Final Major Project.

In preparation for our final major projects we had a night to take at least four images that we could use for a start of the planning towards the projects. I was completely stuck with what to do, I hadn't really decided on a direction to go yet, all I'd decided was that I wanted to take my photographs in black and white and for them to be highly contrasted.

I didn't have any subjects to photograph in this way that night, so I decided to collect some objects to photograph in this style. The quick idea for this photo shoot was personal worship artefacts, here I collected spiritualist things from about my house and placed them on a chopping board. I used the chopping board as the background because I absolutely love the grain of the wood and I think it worked out fantastically in black and white and with a strong contrasted look to the image.

Instead of placing the objects in different angles and on top of each other in an aesthetically pleasing way I decided to photograph the objects straight on, I personally really love straight on photography and I think documenting items this way worked really well.

Although I have decided to not carry on with the personal worship items project, this mini task has led me to the conclusion that for my final major project I would like to shoot it and turn the images to black and white, and for them to be highly contrasted. I also have come to the conclusion that I would like to take the images in a straight on fashion. I'm not sure yet if I want the pictures to be square yet, but this could be a potability.

I wasn't exactly sure what to do on my final major project yet, but through my practise images before I have decided that I would like my images to be highly contrasted and in black and white. 

From a previous project we did on fear, I went down a mental health route with my project focusing on the fear of being unclean and OCD related things. I really enjoyed this, but I wasn't completely happy with the outcomes, I felt I should have done more even though it was two week project I think but time limited me. So because of how much I enjoyed that project, I have decided to go down a different route of mental health and because of the longer dead line for this project, I can explore different outcomes a lot more. 

I thought about exploring depression in my pictures, but decided that was pretty broad, and that I needed a definite direction with the message I was putting across with my images. After some research on the internet and having a look at lots of different images I found this photograph. 

From this photograph I instantly thought of not being happy with the life that you're being expected to lead. Like go to school, college, uni, job, buy a house, marry, have a family, etc.    I talked to a couple of my friends about it who themselves felt they'd been in this situation were completely depressed with college learning about something their parents wanted them to do, only to break out of it to go get a job that they're happy with, and are now happy with in life. People often feel like they're being forced to follow an expected life plan and if they don't completely stick to it they're seen as failures in life. I myself can relate to this, I didn't really know what I wanted to do in my life and went to sixth form because that's what was expected when you left my school, but hated it, I ended up dropping out which was seen to be a failure, but in the end turned out to be a blessing because I'm at college now doing something with my life that I actually enjoy. It's hard to be stuck in a routine of the same thing every day, sometime it makes us feel safe, but some people get bored of the same thing every day. Life should be exciting. This is what I want my photographs to portray. I want to photograph every day situations like getting ready for work, eating your breakfast, but then give them a sinister feel to them. I plan to do a photograph like the suit one that inspired me, but do it as a square photograph and have a white background. I then plan to do all my other photographs this way so that they all fit in as a set, black and white on a plain white backdrop. Also that photograph stops at the neck of the person, since people are normally identified by their eyes I have decided to do the photographs of the people up to their noses then cut off from there, so that the person could be anyone, there fore anyone can be in that photograph. I have also decided that all my photographs will be taken in a straight on fashion, always at the same straight on angle and height to who ever is the model. I also would like a mixture of both female and male people in the photographs. I decided to do a plain white backdrop for the photographs because I did think about shooting them in location, for example the suit one in the persons bedroom getting ready, but I thought a mixture of backgrounds wouldn't tie the photographs together enough. So I decided that they will all be with the same plain white back drop and every photograph will use the same lighting set up and amount of contrast. The white backdrop will also take them out of reality, which could also relate to be idea of depersonalisation  by the fact they're so involved in living someone else's life plan that they feel disconnected to themselves and their own reality. In my last project from college the outcome we had to produce was a magazine, I enjoyed having to work towards this, but don't feel I did as well as I could, so for this project I would like to product a book/magazine with my final pictures and learn some more about the different programs I have to use that I didn't know from before. The book will be square, I haven't decided yet how I will make the book. I have also decided that on each double page spread I would like a picture on one side, the on the other a white page with a black typed quote on it.


Proposal. 
As my planning and writing above was quite detailed I have decided here to write a clear  about what my project will include.

