Monthly Archives: April 2017

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Development, Experimentation

Nocturnal HDR photoshoot

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Similar to the previous shoot, I used a tripod and took a selection of photographs to create HDR photographs. For these night photographs I needed to take extra care when taking photographs as I needed to take photographs with a longer exposure, some as long as 8 seconds long to fully capture as much light as possible. Similar to the previous photographs I kept all of these at the same 5×7 ratio. Unlike much of Todd Hido’s work, all of these photos are in landscape as I found worked better with the HDR and the composition. Hido often works with portraits to creates sense of isolation and keep a single house in the frame, but I think working in landscape creates a more cinematic effect. Similar to Hido’s work I only used the light that was available.

In the first one above there was a variety of different lighting, the largest being from the two windows to the left. I wanted to capture the green tones from the window and the green walls which evoked a fairly spooky undertone. In the second, I wanted to retake a photograph I had taken before, which was taken in overcast daylight, making the image flat and mundane, the cool, low lighting contrasted to the warm light in the foreground made added a compelling effect.

These two photographs were the most difficult to take with many of the photos being out of place, meaning the HDR could not work fully, this being said I am still really happy with the results. I liked the composition of the first with how depth was created with the light from the glass door in the foreground, this being the brightest part of the photograph made it the first thing the viewer will notice, secondly the light from the garage added depth in the mid ground and lastly the natural light created a silhouette of the trees in the background. In the second I also like the two different light sources. The contrast of colour such as the yellow with the blue adds and interesting effect.

The two photographs above are the most interesting from the selection as well are the best at evoking a Todd Hido style of narrative. Considering composition, the high angle enables only the house and sky to be in the frame, creating an isolated, dramatic effect. Using HDR gave the first image a really interesting texture on the wall. On both photographs, the warm light contrasted the cool blue tone from the sky. The most intriguing part about these images is the light coming from the windows. In the first, the TV light created a low, purple light which reminded me of cinematic, 70’s style light, this also evoked a sense of mystery. Again with the second image, I like how there is only one window light on, which adds contrast and mystery.

Considering the exam theme and my starting point, the natural aspect comes from the low lighting and how it changes the whole ambiance of the image and how this affects the narrative and how the viewer feels towards the photograph. This is then added with the man-made structures and street lights, creating a harsher more dynamic effect within the environment. The last four photographs were a direct response to Todd Hido’s work with the subject matter as well as use of available lighting.

Night photography using HDR is something I plan on exploring more thoroughly in my work as well as using the light available within a scene rather then adding my own light.

Planning

Nocturnal HDR photoshoot specification/planning

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After the previous successful shoot I wanted to explore the same area and challenge myself to make more HDR images using dynamic and dark lighting, similar to that of Bill Henson’s dark nocturnal landscapes. I decided to take photographs from a time beyond dusk where there was very low natural lighting and use man made lighting that was available in the scene to add intensity and narrative. After the previous shoot I noticed there were a lot of different light sources such as motion censored lights as well as lights from windows. Similar to the previous shoot I plan on using HDR techniques and multiple exposures to emphasize areas that lacked light. I plan on referencing Todd Hido’s work with his use of lights from windows and using the composition to isolate houses in the frame. I also plan on creating edits using the images similar to Hamish Fulton by adding text and filters over the image in Photoshop.

Exploring, Inspiration

Theme 1: Water

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Water

Based on my first shoot I have identified a theme that I am considering pursuing further. Water. Water is something that is an integral part of all environments, civisialiations are based around water, in the desert the only places that permanent communities are set up are are near to water. 40% of humanity live near a coast line [1] and throughout the rest of the population they almost all live near to some source of water. Human beings need water to be able to survive and so it is an essential piece of our environment. Living on a small island as I do my life is also more connected to the water than most people would be, I have spent my whole life around the sea, I feel lost if I am too far away from the coast. The world and places that I have visited seem incredibly far away and distant from other civilization unless they are near to the coast. It is incredibly difficult to explain but I feel isolated and alone if I am a distance from the coast, even if there are people all around me I feel like the community (village, town, ect…) are isolated and alone, unless the are near to the sea. There is a great degree of comfort that I gain from being near to the sea, this is probably linked to my family history, my Grandfather on my mother’s side was a fisherman and his father before him, all the way back for a long time. My mother also had these close links to the sea and drove me to this with a lot of my childhood being spent at the beach and out on the water.

