Shoot 10 - Distortion - Work Record

Date: 14/04/16

Plans for shoot:
In this shoot I will take normal portrait pictures and I will edit them in photoshop and then print them out and use various physical experiments on the best ones. These experiments I will try and do so they distort the portraits to develop my theme of how mental illness causes the people suffering to loose insight on who they are, hence a distorted view of their identity.

What I wish to achieve:
I wish to get pictures that I can effectively manipulate in various ways to distort the models face.

What I actually achieved:
I completed three physical experiments and therefore three straight images, all of which were black and white portraits of a friend of mine.
This one shows how I have printed one image and then I printed off another portrait but bigger and more zoomed in on her face. I then tore up two sections of the larger portrait and stuck them onto the original picture. I like how this adds a more disjointed effect to the picture as it separates areas of her face out. I also like the ripped effect of the added on areas as it makes it look quite messy and rough which reflects the mental illness in a subtle way; as sufferers feel as if their mind is being ripped apart.

Shoot 9 - Hiding - Work Record

Date: 14/04/16

Plans for shoot:
In this shoot, I am going to combine the idea of lost identity with hiding all relating to my mental illness theme for my exam. I have chosen to do this because I have previously done a hiding shoot and I was pleased with my results and I also think the message and connotations that these pictures have relate a lot to this theme. I will shoot someone hiding areas of their face and body behind various things like their hair, hands, curtains and stairs.

What I wish to achieve:
I wish to get pictures that are better than the ones I did in my previous hiding shoot to show a development. I want these pictures to show connotations of how people with anxiety and depression feel so alone and lost of themselves that they feel hidden and detached from the rest of the world. This is related to how many people wouldn't be able to recognise these illness' because they are mental rather than physical, so people often overlook the consequences, so the people suffering would often feel like no one understands.

What I actually achieved:
I got various pictures all of which show the model hiding herself in different ways. The ways I think worked best were the ones where she was hiding behind her hands and behind a curtain. I edited my straight images and made them all black and white because my research on mental illness photography shows how many photographers work only in black and white. In my opinion, this helps build a strong representation of how sufferers feel drained of life and happiness and a lot of brightly coloured pictures often connate with happy emotions. I was pleased with how they looked in black and white and I think they I will stay with this idea and do my exam shoots and last shoot in black and white.

I liked this picture because I think as well as it shows her 'hiding' which was the theme of this shoot, I think it also shows entrapment; the idea that sufferers feel like they cannot escape their own mind. Furthermore, I like the dark tones that overpower the models body making her look more like a silhouette, this to me, adds a bit of surrealism to the picture as we cannot see a lot of her, just an outline. I also like the tonal differenced in the pattern on the curtain, how the right side is very highlighted then gradually gets darker. I think this makes the pattern stand out quite a lot which I think has a nice effect against her body as it shows clearly that she is behind it.

I think the best part of this picture is how I have used the focus to only catch her eye and the left side of the picture is very blurred. I emphasised this effect using the tilt shift in photoshop. I think this has drawn all the attention to her eye. Her eye to me, is what stands out the most in this picture as it is the only part of her face that isn't hidden. This adds personality as the eyes are seen to show an insight into the soul and character. So by being able to look into her eyes, its almost like we have an insight into her suffering.


What I am going to do next:
For my last shoot, I am going to try some physical experiments, so I will take some portraits and then try different techniques to manipulate them.

Shoot 8 - Unrecognizable - Word Record

Date: 12/04/16

Plans for shoot:
In this shoot I will take pictures of someone in front of a blank wall. I will take them from different heights and zooming in, in different ways, but they will all be taken from the front and straight on. I will then liquify their face with the warp tool but I will vary each picture in the way I do this.

What I wish to achieve:
I hope to get some pictures that show subtly my inspiration from Edward Honaker's depression photography. To support my whole theme of loosing identity in yourself. I also want the pictures to have connotations of the mess and craziness that goes on inside a sufferers head that we can't see. Almost like a visual representation.

What I actually achieved:

This is one of my edited pictures from the shoot, I really like how it turned out and I like the way I have liquified it. I tried this tool in photoshop in various ways, pulling her face out to different angles but I think this one worked best. I also like the tonal contrast in this picture, which I have further defined by making it black and white. I think this picture has achieved the connotations of showing visually, the distortion and mess that sufferers thoughts turn to when they go through these mental illnesses. I think this is an important conceptual message behind the picture because many people, who haven't been through these mental illnesses, have difficulty understanding the impact they have on ones mind, this is because it is more difficult to comprehend when symptoms cannot be seen. Furthermore, I have found that in a lot of my photographer research, many depression and anxiety photographers have been through, or have known someone to have been through it, they therefore have a very good understanding of the implications of mental illness, they can then created good pictures because they are very real and truthful.

