Shoot One - Physical experiment

Here is a physical experiment I made using both my edits from shoot one.

This physical experiment was inspired by the double decollage pieces of artist Mimmo Rotella, which are posters and pieces of art that have had another layer added over the top which has been torn to reveal parts of the bottom layer.

To create this, I got my two edits printed size A4 and aligned the first edit on top of the second one. I then began to tear holes on that to reveal parts of the other edit which I felt would work being shown through the holes. Once I had torn all the holes I wanted, I blu tacked the torn layer onto the other one so that they become one image and scanned that image.

Final Evaluation

For my exam, I chose the starting point of personal opinion, as I felt I had lots of opinions that I would like to voice through the medium of Photography. I initially brainstormed topics I could cover, which included Celebrity Culture, Reality Television, The Music Industry and Mental Health. I settled on looking at mental health as I decided this was a topic in which I could easily translate my opinions, thoughts and feelings into photographs and edits.

For my final shoots. I took inspiration from both my preparatory shoots and the photographers and artists I've researched.

In my preparatory shoots, I began to look at both portraying mental illness itself and creating metaphors for social stigmas regarding people with mental health issues. For my fourth shoot, I implemented white masks for the first time, making my subject wear one during a lesson and photographing him working and the way people behaved around him. My next shoot after this was the one in which I first implemented the painted mask. For this shoot I shot on location in a forrest near me. I simply photographed my subject wearing the mask from different angles as well as moving them to different places in the forest. These shoots inspired my use of both the masks and using different environments other than the studio for my final pieces.

Also, many of the Photographers and artists I discovered through my Photographer research and research logs helped inspire both my preparatory shoots and my final shoots.

My final pieces are very dark in mood, which is mostly due to the use of the featureless white masks and my use of lighting, however the surreal nature of the photographs can give them a slight comedic tone as well. The dark mood of my pieces is a result of influences such as Edward Honaker and Nicolas Bruno, both of which use muted colour palettes to achieve a depressing and eerie  mood in their images. They both also create surreal imagery, Bruno through composition of photographs and what subjects and objects he uses, and Honaker through use of camera and photoshop techniques such as long exposures and using warp tools to digitally distort images, the first of which I heavily incorporated into my shoots for my final pieces. However, for my images I also included some saturated colours in contrast to the dark muted colours and low key lighting. This was inspired by Photographer Melissa Spitz, who often incorporated saturated purples and pinks into her series about her Mother's struggle with various mental health issues.

As a result of this project, I have improved and developed a number of skills in the medium of Photography. One of the skills which I hadn't previously incorporated into Photography is the use of physical art and props. From the fourth shoot onwards, I began to use white paper masks to represent the presence of mental illness. For my fifth shoot, I decided to create some physical art to use for my shoot, so I got one of my two white paper masks and covered one side in various brightly coloured paints. This mask and the plain mask can be seen in many of my preparatory shoots and all of my final pieces for this exam. Another example of my use of physical art is my physical experiments for both my, in which I created Decollages similar to that made by Artist Mimmo Rotella.

There are also many technical skills I've honed during this exam period that I hadn't touched on perviously. One of these is the use of studio equipment and the studio itself. For most of my preparatory shoots and one of my two exam shoots, I shot in the studio rather than on location, which usually not my preference. I mainly did this as my subject matter was easier to get across when in a controlled studio setting, but doing this has also taught me how to use a studio and its equipment effectively. For example, I have implemented spotlights into some of my last preparatory shoots and my second exam shoot, using a snoot on them to create low key lighting on my subject, which I felt created a dark tone in my work and linked it well to my subject matter of mental health. Also, I have learnt to use studio backdrops to add mood and atmosphere to my work; most of my shoots were shot on a dark blue or black background, which are colours that represent sadness and depression.

Overall, I would say that I responded well to the exam starting point, of which I chose Personal opinion and chose to focus on mental health and mental illness. From the start, I began to brainstorm ideas of what aspects of this I could look at and how I could present them. I quickly narrowed it down to looking at both portraying mental illness through Photography and creating metaphorical representations of social stigma surrounding mental health issues. Throughout the exam, I feel that I've experimented with both computer techniques to create pieces and physical techniques, which makes my response varied and shows off several skills and techniques. I also feel that I've kept to the subject matter I chose well, constantly displaying my ideas, thoughts and feelings on the subject of Mental health through using masks to portray it and shooting with these in public locations in order to get people's reactions to them, which acts as a metaphorical representation of how society perceives and reacts to mental illness.