For this project I am going to produce ten photographs in a studio setting. I want them to convey the idea of wanting to escape the situation you're in. So far I am wanting my images to be high contrast black and white showing links to the style of Clay enos. I want my images to be uncluttered, straight on and clean. The end product of my project will be ten printed off images with a book to go along with it. 

As for quotes I have started searching the internet about quotes on conformity, but also thought that maybe I could also put in some statements from people I know who feel that they're in the situation that I described above. 

I started doing some sketches about possible photo shoots that I could do
Here's them scanned in

Then here are some book layout ideas.

What will I need?

- Camera

- Studio set up with at least light sources. 

- Photoshop
- Props for various picture set ups
- Models at least one boy and one girl for my set of photographs 

Before I decide anything else about my project, I'm going to do some research into photographers who work in a similar style to the black and white style that I am going to try and achieve with my project.

The first photographer I decided to look at is Clay Enos. Enos is well known for his portrait photography project called 'Street Studio' that he did in 2000. In this project Enos took to the streets of new york with a bright white backdrop and stropped people on the streets of new york and asked to take their portrait, he captured such a wide range of characters in his stunning and highly contrasted images, he expanded his project to cities all over the world. What attracts me to Enos's images are the lack of background to the picture, this feels like they're out of reality and could be anywhere you wanted them to be, also the highly contrasted black and white look to them, they look to have so much depth to the image.

For my next critical reference I decided to look at a photoset about suicide and depression as my first photographer I looked at was more looking into the style of photography that I wanted to go. The photographer that I decided to look at was one that I found on Flickr his user name is GKZZ when I searched for suicide photography alot of what came up was really really obvious suicide related photographs like people shooting them selves or images covered in self injury blood, but what I liked about this set of photographs were they weren't heavily graphic in their ways of telling the story about the persons life ending. This is how I'd like my set of images to be I don't want them to be heavily graphic but I'd still like them to tell a story about the want to escape the place that they're in. This set of photograph shows the lead up to their death, but for my photographs I have decided that in each one it will have either a method of the suicide or a cry for help included in it. Also these photographs are location based, where as I'd like my photographs to be studio based in the style that I discussed above. His photographs to me I think give off a strong sense of loneliness, I'd like to try and portray this across in my photographs.

Another strong refference to photographers in my work I'd like to make are to the black trinity.
The black trinity was three photographers who photographed the 60s. The three photographers were

 1. Duffy










2. Terence Donovan

3. David Bailey

The Black Trinity, or as the newspapers called them the terrible trio became more famous than the people they photographed. Their high contrast photographs included famous models, singers, actors and even royalty. Capturing the swinging 60's, they broke the rules of fashion photography, and produced some truly striking images. One of the photographs from the trio that I love is a photograph by Terance Donovan of Nancy Kwan with the Vidal Sasoon bob. In the hairdressing world, this was such an iconic image and became the Vidal Sassoon trademark image and well known haircut.  But what really draws me to it is there is absolutely no indication of where the photograph is meant to be set or anything, it's up to you to imagine where she's meant to be. With my work I want this to be the case. The three photographers helped create the most iconic 60's fashion photography.


Although I do want to use the black trinitys style of shooting for my images, they're a little too expressive with their posing in their fashion shots, so I decided to look at the work of Richard Avedons who's studio shots are much more straight on and in the style of model positioning that I'd like.
Here's a few examples of his work that are shot in a straight on way with dead pan expressions. 

I feel that this style of black and white photography, white background, and highly contrasted photograph fits the sort of shooting that I'd like to do perfectly. The dead pan straight on photographs of the models almost turn them emotionless, like you're meant to yourself decide how they're feeling, they're not giving it away. I want my photographs of my model in the pictures to have no expressions, and to be taken head on. But from looking at these photos I feel that the eyes still give a bit of emotion away, but in my photographs I'd like them to be cropped under the eyes as you see emotion in peoples eyes and I want them to feel emotionless. Also when identifying people the eyes are strongly used, by taking the eyes out of the picture I feel I am making the person more anonymous and like a blank canvas, but everything else about the actions of the photo strongly suggesting something quite sinister.  


