i really enjoyed learning about henri. he’s had a fantastic career. i love his sense of geometry through his images, he sees this as his main obsession when creating photos. i like images that convey some sort of meaning, and really make you think without being told what to think. in regards to this, i don’t feel that henri’s images require a lot of deep thought…. maybe his portraiture a little.
FINAL IDEA FOR PROJECT
I had quite a few initial ideas, but I decided on one representing body image.
My original idea for this shoot was to have a series of girls of all shapes and sizes in nude underwear, all holding a piece of paper over an area of their body they don’t like, with the word of the part they don’t like.
When I told this idea to my tutor, Paul, we brainstormed for a bit and thought that a more effective way to represent the images would be to photoshop out the area that they were unhappy with and replace it with words about how they feel about that part of their body.
I’m really excited to get started!!
I HAVE NOW TAKEN MY FINAL PROJECT PHOTOS
It took me about 4 hours. With preparation time, finding the right angle’s, shooting the pictures, the clothes changes, and the location moves. But it was a lot of fun.
I used my friend Lauren as my main subject. Lauren is a dancer, so in the first 6 pictures I have portrayed her as a typical business woman, bored with her daily routine. On the 7th, she has finished work and can let her hair down and do what she really loves, what she really stands for, and that is her dancing. The 8th picture is a contrast against the others in that she is brightly dressed, dancing and happy.
I used a Nikon D70 to take the pictures. I played around with the settings to get the right look for each picture. I took over 250 main shots and whittled it down to 38 to choose for my final 8.
Preliminary shots
Before starting my final shoot, I looked in to the locations I wanted to use and tried to find good angle’s with them. I took over 40 but I’ve whittled them down to 10 for the blogs sake.
FINAL IDEA: what we stand for.
This final idea is a mixture of self and routine. I will produce a series of 8 pictures. The first, a woman living the same boring, every-day routine. She wakes, she brushes her teeth, she walks to her car, she goes to work, she eats her lunch, she works some more, back to the car. In all of these images she will look lonely and fed up. The final image will be of her in vibrant colours, dancing. This is what she stands for. She is a dancer, it may not be her profession, but it’s who she is.
Her job is what she does, but dancing is who she is.
Here is a list of ideas that I had in mind when thinking about my final project
Self: representation of self. What we as individuals feel that we stand for.
Initially I thought about people standing in front of the camera with a completely white background holding a piece of paper that said one word or sentence describing what they feel they stand for. I chose not to use this idea as even though I feel it is quite affective, it is a massive cliché and is done to death!
Money: a lot of people say that the meaning of life is to make money.
For this idea, I wanted to focus on money and greed. Money is fluid, we need money to live. With this idea in mind, I wanted to show images of people ignoring the joys of life and focusing mainly on the job/money aspect.
Life: the journey of life, how we as a society think life works.
So for this idea I thought I would portray how the ‘typical life’ is led, birth to death. I thought of this idea as being a picture timeline. So the beginning picture would be a picture of baby, then I would take a ‘first day of school’ type photo, a graduation photo, a ‘meeting that special someone’ photo, a job (clichéd, in an office), a marriage photo (as best I could, I wasn’t going to go out and buy a wedding dress or anything, but I’d have found a way. I thought about asking my friends that recently got married), a couple with baby photo, a graveyard photo. It’s a bit dark I know, but I felt it would have really sent the message across and make you think.
Routine: the same boring routine.
This is kind of a cynical, stereotypical view of a typical, depressing and boring routine. When we’re younger, we all aspire to be great. We want to be important or artistic or famous or rich, when in reality, most of us are going to land a crappy office job and wonder what the hell happened (as I said, cynical). Wake up at stupid o’clock, eat go to work, eat, work some more, go home, eat, watch tv, sleep.
Help: helping each other, the environment, ourselves.
Inspired by a famous quote by Audrey Hepburn: “As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” So I had the idea of taking pictures of the way we help and care for one another. I thought about going around London and taking pictures of various charity shops, people doing charity work on the streets, voluntary work, recycling, shelters, hostels, vets, doctors etc.. to show how we help eachother, nature and the environment, and I also thought able trying to capture people smiling, holding hands, kissing, hugging. In a way of representing support, and love.
Me: myself.
For this idea I wanted to interpret things in my life I feel that I stand for. And they would all be self-taken, either in a very common ‘myspace’ way (holding the camera at arm’s length) or with the use of a tripod. In the images I would represent the important things to me in my life, such as my family, music, my animals, my boyfriend, my vegetarianism etc.
Wrecked: an architectural view of the title.
This idea came from my dad. He thought a good way to represent it would be to produce a selection of images of buildings that we have allowed to go in to wreck and ruin. So I thought about producing a series of photos of buildings we have been willing to spend money on to renovate, yet we’re willing to allow a beautiful piece of architecture such as the second pier to just be washed away with the sea.
Father: what my father stands for.
My dad is just an average guy, but he has so much to offer. He is kind and caring and would do anything for his family. He works as a carpenter but he is very talented and artistic, he sings, writes songs and short stories, plays guitar, goes dancing, goes running. I thought about producing a series of pictures of him doing all the things that make him such a well-rounded human being.