What I am going to do next:
To expand and develop my theme of losing identity I will do a shoot based on the idea of hiding and how people with mental illness feel hidden from the rest of the world including their friends and family as they feel like they are loosing who they are. I have already done one shoot on the idea of hiding and I like the way some of the images turned out and I think they show a very conceptual message behind them. Some of my straight images from this shoot have inspired me to develop and the idea of hiding.

Shoot 7 - Lost Identity - Work Record

Date: 11/04/16

Plans for shoot:
In this shoot for 'Lost Identity', I will shoot a friend of mine specifically looking into mirrors. I will focus on the liquify filter on photoshop to blur and distort the reflection of her to represent my idea and theme of this shoot.

What I wish to achieve:
I wish to portray the emotional and mental issue that anxiety and depression causes of the sufferer feeling lost and detached from themselves. I will try and do this, by blurring and masking their face in photoshop, to create the connotation that when they look at themselves in the mirror, they don't see themselves anymore. This idea was inspired by my Edward Honaker research.

What I actually achieved:
I managed to take various pictures of someone looking into mirrors at different angles, then in photoshop I used the blur and patch tool to make her facial features blend with her skin tone to have the appearance that they aren't there.

 The denotations of this picture is a girl sitting on her bed, looking down into a mirror, and I have completely for rid go her facial features. I liked how it looks very casual in a sense that she is wearing normal clothes and just sitting on her bed, I think this makes the scenario look natural rather than very set up. This could show the connotations of how it's in everyday life and situations where they feel lost from themselves, even when everything around them is normal, they're mentality is affecting who they are. I found it quite difficult to photoshop her reflection in a way that looked like natural skin tone that all fades together nicely. But I used the patch tool continuously until I was happy with the result. I also like the focus of the picture and how it is shifted to the mirror so her hair is out of focus.

I liked this picture because of how she is looking into the camera through the mirror. I think this adds a lot of personality because to the person looking at the picture it looks like she is looking into us. I blurred out her nose and mouth but left her eyes to add the powerful, personal aspect. I also like how she is touching the mirror. I think this has the connotation of her reaching out to herself in an attempt to try and find herself again. I also like this mirror the most out of the three mirrors I used because of the frame it has and the rustic and old fashioned look this gives to the picture.


What I am going to do next:
Next I am going to try representing the same idea of lost identity but through a different way. I will take multiple, plain portrait pictures in front of a plain background and manipulate them in photoshop to liquify their face to make it unrecognisable as them and very abstract. This idea was inspired by Edward Honaker, I also touched on this idea in a previous shoot and I think it worked really well so now I will develop that idea and try and improve on it.

Shoot 6 - Difference - Work Record

Date: 22/03/16

Plans for shoot:
In my previous shoots on anxiety, I have only represented the illness rather than the actual person aswell. So in this shoot I am going to use makeup on half of her face to represent the anxiety and the other half will be just her as she naturally is. I will also draw a line in eyeliner down her face to make the half and half idea very clear.

What I wish to achieve:
I want to get pictures that portray a sense of difference between the person and their illness. I want the pictures to show a sort of captivating beauty that is in the natural half. But I want there to still be the sorrow in her expression, to show how its overpowering her identity.

What I actually achieved:

I wanted this picture, to very clearly show the difference, almost like she is going through an inner battle so her anxieties don't take over who she is. I used the liquify tool in photoshop to distort one half of her face to make it so abstract and quite surreal. I also like the way on the 'normal' side of her face, her expression is very minimalistic and dead pan, however her eye is very captivating I think and I think I have captured a sense of inner pain and suffering from her.

This picture shows clearly how I used the makeup  on her. I have put red smudged lip stick on her and black eyeliner smudged down her face. I also dripped water down on from her eye to make the black eye makeup smudge to make it look like she has been crying. This also shows the purity of the other side of her side to capture that contrast. I kept this image in colour so we could still see the red smudges and see the effect that the black has.




What I am going to do next:
I have found that a common thread in my anxiety shoots has been the idea of identity. So in my next shoots, I will focus and develop on that theme. My next shoot will be named 'Lost identity' and I will try and capture pictures that show how sufferers, feel like they are loosing themselves. When I researched Edward Honaker's depression work, it inspired this idea of identity and I may try and take some pictures in his style.

Shoot 5 - Makeup - Work Record

Date: 22/03/16

Plans for shoot:
For this shoot, I will put heavy, dark and messy makeup on a friend. I will then photograph simply portraits of her.

What I wish to achieve:
I want to get pictures that have connotations of inner darkness, that will be represented through her makeup. I also want it to look quite messy and over powering to represent how over powering having a mental illness and it takes over your identity.