Test Shoot.
Today with the ideas I've gathered so far I decided to do a test shoot. I wanted to try out three of the ideas for the shoot, which were the noose tie, the pill breakfast and the poison coffee. For my ideas so far I knew I wanted to definitely use a square cropping for my image, this was learnt from doing my first set of images at the start of the project of the worship items. I wasn't sure on my lighting completely yet, I know I want my model to be evenly lit and for the background to not have shadows. For this I will have to have a brighter light shining on the background to white it out, then have two even lights on the model. For the camera settings I used an ISO of 100, a shutter speed of 125 and f8 and the flash white balance. Here are the test shots to get the correct placement for the lights.

Below was the first lighting set up I used.
Here's a sketch of it.











As you can see, the left side of the picture isn't lit up enough like the right side is, idealy I could use another light on the other side. But I only have two other lights which I need to light up the model.








So I decided to take the light off the stand and lean it up the back of the model in the middle pointing up at the white background.
Like this












Here's another shot, here you can see that the light has evenly lit the backdrop how I wanted.

Here's two photos to see the light set up.

I next wanted to have a go at my first idea. The noose tie.
Here's the shot I was most happy with.

I tried to take the image straight on to the person and with the lights are either side of the person were on the same settings and height to make sure the model was evenly lit.
I then opened the image in photoshop, used the preset crop tool in 1x1 to crop the image evenly to a square, changed the image to black and white and adjusted the levels and also added contrast to the image. I had to dodge a bit of the white background in the top corners because they werent lit up enough compared to the bottom of the photograph but this was due to the fact the light was at the bottom, but I easily fixed it in photoshop.

The next idea I wanted to try out was the bowl, spoon and pill idea. For this idea I needed a table and a cloth. I moved the lights down to the sat down height of the model. Here's a photograph of the set up.

Here's my favourite shot. I tried again to take the photograph straight on.

I then opened the image in photoshop again and used the same editing process of crop, colours and contrast.
Here's what I came up with.

 I also couldn't decide if I was happy with the use of the table in the photograph so I tried another shot with the model stood up just holding the bowl, but in the end I preffered my first image with the table and cloth, but next time I will have to make sure it's ironed and straight and maybe a different colour. 

A thing about when I retake this image is that although I took the image straight on in a height sense I didn't completely get straight on in an angle sense as his face is slightly to the side, I'd make sure I change that next time. 
The last practise image that I want to do is of the poison coffee.
He's a picture of the set up I used.

Here's the photograph I was most happy with, I then used the same editing process as with the last two.

Here's the contact sheet for my photoshoot.

Although I was quite happy with how these turned out, I decided that on their own the images didn't really tell enough of the story or have enough impact, the sinister part of the image wasn't really standing out enough or just sort of blended in, such as the 'not to be taken' bottle. So I decided to photograph each part on it's own to maybe go in the set with the other photographs. After taking the pictures, I then decided that the pictures worked better as a diptych, which is two photographs that compliment each other as a pair. For me together the images stand out alot more, and work alot more as a set together.

After I put these pictures together I am alot happier with how my project is going, with the two photographs together I think it clearly shows my message, that you're wanting to escape from the cliche normal life you're currently stuck in. 

From this practise shoot I have learnt the set up of lighting that I want to use for my images, decided that I want to do diptychs for my final set of photographs. Also that on my reshoot of these existing ideas I need to make sure I have the model straight on in all of the photographs and take the photograph from the nose down, I did this in two except the noose one but I think it would have looked better with his nose in to match the other images. I'm happy with the bright white background but I also might explore other options maybe grey as the backdrop to put across a different feel to the images. I am really happy with how they went though, and I feel I'm getting closer to being able to put across my message of wanting to escape the normal life you're stuck in. Another minor thing I'd like to change is to make sure the table cloth is completely flat and straight and be a little neater and thorough-er with the dodge tool on my images as I can now see a few bits I've missed.  Since through this the one page picture then another with a quote on would have to be changed, I was thinking I could maybe still do the one page picture, then with the item photograph it could have the quote incorporated into it about longing for an escape of normality. 

Here I printed out my three practise images and wrote on the changes that I need to do for the final shoot.
















Although I do have my heart set on black and white for my images, I have decided to explore different levels of vibrancy and saturation in images to see if I can put any more of a feel to my images, like their lacking the colour in their life. 
Here I opened one of my images up in photoshop and toned down the amount of vibrancy in the photographs. Although I don't like the red table cloth in the image, I do like the skin tone of the model in the middle photograph. The model looks sort of ill and corpse like and it gives a creepy look to the image. I will have to experiment this look with my other photographs and have a go at saturation too and see how that looks on my photographs. 


















