Wednesday 31 December 2014

SHOOT: Self Portraits #2

Following from my initial exploration into self portraits, I decided to take advantage of the current weather conditions and shoot some more portraits relating to fairytales. I took inspiration from two fairytales - Snow White and Hansel and Gretal.


This image was inspired by Snow White and how she was poisoned by the wicked Queen disguised as an old woman. My original concept for day was to produce a variety of images relating to get topic but with a model. However, the model cancelled on me last minute and without time to find another one, I had to improvise and use myself. With the help of a tripod, and self timer, I took this shot of me led on the snowy ground, with the apple next to me. This image represents how the fairytale could have ended, if Snow White ways to know the apple was poisoned. I have taken a bite out of the apple, but keeping it a secret that it has not been swallowed. I think the lighting and editing techniques have worked well here, I used a red overlay at opacity 50% to give red tint as homage to the colour of the apple. I think this worked really well as it brought out the red in the apple as well as the red in my hair.


This image is inspired by Hansel and Gretal and how they were left in the forest to fend for themselves. Hansel and Gretal is a classic fairytale with a more prominent dark side, where the parents who cannot afford their children, send them off into the woodland and abandon them. I remember my parents use to threaten me with the threat of Hansel and Gretel's fate when I was naughty as a child, and is still used today on my younger sister. The setting and weather was quite bleak, but also mystical because of the snow on the trees and ground. I wanted to give the viewer a search to find me crouching in the trees, which would have been the same for Hansel and Gretal trying to find a place to sleep or something to eat. I edited to image to have 50% desaturation, which did not make a huge amount of difference to the largely grey image.


SHOOT: Outdoor Product


After my success of shooting the red apple and various other food products in the studio, I decided to venture outdoors and take advantage of the snowy weather conditions to shoot some food outdoors. I decided to go with the red apple as I was already shooting a self portrait relating to Snow White on the same day. I think the red apple looks better being photographed outside rather than in the studio, as it puts it in more context of the situation, especially with the snow and ice surrounding it. I think I will shoot some more product photographs outdoors and develop on this, as well as making them into advertisements on InDesign and Photoshop. I am focussing on consumerism in children so shooting outdoors will give me more opportunities to develop my work as I have no access to a studio over Christmas.

RESEARCH: Annie Leibovitz

I looked at the work of Annie Leibovitz with awe and enthusiasm, her work, both technically and creatively, is stunning and breathtaking. I looked at her work from the Disney advertisements she did that included celebrities replicating popular children's fairy tales. From a child point of view, these are magical images that make them want to visit the place that these advertisements are pushing - Disneyland. Consumerism in children can be uncontrolled, as children sometimes have no grasp of money or how much things cost in retrospect to adults wages. Many adults know that Disneyland is an expensive place to visit, especially as a family with children. Disney knows this - and plays on the fact that if children see images like this, filled with role models dressed as knights in shining armour and gorgeous princesses, they will want to go to the place where "dreams come true". The use of celebrities in these advertisements are the thing that I am interested in. If Disney can use celebrity and fairytale references in their advertisement, then it gives me the idea of using fairytale encouragement and hints to relate back to the Disney Empire in my food photography. My studio images came out well, so I plan to edit them in the form of advertisements to see what result that produces.


Monday 29 December 2014

RESEARCH: Tracey Rose


Upon looking into Susan Brights book titled "Auto Focus", I was inspired by one individual photograph by Tracey Rose showing her running through a bright green field naked. Although the I am not going to take my clothes off and do the same, and although her imagery has no direct link to my own photographic experimentation, her use of location and thinking about the landscape around her to represent a theme has heavily influenced my reasoning into making sure I pick the right weather conditions and locations to make my photographs have the right feel. Because I am shooting self portraits to represent fairytales, the use of woodland locations is vital to represent the theme to make sure the audience can make the connection.

RESEARCH: Cindy Sherman


Cindy Sherman's film stills have, and always will be, my favourite collection of self portraiture to date, based on the cinematic feel they all possess. Her work has inspired me to take the first step into self portraiture, and gives me a historical reference to work upon.


RESEARCH: Ananke Asseff



Annake Asseff looks into the ever changing beauty of landscapes and how her body works together with them in photography. Her work has made me think about locations and weather conditions, and how they can be used to make my work stronger. I really hope after seeing the above image, it snows over the winter period, as using snow as a backdrop with the human form is beautiful and represents the theme of fairytales well; as them being a magical story with magical locations.

