Photograph series - experiments

Experiments

 Experiment 1:

I decided to conduct some experiments to see if my initial idea would achieve a good outcome. My idea was to represent lust, love and heartbreak using colours. 

I wanted pink to represent lust, red to represent love and blue to represent heartbreak. 

I decided to play around with some colours and these are some of the outcomes I got.

 

I used very little natural lighting and held up a coloured lamp close to my face so the camera could pick it up.
I really like how these pictures came out as I think the use of colour is strong. Though I still feel like my idea needs a lot more preparation and inspiration.
I plan to continue researching and experimenting until I have a solid idea with a powerful message. 

Experiment 2 

After deciding on a theme for my photographic series and researching further into it I decided to do another experiment to explore further ways of portraying my theme (body dysmorphia). For this I used artificial lighting from my mirror light with the main lights switched off as I wanted to create a dark setting. 

I also had half of my face with makeup and the other side of my face 

Experiment 3

For this idea I used a projector to display the unrealistic beauty standards that are displayed on instagram. Though I really like this idea the pictures I shot didn't come out great as I was working alone in a small room so it was very hard to get the outcome I had hoped for. I'm going to do this idea again in the studio with a model so i can achieve a stronger picture.

Final Shoots

I used a projector to display the constant feeling that suffers of Body Dysmorphia (and other mental illnesses), not feeling "good" enough.

I shot this in a dark room using the projector as the only source of light to make the words more visible. Unfortunately this distorted the colour of the image and gave off a green/yellow tone which I didn't like so I used Photoshop to edit the hue and contrast/brightness to enhance the image. 

This photograph was inspired by the projection work of Tracy Martin.

For this image I used one source of artificial lighting, from my mirror light as I couldn't fit any lighting in the accommodation room I was using due to lack of space. However I don't think this was an issue as the lighting used did a considerably good job. 

This idea was one of my original ideas, inspired by the first artist that I researched, Duane Michal. 

I constructed an experiment a few weeks prior but I didn't gain the outcome I wished to achieved so I shot it again. 

Though originally I didn't want to use photoshop to manipulate my pictures, I decided that I wanted to distort the image in the mirror to better connect it to Body Dysmorphia, which in my opinion worked well. 

When it came down to my final idea I was stuck on what to do for it, as I wanted each picture to be different, instead of a typical photo sequence which often uses the same location and props. I thought this would help me to explore new techniques and also help me to better portray Body Dysmorphia. 

Although gathering a lot of inspiring research I wanted to create something I hadn't seen before. 

I conducted further research on Body Dysmorphia, reading articles about how sufferers of the disorder feel. Negative words they feel about themselves and how they just want to hide away and cover themselves up because of this, which is what I tried to represent by using a bin bag to hide most of my face. 

I used magazines to cut out the negative feelings that sufferers faced daily and stuck them onto a bin bag.  

For this picture I used flash in a dark room, as artificial lighting wasn't giving me the effect I wanted.  I used photoshop to fix the brightness and contrast as there was a slight glare problem due to the use of flash.