What I actually achieved:
Here are some examples of pictures that I liked from this shot:
I think this picture best shows the makeup on her. I used black eyeshadow and black lipstick. This is because it was closest picture I took. I really like the dark tones and shadows in this picture, this helps to create the dark, eery and mysterious connotation that I wanted. I also like the use of negative space near the bottom of the picture and how it seems to over power some of her face so we can'y clearly see all of her.

I also liked this picture. I think I have managed to capture a lot of emotion and feeling. This may be because she is looking into the camera so when we look at the picture it's like she is looking into us. I also like how her hair is quite messy, this helps portray the anxiety by how it messes with your thoughts and jumbles up your mind.

What I am going to do next:
In my next shoot, I am going to develop the idea of anxiety by doing a shoot that shows the difference between the person and the anxiety, and how it overpowers the person and their mind.

Shoot 4 - Hiding - Work Record

Date: 17/03/16

Plans for shoot:
The rest of my shoots will all be focused at looking at different factors of 'Anxiety's'. This shoot will be specifically focused on how having anxiety, can cause people to feel so insecure about themselves that it leads to them feeling unworthy. I will capture this by photographing a friend of mine, constantly hiding her face to represent this opinion.

What I wish to achieve:
In this shoot I wish to capture the opinion that people with anxiety have of constantly feeling judged and ridiculed for being who they are. Even if this isn't true, and people do not view them this way, they will still feel this way based on paranoia, this causes them to feel incredibly insecure. I want to represent this by hopefully getting pictures that show her hiding behind things rather than looking confident.

What I actually achieved:
Here are some of my best edited pictures from the shoot:

In some of the pictures for this shoot, she was hiding her face behind her hands. I was inspired by some of the pictures from my shoot 1 (standards) where the model was posing in a similar way. I liked this one because of the way her eyes look very piercing as even though she is hiding her face, we can still see them. This adds a lot of personality to the picture I think because of the way she is looking into the camera. I used the tilt shift tool in photoshop to focus the picture even more onto her eyes. I also like the tonal contrast in this picture that has been created through photoshop. I think this makes all of her features, like her eyes again, stand out a lot.

 With this picture, she is hiding behind the beams on my stairs. However because of the way I have cropped the picture, it looks more like some sort of cage that she is hiding behind.









What I am going to do next:
My next shoot will be all about expressionism. I will use heavy and messy makeup on the model to represent inner darkness that anxiety sufferers feel.

Shoot 3 - Friendship and Attachment - Work Record

Date: 15/03/16

Plans for shoot:
For this shoot I will capture friendship and attachment by photographing two friends. I will shoot them together having a good time and hugging, laughing and holding hands.

What I hope to achieve:
In this shoot I want to achieve a sense of friendship and attachment through the two friends displaying various related emotions, like happiness, joy, comfort, togetherness, and love.

What I actually achieved:
During this shoot, I managed to capture various pictures where the two girls naturally showed their friendship. I found that I didn't have to tell them how to pose very much, so not a lot of my pictures were staged because of the fact that they truly did have a very good and happy friendship that how they naturally acted, made good pictures for me. I found this was especially true in pictures where they were laughing together. I also got pictures of them hugging and holding hands and having their arms around each other. I found this to be quite an easy and fast paced shoot because of the fact that I didn't have to tell them how to pose or look because they had a genuine friendship which was a benefit to me.

This picture shows the two girls looking at each other and smiling. I have edited it and put a slight cooling filter on it and also manipulated the colours to make the cool undertones stronger like the magenta and cyan. I think this has quite a hie effect on the picture and makes it look quite futuristic and modern. I think it also looks very colourful considering the blue background that I used in the studio, I increased the saturation and vibrance to make the colours stand out more, I think this helps to portray the happiness and joy they share.

This picture shows them holding hands. I only got there bodies as a pose to their faces because I wanted all the focus to be on their hands. I like how this represents togetherness and attachment in their relationship. I made it black and white and increased the contrast in this picture. This helped to make the tonal contrast. I think this contrast works well with this picture because of the way the girl on the right has short sleeves so her skin on her arm is highlighted, and the girl on the left is wearing a dark hoodie on so it shows much darker tones so both their arms show both the lightest and darkest tones in the picture and then I like the way that they come together as they are holding hands.


What I am doing next:
Next I am going to develop my idea of anxiety's that I explored in shoot 2. I will do this by expanding on the idea of hiding yourself and feeling insecure. Therefore my next shoot will be called 'Hiding'. This is because in shoot 2, my favourite pictures were the ones where the model was hiding her face with her hands. So I will focus my next shoot on pictures like this and come up with new ways I can portray that same idea. I think this will work better than expanding on the idea of friendship and happiness, because while this shoot was very genuine, I think it is easier to get pictures that show suffering that look very real and unstaged. This has been shown through my previous two shoots as I think they worked better than this shoot.