Sunday 28 December 2014

SHOOT: Self Portraits #1

It snowed over the weekend so straight after work on Sunday afternoon I decided to head straight over to a woodland area to take some self portraits using artificial lighting. I am planning to take my experimental portraits later on this week with the food items I have chosen, so it is a perfect time to practice and see what lighting works best. Below is a behind the scenes shot of my fiancé setting up and image whilst I stood in as the subject. I wanted to make sure that the shutter speed, ISO and aperture settings were correct as the snow was melting every time I sat down.



We started shooting at 7pm which is quite late as the sun had completely disappeared! We began by using car headlights and a reflector to create a harsh but golden glow on the subject. We soon realised that using full beam headlights was too harsh and we needed to turn them down. The outcome (shown below) is using side beam headlights and a silver reflector. I am really impressed with this images as it is my first time trying self portraits as well as artificial lightning outdoors. Although it was freezing and I have a cold body, it was well worth the end result. I am heavily inspired by Gregory Crewdson in this image for the use of heavy but creative lighting, and now understand that using lighting outdoors can be greatly beneficial to my photographic work. I decided to edit this photograph in black and white to benefit the mysterious lighting, and use a cinematic crop as homage to televised fairy tales.


Friday 26 December 2014

SHOOT: Studio Products #1

I decided to begin my experimentation into product and food photography by setting up my product table with my studio lights and experimenting with different ways to photograph food. I have spoken to Speedy about my idea and he has encouraged me to expand them and looking into consumerism and how it affects children. I decided to photograph four different foods; sweets to represent Hansel and Gretal, gingerbread to also represent Hansel and Gretal, a red apple to represent Snow White and a piece of cake to represent Red Riding Hood. I understand that some of these references will be better understood by different people who have different memories from fairytales.






My favourite image that I took on this occasion was the image of the gingerbread. I originally took photographs of the gingerbread (which were shaped like snowmen, how very festive) stood up next to each other in line, however this was neither creative nor practical and looked silly. I decided then to break the gingerbread into smaller pieces and stack them on top of each other. This gave a more neat feel and looked professional. My next experimentation on top of this is to recreate a gingerbread house which would represent the fairytale even more, however, I don't want to spoon feed the viewer so will hold some details back. Speedy referred to consumerism in his tutorial with me and suggested I looked into it further. After taking these photographs I have decided to need to read more into consumerism as a subject and how it can relate to my current project. I plan to look at the work of Disney advertisements and how they encourage children to want to visit Disneyland, and the work of other children's advertisement photographers and graphic designers to understand what they need to do to hit the target audience.

I also took photographs of the red apple, which was the first idea I had when it came to food photography. Everyone is familiar with get concept of Snow White being poisoned by the apple by the wicked Queen. I decided it would be a safe option to continue this idea to really get my message across, alongside other items of food and drink that relate to fairy tales, my next step is to read more Grimm fairytales and list food from them, even if the story is not as popular with the ones I have already explored.

Wednesday 24 December 2014

RESEARCH: Consumerism in Children

After meeting with Steve Speed regarding my current ideas for my project before we left for the Christmas break, he mentioned the idea of using consumerism as a base for my project, to underpin my idea and concepts better. I then decided to research into the Disney culture and consumerism within children, and how things sells if they are represented by a brand or stereotype.

Disney is a favourite for a lot of younger children, as well as the older generation, and the store can mark up their prices because of the brand; they know it sells. Children are driven by this desire to want and apparently need certain items if they are represented by their favourite television show or film, especially Disney. Fairytales from the Grimm Brothers have been adopted by Disney, and made out to be glamorous, beautiful stories about gorgeous princesses and courageous princes, and the quest to save one another. However, in the time when they were originally published, they focussed upon issues such as kidnapping, abandonment, murder and slander. For example, Cinderella is singled out and mistreated buy her own family because of the way she looks, Alice in Wonderland wanders off away from her family and becomes lost in a mysterious world that is full of strange and weird creatures and scenarios, and Snow White is poisoned by an apple off a wicked witch who wants her dead. All of these fairytales have a storyline of someone being mistreated and sad. However, the Disney versions of these fairytales hide this fact, and present us with a dumbed down, lovely version, which disguises all the bad parts and presents us with the good. 