There are many photographers that have used water as a part of their work. Although usually not the main feature there are some like Tanja Deman whose work has the water as a highly integral part of it. Her project titled “Saltwater” looks at the underwater environment is a kind of activism in response to the threat of oil companies wanting to start drilling in this coastal area. This would have been terrible for the environment due to possible oil spills and other contamination from the general process of creating these rigs and housing the crews. Her works usually have some focus on structures; buildings and natural structures and how humans interact with them. A particular connection is felt between her and the sea, in an interview with Süeddeutsche Magazine Deman talks about how closely connected she is with the water, she says that

“the sea has become part of my personality”

and talks about how the people who have lived in the same place as her for over 1700 years have their whole lives based around the sea; fishing and tourism being the main industries in the area make the connection between these people and the sea one of the most powerful connections. This is something that I was trying to go for with the first shoot that I did but it did not properly work out that way, it was difficult to show that kind of raw connection between people and the sea without taking images over a much longer time frame. This kind of time frame is not available to me for this project so I’m going to have to look at another way to explore the water.

Instead I’m going to look at trying some more abstract methods and concepts for representing water as an environment. Looking into the use of colour under the water would be a good way to study this.

  1. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/es/papers/Coastal_Zone_Pop_Method.pdf
Analysis, Inspiration, Research

Environment – Travel Photography History

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Travel Photography

I wanted to investigate Travel Photography in depth, researching its foundations and history. Doing this will provide me with an insight into the original purpose of the genre and the reason and artists behind its creation. Travel photography is a genre of photography that may involve the documentation of an area’s landscape, people, cultures, customs and history. The Photographic Society of America defines a travel photo as an image that expresses the feeling of a time and place, portrays a land, its people, or a culture in its natural state, and has no geographical limitations. As travel has become more accessible, the genre is opening up more to amateurs and professionals alike. As a result, this category of Photography is much more crowded in Modern art society. Nevertheless The appeal of photography was as obvious to travellers in the 19th century as it is today. Photography made its earliest steps as a medium when in 1839 Louis Jacques Daguerre introduced a photographic process called the Daguerrotype. The first owners photographed their local area within Paris like the Notre Dame Cathedral, the river Seine and le Pont Neuf. However using a Daguerrotupe was a complicated process that required a lot of equipments and chemicals such as amalgam or alloy, of mercury and silver. It would be very difficult to transport the camera and equipment around long distances and the travelling photographer had to carry with him a portable darkroom including enough chemical to have a mini laboratory. As a result, Travel Photography was very rare at the time. 

A portable darkroom in 19th century Ireland.

In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process which became a standard photographic process until 1880. This new process reduced the exposure time to only 2 second , compared to the daguerrotype and colotype. However this did not help many travel photographers in their task as the equipment was still incredibly difficult to transport. In the 1850s the standard photographer outfit was the large sized camera, tripod, glass plates, plate holders, a tent like portable darkroom,chemicals, tanks, and water containers.Photographers carted their equipment around the world. In the mid 1800s, pictures taken for scientific purposes were of great interest to people in general and with the help of the collodion process reproduction of photographs became convenient. With the invention of the printing press, photography became commercialized as the demand due to tourism increased. However, this new era of photography was not accepted well by the purists who debated that commercialization had spoiled the craft. By the end of the 19th century tourists could take their own pictures. In 1888, George Eastman, the founder of Kodak invented a camera using a roll of film.he camera came loaded with a 100 exposure film and a memorandum book that had to be filled in to keep count of the photos. When the film was finished the camera was posted back to the factory. The camera was written with the films and loaded with a fresh film. In the first year Eastman sold 13000 cameras. Kodak had made photography accessible by millions of people across the world.  Photography had become a mass medium and tourists were traveling with small and easy to use camera.

Du Camp and Flaubert

Flaubert in Egypt is a book composed of excerpts from the journals of two young Frenchmen, Gustave Flaubert and his rich Parisian friend Maxime Du Camp. Flaubert, in 1849, had dropped out of college and was at loose ends. Du Camp suggested that they go and photograph the monuments of the “Orient.” Flaubert jumped at the opportunity, and that autumn the two hopped aboard a ship bound for Alexandria, Egypt. Travel as we know it did not exist in the early 19th century. Only the very rich, mostly aristocrats, could afford the time or money for a visit round Europe. Most people had no idea of what the world looked like because, before photography, travel books featured only line drawings at best.Du Camp had studied photography, and for the trip took along his wooden Calotype camera, a tripod and jugs of chemicals. Invented by Henry Fox Talbot, Calotype photography was never very popular because Talbot strictly licensed his patented process. The fees he charged made it less attractive than the free public domain Daguerre process. But Du Camp smartly realized the advantage of the Calotype for travel. His camera was relatively small and easy to carry around. It used ordinary, readily available, high-quality writing paper as the media for its negatives. The writing paper itself could be partially sensitized in a hotel room or even a tent, and once dried, be conveniently stored and carried around until needed. The big drawback was that while the Daguerreotype is incredibly detailed, a Calotype print is much softer because the print is made from a paper negative. However, by shooting paper negatives, Du Camp could make any number of contact prints from them upon his return to Paris. By comparison, the Daguerreotype was a singular photograph from which no copies could be made. Du Camp was planning ahead to produce multiple copies of his travel albums.

