I reckon it worked well as I had to tweak what I initially though would be a good pose on paper as it initially looked like Ailsa was an amputee as you could only see her back but not her limbs.

After we had got the shot that I had planned for we decided to experiment with some other shots, especially of Ailsa’s legs. We did a shot where she exposed the majority of her legs which when paired with the delicate folds of the wedding dress showed a sense of innocence and also vulnerability which I definitely want to show in this project.

Before/After

Crop experiments

Edited Plan- 

My first plan was unrealistic and also disrupted by the Creative Making week so I have decided to come up with a new plan


Week 3
- Research and experiments
Week 4
- More research and experiments, get ready for final images
Week 5
- Finalise exact images to shoot and shoot them. Start editing
Week 6
- Finish off editing and print final images. Final research for gallery space
Week 7
- Set up gallery space and finish!

Holiday

I spent a lot of time over the holiday playing the classic Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the N64. This was a game that really changed the face of gaming and inspired many amazing titles that have come since it was released. It is still today regarded by many as the best game of all time.

It is set in an ancient and forgotten past in which you play as Link, a small boy, on which the fate of the kingdom rests on. After you spend a while playing the game it becomes so easy to lose yourself in the loneliness and emotion in the story. The game starts out as quite lighthearted and adventure driven but after a turning point in the story it quickly turns into a very dark, haunting experience.
'Strengthened by a rich, surprising realism in-spite of its cartoon definitions, its dark half, a sinister overtone of dread and pathos, paints Hyrule under a canopy of rainy graveyards, masked cadavers, and the damnation of the Shadow Temple; notable for its leaden guillotines and the corpse figurehead embellishing its River Styx ferry.'- Eurogamer
The amazing thing is this was all done with very limited graphical capabilities as it was one of Nintendo's first forays into 3D games.

The game world is very diverse, as Eurogamer states 'Hyrule is a snow globe of pockets requiring your attendance at their far-flung reaches, a broad ecosystem encompassing woodland elfin Kokiri, rock eating mountain Gorons, and capitalistic humans bartering every trinket they can lay their hands on. It's a world with an exclusive fantasy certificate, combining Celtic, Tibetan, Medieval, Egyptian, and Greek mythology for its armoury, temples and monstrous dungeon keepers'

Perhaps I could incorporate different races and elements in my project to flesh out the world I want to create?

Experimenting with magic triangle inspired by the triforce from Legend of Zelda. The triforce is representative of the power of the gods in the games, it is plastered all over the royal castle, on armour and also imprinted on the princess's skin- that's where this idea came from. I wanted to make it emit light as though something has activated it, perhaps it is some sort of distress beacon?

I had a trip to the aquarium and natural history museum to get some stock images of fish, animal, rocks and other stuff that I can use in composites if I need to. I can imagine incorporating some of the fish tank interiors into magical environments.

I also carried out various outings to Ashtead park to find some nice, natural locations to shoot my photos.

I did shoots with Mae and Ailsa experimenting with more adventurous makeup and beauty editing to continue on from my success with the 'Flower Girl' image.

I used the triangle concept in my shoot with Mae, I wanted to show someone who had been using the magic powers for evil and it was slowly consuming them.
This shoot was quite hard to pose properly as the makeup we had done was not exactly made to look flattering so I had to do a lot of tweaking in Photoshop. I think if I did the shoot again I would ask Mae to not make her lips/cheeks so loose as I had to do some clever liquifying to make the skin look a little tighter.

'Tainted Heart' Before and After

 I did a shoot with Ailsa inspired by the fairy fountains in the Legend of Zelda games. The makeup was particularly inspired by the Zora race. This time I didn't use the triangle but decided instead to use gold makeup (originally green as I couldn't make my mind up before the shoot) I found that the glitter we put on looks like tears- perhaps I could use this in my concept?

'Fairy Tears' Before and after

This led on to ideas about healing tears- perhaps the fairies are getting exploited? Are they being farmed for their healing tears?

This could challenge our ideas of what is human and what is not, should we treat these creatures like we treat other animals?

FMP Week 1

Week 1

Day 1-

 Initial thoughts and research about the theme, looking at the outfits and aesthetics of videogames I enjoy.

Day 2

Today I visited the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate Britain.

The way that all the portraits were put together in pieced together in my mind the ‘world’ at the time; you could see people of different classes and nationalities, people’s job roles etc- I could almost imagine the whole collection translated to a fantasy world. I should explore this when deciding what images to include in my series and what

Tate Britain had a couple images that were very much my style- very detailed outfits with props and natural scenery. A couple of the images were almost uncannily similar to some photographers I admire now, it’s strange to think how old these paintings actually are. I should keep looking at paintings and other media as they may bring a broader range of ideas to my project as opposed to if I only looked at photography.