Lets begin with some facts sourced from Investopedia.com. Walt Disney is one of the most powerful companies in the who world, especially in the field of entertainment. It runs films, ice shows, stores, theme parks and television channels. There are not many children who live in the world who have not heard of Disney. The Disney empire is worth over $60 billion dollars, and rising every day. Every day, a quarter of a million guest make their way to the various theme parks that they own, a mass transit system that consists of more than '270 buses, 12 monorail trains and a fleet of boats and water taxis' (Theme Park Tourist, 2014).

"Children are a captive audience: The average American child watches an estimate between 25,000 to 40,000 television commercials per year. In the UK, it is about 10,000" (Global Issues, 2010). Children are influenced by what they see in advertisements, television programmes and in magazines. My work is going to now look into advertisement culture, and I am going to create some food photography and make them into advertisements for supermarkets as a response to this issue.

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Anup Shah. (2010). Children as Consumers. Available: http://www.globalissues.org/article/237/children-as-consumers. Last accessed 24th December 2014.

Nick Sim. (2014). 10 Mind Boggling Statistics About Walt Disney World.Available: http://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20140214/16276/10-mind-boggling-statistics-about-walt-disney-world?page=1. Last accessed 24th December 2014.


Tuesday 23 December 2014

RESEARCH: Kyle Thompson

Kyle Thompson is a surreal portrait photographer from Illinois, he describes his practice as surreal, conceptual self-portraits, spanning out into alternative portraiture. I have taken inspiration from two of his images in order to develop my own portraiture work for this module. He is completely self-taught, skipping college to choose travelling around the USA in his car.

The first image is my favourite image of Kyle’s is this photograph shown below. His head coming from the puddle looks so surreal and out of the ordinary, but reveals a lot about Thompson’s personality and his photographic approach. I am inspired so much by his work and how he represents his thoughts and feeling through imagery. I am also inspired greatly by the second image, although not a self-portrait, it has inspired me through use of location and how the lighting has created an eerie effect and is kind of captivating. The mood set in this image is quite hazy and unclear, which is a contrast to the technical aspect of his photographs, which are technically perfect. He work has inspired to capture the extra ordinary, whether it be people hidden within piles of mud, floating among reeds and water or surrounding by blazing fire, I plan to use Kyle Thompson as my main inspiration for the portrait pathway of my experimentation, as he has clearly shown that anything is possible with a creative mind!






Sunday 21 December 2014

REFLECTION: Presentation & Further Ideas/Research

After looking into studio portraiture and understand how I need to put more thought and process into my image. I have decided to experiment with two different paths of experimentation, one being product photography of food and props that are used in fairytales, as well as the pathway of experimental lighting within portraiture. I have been looking into the work of Gregory Crewdson a lot over the past few weeks and have fallen in love with the idea of "dressing the set" and preparing dramatic lighting for a shoot. I think it will broaden my knowledge of lighting outside of the studio. 

For my action plan, I have come up with some initial ideas for both.

Product
I had the idea to experiment with product photography when looking at a fellow students work during the Professional Frameworks module. I did not want to have to solely rely on models (who off the internet can be unreliable) over the Christmas period as students have deadlines and a lot of people have to work extra hours to fit demand or spend time with family. Therefore, I have decided to expand my knowledge of product photography. I have been researching into a number of product photographers who work in the industry to learn more about lighting techniques and what sort of lighting they use. I plan to conduct a number of studio and outdoor shoots depending on weather and if I can access a studio over the Christmas period. If not, I am hoping it snows to get the fairytale weather conditions to produce these product images. The food that I will be photographing will all be based on food included in children's fairytales, I plan to use a red apple to represent Snow White, gingerbread and bread crumbs to represent  Hansel and Gretal and a pumpkin to represent Cinderella.

As experimentation for this action plan, I plan to experiment with different colour backgrounds and locations, as well as using body parts with the food. I understand now I will have to research into advertisement food photographers and understand studio lighting for food photography more.

Experimental Portraits
I have always been the photographer to take editorial styled images in the studio or on location that would look good published in a high fashion magazine, therefore, I want to experiment with taking alternative portraits for this module. I want to take eerie images of people over the Christmas period, taking advantage of the possible weather conditions that could arise (such as dense fog and snow). I think these are all good weather conditions that could look good and compliment the theme of fairytale.

I plan to use the inspiration of Kyle Thompson (research to follow), as his self portraiture work is inspirational and well thought out. They all represent problems in his life and how he can overcome them and strive forwards in life. They all represent problems in his life and how he can overcome them and strive forwards in life. I want to take inspiration from some of his work he produced in the woodlands to influence my style of photography, I plan to research this in the next post.

