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