However, there are some things that I feel I could have improved on based on their ability to respond the exam starting point and the exam as a whole. I would say that I could have implemented more advanced editing techniques in Photoshop to hit AO2 more successfully; Although I used Photoshop often, most of the techniques I used, even during the making of the final pieces, were fairly simple. Additionally, I feel that I could have completed more shoots in preparation for the final exam; I completed seven shoots, whereas the recommended amount is ten in order to consistently demonstrate the assessment objectives. Finally, I would say that I could have done some more regarding recording my work and observations, especially when it comes to explaining the deeper meanings behind my pieces, as they are based on mental illness and it is often not explicitly clear on what the meaning behind it is. I could have also gone into more detail about how my shoots link to each other, my research and the exam as a whole.

In conclusion, I would say that my final exam went well, as I created pieces that I feel were an improvement both technically and visually than any of my previous preparatory shoots. However, I feel I could have worked more to explain the links between this, my preparatory shoots and my research.

Shoot Two - Physical Experiment

I used both edit pieces from shoot two to create a physical experiment. I took artist Mimmo Rotella as an inspiration for this physical experiment, as this is an attempt to create one of his signature Double D ecollage pieces using my two final pieces from this shoot. First, I printed them off in colour at A4 size. Then, aligned them up so that the one using the plain masks was on top of the one with the painted masks. Once they were aligned, I ripped holes into the top image using a combination of scissors and my fingers. I chose areas which were colourful on the bottom image but no on the top, so that it creates the effect of lots of bright colours shining through the ripped holes in the top image. Once the tearing had been done, I blu tacked the ripped image onto the other one by the corners and scanned it, this being the result.

Exam Shoot Two - Work Record

For this exam Shoot, I plan to implement  my long exposures into a studio setting. I am going  to be using a studio spotlight with a snoot on it in order to make a small spotlight directed at my subject's face. I will be using both the painted mask and the plain mask in my shoots and overlaying the shots in photoshop.

For this shoot, hope to present mental disorders in the way I did in the previous shoot, as multifaceted and complex, while honing studio techniques such as lighting and using studio backgrounds.

Here is an image from my shoot that I feel was successful. This image was shot with an aperture of f22, a shutter speed of 1/6 of a second and an ISO of 100. This was one of the first photos from the shoot. One reason why I like this is that I feel it links very well to my topic. The image creates a sense of distorted reality, and a sense of there being two sides to a personality, as you can see two faces in different positions. This ties in well with my subject of mental he alt, as people suffering from mental illnesses such as Schizophrenia and Bipolar may experience things like distorted reality and having two contrasting sides to their mind. I also feel this image was a success from a technical perspective. For one, it's exposed exactly how I wanted it to be; it's not overexposed, which I owe to shooting with a shutter speed of less than a second. It's also not underexposed, as this could have been a possibility with using a spotlight with a snoot as your only studio lighting in a dark room. I also like the amount of motion blur I achieved; it was just enough to capture a few stages in my subject's movement but not blur the image so much that you can't make out there is a face in it.

However, here is an image from my shoot that I didn't feel was very successful.

Shot on F22 at 1/6 of a second.

This was one of the last images from the first half of my shoot before I switched to the painted mask. For this image, I had told my subject to shake his head but only a small amount. While I expected the blur to be small with this shot, I still wanted there to be enough blur to distort the image. However, the image came out with a very small amount of blur, so it looked as if I was trying to take a photo at a faster shutter speed but camera shake had effected the image. This small amount of blur meant that the image also appeared to be out of focus, even though I had focused the camera onto my subject's face.

Also, because of the lack of distorted reality as a result of a lack of motion blur, I feel this image doesn't link to my subject of mental health as well as some of my images did. Although it still incorporates the mask to present a mental disorder, I felt that the slight blur of the image weakened the dark mood of the image as a whole.