Saturday 20 December 2014

SHOOT: Hedgehogs

I decided to plan a simple fashion shoot in the studio. something I am used to in my normal practice, but making sure I pay attention to detail to make the shoot the best it can be. I realised in my research that I need to pay more attention to small details within a photo shoot so it represents my brief perfectly and fits all the criteria. Here, I wanted to create a whimsical fairytale fashion photo shoot, to experiment with the concepts I have in mind and decided whether this is something I would like to concentrate on for my Final Major Project.

I hired a small pygmy hedgehog for the shoot, and used my good friend Kelly as a model. I did not want to hire a model as they can sometimes be unreliable and, on this occasion, could not pass the opportunity to use animals as part of my shoot. I think the photographs came out really well. I made sure the hair and make up matched my theme, and made sure everything was in place whilst I was shooting. In the past, I have shot a whole series of images and realised at the end the make up was too shiny or that the hair was out of place. At this shoot, I made a connection between my camera and my laptop to provide my assistant with a live feed, so errors could be noticed and corrected.














Friday 19 December 2014

RESEARCH: Margarita Kareva




This work inspired me the moment I saw it because of two things; the animals involved and the snow overlay in the background. I have already worked on my Photoshop skills by using a snow overlay over the top of the some of my personal images, but the use of animals really makes this feel like a fairytale. I have been reading into one of my favourite children's books which was about a hedgehog who had lost its Mum, kind of like a fairytale of Finding Nemo but with hedgehogs. I want to incorporate hedgehogs in my next experimentation as they are a personal fairytale creature of mine. I have been inspired so much by this series of work that I plan to experiment further with this if my next series is strong and exciting enough, and use other wild animals to produce editorial images I could submit to a magazine.

Thursday 18 December 2014

SHOOT: Woodland Location (Photoshop Layers)




I was looking at the work of Annie Leibovitz and realised that I would need to improve upon my Photoshop skills if I was to make some surreal work that would match my brief. I took these photographs of a model wearing some pieces from my friends clothing collection, again, I paid great attention to detail whilst shooting to make sure that the garments were fitted correctly and that the hair and make up was perfect at all times. I decided to in post production to add an overlay of some snow flakes. I then used the healing brush set to clear to get rid of the overlay from the models face and body, to make her more clear. I enjoyed being able to improve my Photoshop skills, and using my Bamboo tablet more on my laptop. I definitely need to improve my skills over the course of the next year for the industry when I graduate.

Tuesday 16 December 2014

SHOOT: Woodland Location

I did a photo shoot with my friend Kelly, testing out locations for my final piece. I collaborated with my friend who is a fashion designer, who made the clothing based on the forest and the woodland locations around her house. I wanted a location that was perfect to represent the theme, so I chose this decayed woodland area. I plan to use this location again, I am aiming to wait until it snows and try and shoot here to get the fairytale whimsical feel. I was heavily inspired by Kilian Schönberger for the use of location and weather. I made sure it was a cloudy day so it wouldn't look summery, and used a silver reflector to give the skin a cold glow (if that makes sense?!) In post-production, I didn't do an awful lot of editing, the only thing I did do was lower the desaturation like Schönberger, to give it an eerie and mellow feel.











RESEARCH: Gregory Crewdson

During my presentation, I mentioned my love for Gregory Crewdson's work and received the feedback that I would not be able to achieve the same effect as Crewdson as I did not have a crew of people. I am determined to try my best so have conducted some research into how he works and what lighting he used. I plan to experiment over the course of this module with alternative lighting, both in the studio and outdoors.

Gregory Crewdson explores staged photography to the very limits, and I wanted to use him as inspiration as I am telling an alternative story of fairytale photography and the children's books I am looking at. I plan to experiment with use of lighting to create dramatic and mellow mood in my images, to represent the darker side of fairytales and the issues that were not clear to me as a child.



I decided to do some research into the type of lighting that Crewdson uses and whether it would be achievable on a student budget. I have been reading a website called Guess The Lighting, where a fellow photographers analysing lighting and draws diagrams explaining lighting techniques and direction. He also writes in tremendous detail about the cameras used and the make of lighting that he owns.