Since I have decided to do my images as a diptych, I am going to look up other photographers and artists who've used this method to create powerful images.
People put their work in to diptychs or even triptychs to create a story out of their work, images that may have not been as powerful on their own suddenly become stronger and tell a story when placed next to another piece of work.

Some diptychs tell an obvious story and connection between the two images, like this lovely photograph that I found on http://www.blondeshotcreativeblog.com/2011_02_01_archive.html.
I think this is a lovely example of a diptychs, the colours and backdrop to the photograph are exactly the same tying them in together really well and it also has a really lovely story to it showing the ladies bump, then her beautiful baby! although these images would have worked strong on their own, I do think that together they are a hundred times stronger adding a cute narrative to the images. 

Where as other diptychs want you to look and think about the connection between the two images, this is what I'd like mine to be like, I don't want the connection to be immediately obvious I'd like the audience to look at the first image, then look at the second, and suddenly realise the sinister side.  Below I found an example of one of these images where you have to look closely to find your own meaning to the photograph. Here's a diptych by a photographer called Tao Ruspoli the image is called Goat and a hole, I couldn't really find an image that you had to spend ages searching for the meaning to between the two photographs so I decided t pick one that was completely random. Normally the look and style of the photograph is the same, but I don't even think they look like they're taken to go together at all, the first photograph looks industrial to me, where as the second picture looks rural and rustic. Coming back to this photograph the only link I have managed to come up with between these two photographs is that goats love to chew material. I'd like my photos to take a second to work out, but no where near as long as it took for me to find a tiny link between these two pictures. 

Another thing about my final photographs I was considering was background colour. I was a bit worried that the white backgroup to it looked too high fashion like for the feeling of photography that I was going for, I didn't want my images to be thought about with images such as this that look like catalogue images. 

I decided to have a go at photoshopping one of my test shots with a grey background to see if I would like it any better. If I do like the outcome I will shoot my final images on a grey background. I'm not really sure if I'm happy with this or not, I agree it looks less fashion like, but I think the lack of a bright perfect white background takes a way the clinical medical feel to it and I also wanted the background to be stark white to take an context out of the image, meaning you have no idea where it's meant to be set or who they are. I'm glad I tried this out, but I think with my final photographs I am going to stick with a bright white background.

Since I had only been able to come up with 3 ideas so far for my final photographs I needed two more, to fit the brief of ten photographs in my 5 diptychs. I went back to my original mind mapping to see what other two suicide ideas I could take and turn into my two other final photographs. The two ideas I decided that I wanted to work on was the suicide note and the knife. Here are my sketches trying to work out a final idea. 

In the end I have decided to have the knife laid out on the table with other objects such as tooth paste and a brush so it seems like the knife is part of their daily routine. Then for my other photograph I have decided to do the model sat at a desk with a pile of books and papers at their side then them writing the note. 

FINAL SHOOT.

Today was my final shoot. 
I had my improvment sheet at the ready from my last shoot which I followed really closely to make sure I was 100% happy with this final set of photographs. 
I set up my lighting the same as I had before, but I got my mum to hold up a reflector onto the shirt of my model to get rid of the harsh shadows on the front of his shirt that I had in my practise set of photographs.
Here's my contact sheet for all the photographs I took.

For the editing of my photographs I first opened the RAW files up into photoshop and cropped the images with the preset square.  I then used the dodge tool to whiten out the backdrop then for the remaining marks on the background I selected the area and whited it out using a soft brush. I edited out the snake bite marks on the models lip using the spot healing tool then turned the image black and white and moved up and down the levels till I was happy with the look of the photograph, I then slightly upped the contrast of the image.  to put the images together I used picasa collage maker. Here's my final set of images.

For my graphic outcome, like I said earlier, I have decided to create a booklet. I thought about producing the booklet myself, but decided that designing it online and getting it professionally made would probably look better in the end.
Under each of the photographs I decided that I wanted a quote. I spent ages trying to find some quotes about not agreeing with conformity with society, but it was really really hard to do, and decided that getting personal stories wouldn't be as effective as short but powerful quotes, so I decided to try and look for quotes about suicide that related to the images.

Here are the ones that I have found for the booklet. 