               

Shoot with Evie-

I did my first shoot with a makeup artist and also my first beauty-style edit which went pretty well although I noticed that I might have slightly overdone the reduction of shadows underneath the eyes in the edit. I reckon my first few beauty edits won’t be the best but I’ll keep practicing so that I’m ready for my final images.

               

Day 3- Crits

The crits today were very helpful, people suggested various references that I could look at. We also talked about using common words in our universe to mean something completely different in another, for example a fireman might be the person to create fires instead of put them out. This concept could be interesting as the viewer will see the word and think they know what it means, I can then turn it on its head and hopefully make people think.

The most important thing I took from the crit was the fact that I needed to concentrate on creating a really solid ‘event’ or ‘turning point’ that my project and this parallel world would pivot on, because without a strong story and meaning it will be hard to have successful visuals. I may have to alter my plans for the FMP as I don’t think I’ll be able to start shooting final images until I’m sure of my concept and story.

LBM Project 7- Promotion Week 3

Day 1/2

Finalising my plans

Shoot-

This shoot was probably the most magical shoot I have done so far- the set up was very elaborate with a lovely dress and lots of props so standing there in real life was just like living my dreams, it was so cool! Ailsa was very cooperative again and we had a lot of fun- especially with the smoke! I knew it was going to work as I had tested it the day before with some personal work, which also was very fun.

Final Crit-

Unfortunately I didn’t manage to concentrate very much on the promotion side during the three weeks as I mainly devoted my time to just producing the image, I feel like I wasn’t perhaps utilizing the time in the right way. I think I could have managed to produce a final outcome on the second week, leaving the third week free to think about promotion. Instead I let it get to the point where I only had just enough time to shoot and edit the photo for the crit.

I took the feedback from the crit into consideration and I replaced the background (originally my garden fence) with a shot I took of a clearing in the forest surrounded by trees, this helped a lot and made the overall shot more magical and mysterious. I also added hands pulling on each of the ropes; this gave a much better sense of opposition and made it look like the fairy was being surrounded.

Final image: http://flic.kr/p/kn1mBP

LBM Project 7- Promotion Week 2

Day 1-

We had a tutorial session this morning going back to thinking about what photography is. We recapped the elements of the camera, how to control it and what effects we achieve.

Day 2-

More research

Self Directed-

Deciding on which dress to buy- I went to TK maxx and found nothing that would suit a fairy look..

All was not lost though as my mum was kind enough to let me borrow her wedding dress, and it’s a perfect fit for a fairy!

I made my wire wings inspired by cicada wings- I used brown paper to give a moth like look, it will also burn well.

I tested out the dress with a photo for my 365 project of it floating like a ghost, lit from inside. Balancing on a sinking ladder in complete darkness was very interesting!

Day 3-

Today’s crit was helpful; we discussed how the image would be perceived when on social media. I must make sure my final image is relevant in today’s generation and it must be easily shareable, this is why I have decided to produce 1 main image instead of 8 as not many people would share 8 images. I also feel that the impact is better when everything is contained in 1 image.

LBM Project 7- Promotion Week 1

Day 1-

We started off the week discussing different ways that artists promote their work. Some decide to go for a more guerrilla approach and others use conventional ways of advertising. Both methods are beneficial but guerrilla is more of a one-time publicity stunt whereas conventional advertising is more long-term, sustainable method.

I came up with initial ideas surrounding the charity ‘Open Doors’ and their ‘Blackout’ campaign, it aims to raise awareness and provide support for persecuted Christians in other countries. This year they are selling Blackout branded tape and encouraging people to take pictures of themselves taped up and upload it to their Facebook page with the message ‘Make a big noise by keeping quiet’. I thought I could possibly do some kind of guerrilla promotion relating to this- possibly taping up people from my church.

When we fed back our ideas in the afternoon I realised that it was becoming less about the photography and more about the thing we were doing, which was probably not what I wanted, so I changed my train of thought back to creating a fine art piece in my style but with these themes.

Day 2-

In order to get my work out there and form new connections I started to interact with people on Twitter. I was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and interactive some of my favourite photographers were. It was really cool to be able to chat to the people I look up to!

I did some more research into the theme of persecution and got a few more ideas.

Day 3-

Today I had my FMP tutorial, I hadn’t really thought about it much but I came with some initial ideas. I recently read ‘Never let me go’ by Kazuo Ishiguro, it is set in a version of relatively modern Britain where history is slightly altered by a new scientific discovery. The events that lead on after this create a new, darkly skewed version of Britain where some things are slightly off. The story challenges the readers as to whether these bad things would have actually happened had history been slightly different.

I want to create something similar where history is slightly altered, sending the timeline off on a new tangent. It would face the issues we have in this world through the realm of fantasy/sci-fi.