Shoot 2 - Anxiety's and Lonlieness - Work Record

Date: 09/03/16

Plans for shoot:

For this shoot I want to capture portraits of a model that portray the emotions of loneliness and anxieties. I will do this by getting pictures of her in an empty bed and portraiture of her crying.

What I hope to achieve:

I hope to achieve pictures that have a deep emotional root that strikes the reader to feel the position that the model is in and has a big impact.

What I achieved:
For this shoot, I focused on different emotions of anxieties and loneliness. To capture these emotions, I focused on portraiture and wanted to get pictures where the model looked genuinely distraught and capture the look of them being over powered by there inner anxieties. To capture loneliness, I wanted the model to look isolated and as if they were missing someone or something, leaving them to feel incomplete and alone.

Here are some examples of the pictures that represented loneliness:

In the two above, as you can see, she is laying alone in a double bed, she is reaching her arms out to the empty side of the bed and she is looking out into empty space. With these pictures I wanted to create the connotations that she is missing a loved one who is no longer with her; she is reaching out to the space they used to lay. To help create this emotion, I edited both of them to bring out the dark tones in the pictures to add a grungy vibe and I also lowered the saturation and vibrance of the colours. Muting the colours in this way, I think makes the picture have a serious connotation.

With this picture, it shows her loneliness through isolation. In this picture I wanted to capture more of an inner feeling of being alone; feeling isolated in your own mind even though you may have friends and family, sometimes people can still feel like no one is truly there for them. The denotation of her having her head buried and her arms are hugging her knees, to me, portrays how she doesn't want to reach out to anyone as she feels like their is no one to reach out to, as if she is trapped inside her own thoughts.

Here are some examples of pictures that represented anxieties:

I wanted this picture to have a hidden representation of anxieties starting from the individual who suffers from them. The fact that she has her hands hiding her face and the fact that I edited them to be bright red against the black and white background, portrays how sometimes, the anxieties people have, start from within them and they personally are the reason for their own sufferings. I made them bright red to show how this is an unknown and possibly evil part of them that they want to escape; they want to escape themselves.

This picture shows the model sitting and hugging her knees in a bath. I wanted to portray how some people are vulnerable to their anxieties, through her being in a physically vulnerable state. Also she has a very serious and thoughtful expression to help portray this.

What I am going to do next:
For my next shoot I want to explore a completely different emotion / opinion to mu previous two shoots, then I will develop one of the emotions I have explored further in my future shoots and make that a focused direction. I will base this decision on which shoot went the best and which pictures came out best. The emotion I will explore in my next shoot will be friendship and attachment.

Shoot 1 - Standards - Work Record

Date: 20/02/16

Plans for shoot:
In this shoot I want to explore the idea of standards in society, focusing on beauty standards. I will shoot a girl in front of a collage of models from beauty magazines and various pictures of her hiding her face.

What I hope to achieve:
I hope to achieve a shoot that represents girls and women in todays culture who feel like they need to live up to fake standards. And how this can destroy self confidence in women.

What I achieved:
My focus point is portraying how unrealistic beauty standards created by the media and society are, and how this can make people feel unworthy and unhappy with their personal style and beauty. I think this is an ongoing and big issue in todays culture, this is because it makes people feel like they need cosmetics and other beauty traits to make them look like an ideal rather than embracing their individual look. This often causes a lack of confidence in people and they don't feel comfortable in their own skin. I represented this issue through taking pictures of a friend of mine. I got her to pose in various ways where she was hiding and covering her face to portray how she feels unconfident with her looks. I also took various pictures of her posing in front of a collage of multiple magazine cut outs with pictures of models on them. This shows the contrast between fake and artificial beauty that is admired and praised, and real beauty that is hidden and unappreciated.

This was my favourite picture from the shoot. I like the way she is hiding and covering her face with her hands, and I like how they have been placed so we can still see her eye. The way she is looking directly and innocently in the camera, it adds a lot of personality to the picture and we can really sense her adolescents.

I edited the picture to mainly lower the saturation and vibrance to make the colours really muted, this gives quite despondent atmosphere.

In this picture I wanted to get the idea across that makeup and cosmetics are, in a way, trapped in our lives. I wanted to represent this through intertwining the hair around the makeup. I like the way I edited this picture to make the products stand out in the picture making them a focus point. They are emphasised through being in colour while the rest is in dark tonal black and white.

However, I did not like this picture, this is because of the angle, and the way the creases in the bed sheet she is laying on can be seen. To overcome this, I could have shot her laying on a floor or flat surface.

What I am going to do next:
In my next shoot I want to explore a different emotion. I will shoot based around anxieties and loneliness.