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” 
― Albert Camus

“I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.” 
― David Levithan, Will Grayson, Will Grayson

“We cannot tear out a single page of our life, but we can throw the whole book in the fire.” 
― George Sand, Mauprat

“I should have known better than to rely on pills. You can't buy unconsciousness quite so cheaply.” 
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.” 
― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

To get them to fit onto the pages of my photobook I had to make my second image smaller on my page. Here's a screen shot of the images on my book in photobox.

For the inside page I decided to write

A photographic representation about the tragic strong urge to escape the normality of society.

I also decided that I didn't want my booklet to have a title I played around with the idea of escape or similar things, but in the end wanted it to be untitled and for the front cover just to be one of the photographs and for that to speak as the title of the book. 

For the layout of my exhibition I have decided to have my images printed A5
(upload photograph) and have them set out linked together all in one line, then have my book on a table in the middle of it all and nothing else, keep it really simple and clean like my images. I played with the idea of having the images one on top of another running up the wall, but I think in a long line they look like negatives or a contact sheet, and walking along them down a wall makes them easier to take in one by one instead of being plastered with them in one chunk. I also decided that there didn't need to me much order to the photographs but the 'help me' needed to be the first one, but then the rest were all the different methods and they could follow on after. For the ideas of contact sheets I had a look at the duffy contact sheet for the David Bowie cover of the Aladdin Sane Album.

 I feel the layout of contact sheets almost reminds me of mug shots, because one continuous shot is taken after another and it's as if not one photograph can hide, they're all there. I wanted my exhibition to have this feel, that it was really honest, and it wasn't hiding anything, just showing raw emotions.

Then here is a sketch of what I'd like my exhibition to look like.

Here's a photograph of my images before they've been put up in the exhibition.

For the presentation of the images they were put into large white frames, that would be Velcrowed up to existing picture frames on the exhibition wall.

FINISHED EXHIBITION :D (my book was put on the wall next to the final image) 

Evaluation. 

From being quite worried at the start where I'd take my idea of the fear of conformity and wanting to escape it. With my first set of test shots, I feel I managed to show a strong link to my influences to the black trinity with their square prints on a bright white backdrop, but also the dead pan style of Avedons prints. I am happy with my choice to remove the eyes out of the photograph, I feel this took away the personal side to the images, like they could be anyone. Although I was happy with the test shots initially, they felt like there was something missing, I'm really glad I looked into the use of diptchys in photography, I feel like they made my work alot stronger and have alot more meaning to it. I made a long list of improvements that I needed to make to my final images, which I've never really if I'm honest done before, they've always been in my head. With this project I printed out my images and sketched over them what I needed to change, then shooting my final photographs this was a massive help as I kept it close to hand to keep checking that I'd mixed the mistake I made last time, I'll be definitely doing this in the future. Also another thing that I have learnt that I'd definitely do with projects again is for the first few weeks of the project during idea generating times I'd carry round my note book and scribble down sketches of ideas that came into my head, even though they're not very neat, it helped me generate ideas alot quicker than trying to think of everything all at once. Although I wasn't sure if I should go down such a dark route for a project, I'm glad I did, working with such an emotive subject I think is such an influence and really pushes me towards working to it. In the end I decided that it wasn't as 'dark' as I realised, sadly alot of people come to terms with loosing friends to suicide or experience thoughts, or depression, and there's such a stigma towards it to keep quiet, but this wasn't what I wanted to do, I wanted to show raw emotions in my photographs in quite a strong message and I think I'm happy that I achieved this. The thing I really happy with was the layout of my exhibition like I talked about before I think it showed no hiding of the model,  they were showing their true wishes etc not hiding behind a smile, I think this was achieved well with my contact sheet layout, like I said earlier they're like mugshots and with a continuous shot, leave nothing to hide. If I could redo my project again I think I would have liked to explore the idea even more, maybe experimenting with even more sets of photographs into the methods and ideas behind the suicidal nature. Over all I am really happy with how this project went, through lots of careful light set ups and editing the images in photoshop I feel I managed to produce a set of clean and tidy images that all tie in together perfectly due to their replicated methods in each shot. 

Katie Kitchen

Conform, Sleep, (Repeat?)  

Foundation Degree at Leeds City College

 Conform, Sleep, (Repeat?) represents an individual’s struggle with a ‘normal’ life; filled with repetition and the expectation to conform. The project was influenced by the Black Trinity.