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!