He explains using this diagram how Crewdson lighting that image of the woman planting a flower bed. It's interesting to see the amount of lighting that goes in to lighting a seemingly dark image. Looking at the diagram, there has been eleven lights used, and reading the text that the photographer has wrote it gives a breakdown of the lighting he used and how powerful they were. He commented saying "there is not so much a key light as various light sources [are] hitting our model and leaving her in different degrees of shadow. Two 200 watt, tungsten fresnel (shot through a silk) are eight feet camera left. Two other 200 watt, tungsten fresnels are in the same spot camera right. They all serve as front fill on our mode. A 650 watt, tungsten fresnel (shot through a silk) is out of frame camera left and slightly behind the model, shaping the highlights on her face. A 1k fresnel (shot, again, through a silk) is behind the kitchen door in the rear left of the shot. Two, 1k fresnels (silk) are behind the kitchen window in the rear right. Two more 1k fresnels (silk) are behind the front, right kitchen window. A Rosco Delta 6000 fog machine creates the light streaks. A 100 watt lightbulb hangs in the chandelier to give a touch of reality"

Although there are a lot of lights and different techniques used to get the effect desired, I think this still can be used as inspiration and will allow me to look further into lighting techniques and how they can be used on a  location scenario. I plan to use flashguns and external red head lights powered by a generator at Blue Lagoon over the Christmas period with a male model (all my other female models have gone home for Christmas), just as experimentation towards my FMP.

RESEARCH: Melissa Nucera

Mellisa Nucera is a graphic artist from Pennsylvania. She shares her work on the online platform Etsy, and her photo manipulation and photography makes amazing pieces of artwork that wouldn't look out of place on any wall.

I have been inspired most by her photograph she has manipulated portraying Snow White in the forest, looking on into the dismal woodland. Her images represent my theme of dark fairy tales perfectly, and although my current work is quite bright and colourful, the content of this work is what I want to steer towards and make my final goal. At the moment I am experimenting with product and portrait work and experimenting with how to combine them to product a strong photographic body of work. From this artist research, I plan to take elements of the editing techniques and explore them further in my own work.




RESEARCH: Kilian Schönberger

I researched into Kilian Schönberger because of his landscapes he produces and how I plan to use landscape to represent the mood and tone of the image. Kilian creates eerie landscapes using desaturation and smoke for effect to respond to fairytale landscapes such as Sleeping Beauty and Pied Piper of Hamelin. Schönberger is colour blind, so also looks at how colour is represented within photography and how it can be used to create a mood for the viewer, such as fear and intrigue. 



I have planned to conduct one of my photo shoots at a place called Blue Lagoon, where I shot one of my previous personal fairytale series. However, I plan to go earlier in the morning when there is low fog and mist to create the sense of intrigue that Schönberger has managed to create, rather than using a smoke machine. As a last resort, I will use a smoke machine, to create effect and an eerie atmosphere, much like what is explored within Schönberger's images.

PRESENTATION

I am not a fan of presentations at all - so when we were told we had to present our idea in a seven minute presentation based on our current ideas I was not okay! I decided to collaborate all my ideas that I have had to date and put them under one topic, which naturally would be fairytales.

I did some basic research onto photographers who look into fairytales. I knew of a few photographers that I wanted to do some basic research into; such as Gregory Crewdson and Annie Leibovitz, but I also wanted to expand my knowledge of other practitioners (especially as this will greatly benefit my career as a teacher in the upcoming years).

Sunday 14 December 2014

INITIAL IDEAS

As mentioned in my previous post, I have planned to produce some experimental images in the run up to my final major project, based on underlying issues within children's books and fairytales. It has been widely discussed that there is adult humour and underlying issues such as kidnapping and murder within fairytales, especially the Brothers Grimm series of fairytales which I have grown up. I plan to look at the development of how we look at these images, from being a young child to an adult.


BRIEFING

Today was the first lecture which looked at the briefing and outlines for the module, as well as expectations and when we were expected to be in! This is the start of my final major project, so its quite terrifying as it's super close to the end! The module aims at helping us develop a plan and "an appreciation of investigative strategies", by researching photographers and artists and developing a plan for our work.

I have had an idea since my first year, but a time has never arose for me to execute it. I have never produced a series of work for my University studies that truly represents me and my style of photography. I plan to look into my favourite children's books that I used to read on a regular basis, and still read to my nine year old sister. I plan to develop my knowledge on these books and the hidden meanings within the text, as well as present the darker side of fairytales and children's books.