Finally, I felt the lighting from this particular image could have been more low key. I find that too much of his face is lit up, which was likely a result of bad positioning of the spotlight. Perhaps if I had placed it more to his right, only one side of the mask would have been lit up, creating a much harder shadow than what I achieved.

Shoot Two - Final Pieces (computer experiments)

To create these edits, I used almost exactly the same process I used to create the edits for my first shoot. I opened one half of my shoot, as my shoot was divided into two parts using each of the two masks, in photoshop. Once all my images were open, I looked for an image in which my subject was in the middle of the shot to use as my base image for the edit. Once I had found this image, I converted it into a layer. Next, I began to copy and paste other images onto the top of this image as other layers. Every time a Layer had been added, I would go into the layer blending dropbox and set it to "Screen", which would merge the layers in the way I wanted. I tried to choose images in a way that the whole frame would have distorted faces in it, as I used images from a variety of viewpoints and placed them over the top of the layers already in the edit. Once I had added all the layers I wanted and set the blending option to "Screen" for all of them, I flattened the image and saved it as a JPEG.

Shoot Two - Straight Images

Shoot Two - Contact Sheet

Exam Shoot One - Work Record

For my first exam shoot, I am going to be shooting on location. During this shoot, I am going to be using both the plain white mask and the painted white mask, both of which were incorporated into many of my exam preparation shoots. The plan for the shoot is to take pictures using long exposures of my subject while they move their head from side to side and have their hands over their face and alternate between long and fast exposures and plain and painted masks.

I hope to capture a detailed depiction of what it is to have a mental disorder, portraying it as something that has many layers and details rather than being a simple, two dimensional matter.

Here is a photo from my shoot that I feel was successful.

This image was shot using an aperture of F22, an ISO of 100 and a shutter speed of 1/2 a second, which allowed me to achieve a large amount of motion blur. Although the shutter speed was not a very long one for motion blur photography, my subject was moving very fast which allowed me to achieve a large amount of motion blur without letting to much light in over a very long exposure, which would have likely made the image overexposed. I feel that this image is one of the best exposed images from my shoot, as the bricks in the background are the right shade of dark red, while the white of the mask is not blinding and doesn't take over the rest of the picture. Another thing I feel went well with this image is the composition. I used a rule of thirds composition for this photo, placing my subject along the right horizontal line of the grid, so that your eyes are drawn instantly to him. Also, I feel this image is one that links strongly into my topic; the blur created an effect in which you can almost see two faces, which creates connotations of distorted reality. This is something you would experience if you suffered from a mental disorder such as Schizophrenia. 

On the other hand, here is an image from my shoot that I feel was not very successful. This was one of the first images I took, which incorporated the painted mask rather than the plain one. I shot this on a aperture of f22, an ISO of 100 and a shutter speed of one second. This shutter speed was twice as slow as what I used in the previous shoot, meaning too much light was let into the shutter, making the picture over-exposed. Even if the conditions I shot in were darker so that less light would have been let in, a one second shutter speed wouldn't have been needed to achieve a large amount of motion blur, bearing in mind that my subject was making small fast movements with his head. Finally, I would say that this image was focussed on the wrong part of the composition, as it appears that the background is in focus but my subject's face is not. However, this could be because of the overexposure and excessive motion blur, as when shooting at f22, there will be a very wide depth of field in which everything in the photo is in focus.

For my next shoot, I will be continuing with using the mask to present mental disorders while capturing motion blur using long exposures, however, I will be implementing this into a studio environment and adding a spotlight, a snoot and a black backdrop to the setup.

Exam Shoot One - Final Pieces (computer experiments)

For these two edits, I used the same techniques. I would first open an image in which my subject is placed in the middle of the shot. From here, I would find one of the images which used motion blur and where my subject is to one of the edges of the frame, and select it using cmd+A. I would then copy it with cmd+C and paste onto the background image with cmd+V, which would add it as a layer. I would then convert the background into a layer. Once this first layer was on top of the other layer, I would go onto the layer blending tab just above the layer palette and select "Lighten", which would merge the layers together and blend them. I would then go on adding layers in this way onto the top of the existing layers, and setting them to "Lighten" until I had faces across my whole image, when I would then flatten the image and save it as my finished edit.

Shoot One - Straight Images

Shoot One - Contact Sheet