LBM Project 6- 'Freedom and Liberty' Week 2

Day 1-

I found a really cool artist today called Katerina Plotnikova, she did some really magical images involving people levitating next to trees high in the sky. She inspired my first solid idea, I had a vision of creating some sort of village amongst the trees and that there would be someone leaping off the side to see what the ground below was like. Everyone in the village would be outraged that they dare go down to the forbidden ground below.

Day 2-

Today I refined my idea, instead of creating a village there would be people tied to a tree and one person would be cutting the rope and breaking free. Same concept but simplified a little.

I went round to my Grandad’s house and borrowed some old sheep shears to act as the implement the character would use to cut the rope- I felt I needed something like this as standard scissors would be much too small to draw attention in the photograph.

Shoot-

The shoot this week was quite last minute as one of my models had to cancel last minute leaving me with two shoots on Thursday- Ailsa in the early afternoon and Emily in the evening. I decided to start compositing the photos involving me and the background on Wednesday and Thursday morning so that I at least had some of the edit done. The shoots didn’t leave me much time in the day so I reluctantly had to pull another all-nighter. I just managed to finish it for the morning.

Day 3-

The image was well received and kept the attention of the people in my crit for a while, which means it was a success! One thing that Clive picked up on was the fact that you could clearly see where the inspiration came from, he challenged me to try and create images in future where you wouldn’t be able to trace the image back to the inspiration. Other than that he said to keep going the same way and challenging myself as I have been doing to get better.

After the crit I corrected a couple parts in the image that I had noticed on the print.

Final image: http://flic.kr/p/jEHeWD

LBM Project 6- 'Freedom and Liberty' Week 1

Day 1-

We had an introduction to the project and then watched ‘The Naked Rambler’ which was a film about a man who decided to walk the length of Britain completely naked in order to promote some sort of freedom. It explores the floors in his thinking and makes us question what our perception of freedom is and whether he was wrong or right to do what he did.

Day 2-

I found this amazing game the other day called ‘Broken Age’, the themes it explored seemed very relevant to this project. It explored two parallel worlds where the two main characters are sheltered from the truth and are given a sense of false freedom- everything appears to be fine and dandy but behind the mask is a darker truth. The game, or more like interactive story, follows the characters as they discover true freedom. I want to convey the same theme in my work.

Day 3-

I talked about the Broken Age research in the initial crit- Chris thought it was a great starting point but he challenged me to ask the question of what the dark truth or the monster is in my story I want to tell. Broken age had a very clear (at least on face value) monster in it, I just needed to identify what that would be in my work.

LBM Project 5- 'Contrasts, Contradictions and Juxtapositions' Week 2

Day 1-

More research

Day 2-

Today I had a chat with one of the tutors about my ideas; it was very helpful and enabled me to take my idea a bit further than it was before.

I had just discovered the artist Brooke Shaden and had fallen in love with her way of thinking so I listened to some lectures by her discussing the topic of creativity.

Photoshoot

The photoshoot went well, Luke was very cooperative with the whole standing-in-freezing-water thing and because I had done sketches beforehand I nailed the angles and got all shots I needed in not too much time.

I made sure to dry Luke off and clean him up afterwards, we then went back to my house and had coffee to warm up

Editing

I pulled an all-nighter to finish editing the image, this was probably the most complicated edit I have done so far.

During the editing process I came into a few problems with the posing; Luke’s legs were open when he stood in the water but his tied up legs were closed and his t-shirt was not correctly obeying gravity. I managed to overcome these problems using clone stamping and liquefy- but I must look out in future for little inconsistencies between the shots I get in order to save me time in post.

Day 3-

I am very pleased with the outcome of this image; it’s probably the first piece of work that I’ve been thoroughly excited about in my photography so far.

The response was very good in my final crit; everyone seemed very interested in what was going on in the image and Tom’s response was to stick with my current attitude of pushing myself further each time. I also got asked by Tom to use the image in the course as an exemplar piece of work!

I got a very good response on Facebook later from my friends, seems like I’m on the right track!

Final image: http://flic.kr/p/jhpbBt

LBM Project 5- 'Contrasts, Contradictions and Juxtapositions' Week 1

Day 1-

Introduction to project, discussed example images and meaning of the three words contrast, contradiction and juxtaposition. We were set a task to go out and find images relating to the theme in and around Rave. The crit session after we had taken the photos was helpful as we discussed what the difference between powerful images that make you question things and just playful gimmicks.

Day 2-

Today I started my research and ideas generation. I discovered that the main subtheme I liked was ‘tension’. Tom spoke to me about not just getting inspiration from photography, but to look at other media e.g. classic paintings- this was helpful advice.

Day 3-

Today we had initial crits which went well; the others in my session had some good ideas for me. I found it quite interesting hearing what everyone else was getting up to.