Du Camp and Flaubert traveled through North Africa, Egypt and the Middle East, taking photos and keeping detailed diaries. It was a landscape as dangerous and chaotic as it is today. They had to fight off bandits and the occasional anti-government rebels who fought from camelback. Naturally enough, their exploits also involved dangerous liaisons with native women, belly dancers and prostitutes, and the consumption of quantities of alcohol and exotic drugs. Despite these distractions, the men stayed focused on their mission, producing hundreds of photographs that captured, for the first time, some of the great manmade wonders of the ancient world such as the pyramids, the statues at Aswan, the Sphinx and more.

Arriving at a site, the work of making photographs would begin. Flaubert apparently would do his best to avoid actual work, letting the porters put up the darkroom tent, while Du Camp would scout out locations. After placing the camera on a wooden tripod, Du Camp would duck under a black drape so he could frame and focus his image on the groundglass.Then he would go into his mostly light-tight darkroom tent and brush the sensitized side of the writing paper with a solution of gallo nitrate of silver — a mixture of silver nitrate, acetic acid and gallic acid. This was an accelerator that increased the paper’s sensitivity to light. After blotting the paper dry and placing it in a light tight holder, he would go back and load it into his camera. Now came the trickiest part of 19th century photography. Exposure was learned strictly by trial and error. Once he found the right exposure time, Du Camp would remove the holder’s light slide and take the lens cap off. Using his pocket watch, he would time the exposure and then replace the cap. Exposure complete, he would return to the darkroom tent to develop the negative. This required brushing the paper with gallo nitrate again while gently warming it over a hot pot. This produced a visible silver image that was fixed with hypo, the same hyposulphite of soda modern film development uses. This dissolved the unexposed silver iodide, which was then washed away, leaving a pure silver image on the paper.

The prints were mounted on heavy paper, and then bound in albums that Du Camp sold in 1852 under the title “Egypte, Nubie, Palestine, Syrie.”This was arguably the world’s first travel photography book and the images amazed the public. It made Du Camp famous almost overnight. Hearing and researching this story has been really insightful and enlightening in my investigation on travel photography. It makes you realise how much photography has developed and how lucky we are today. Today’s snapshooters have no idea how hard it once was to photograph the world, something they can do now so easily with just the press of a button.

Uncategorized

Environment – Shoot Two

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For my second shoot, I photograph my girlfriend, Lizzy. Within this shoot I attempt to capture the relationship we share and my perception of her. I see Lizzy as both very innocent and sensitive, sometimes shy, but can be herself around me.

This can no be entirely represented through the lens of a camera, as people often become embarrassed, or even overact. Despite this, I feel that within this shoot I have captured some sense of both emotion, in terms of feeling comfortable and uncomfortable. We see photographs where her face remains unseen and others where this is not the case. I think this reflects her personality greatly, as often in certain situations she will become reserved, but around me she is able to open up in such a way that is expressive and emotive.

Ultimately in terms of my environment, as well as hers, I am trying to show that wherever we are together, the two of us will feel comfortable in our surroundings.

Inspiration, Planning

Environment – Specification

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When assigned with the theme of environment, I wanted to try and capture the lifestyles and settings of me and my friends. Nevertheless, this concept as an individual project is quite generic and predictable and I feel as if more imagination is required in order to make my work unique. When provided with the brief of ‘environment’ one of the first instincts is going to be the multiple environments of a social group. I don’t want to jump straight to this idea, as the process will be followed by a plethora of other students. My thinking process at this stage was conceptualizing ways in which that I could incorporate some kind of personal element or unique characteristic into this generic idea. I came up with the idea of utilizing disposable cameras. Everywhere I go, I take a disposable camera with me.  I really enjoy taking photographs with disposables and love the ‘old-school’ vintage aesthetic that they bring. I think that I love them so much due to the subconscious nostalgia they bring. When I was a child and technology was not quite as advanced, my family and I would always use disposable cameras. We would take them on holidays and vacations as they were cheap, easy to use and did the job. If I look through my house, I will find thousands of disposable photographs documenting my childhood  right from the day I was born. I love the physicality of them and how they will always be there, regardless of the advancing digital technology. As a result, I actually prefer using my disposable as oppose to the camera on my phone or canon. I came up with the idea of taking a photograph of my environment with a disposable camera before passing it on to a friend and instructing him or her to do the same. This process would be repeated until more than 10 people have produced images of their personal settings and environments. I like the process of this project, as it involves the participation of a small community and the documentation of multiple environments. It provides the viewer with a quick, sneaky insight into the life of multiple characters. This project takes advantage of the portable, compact and light nature of a disposable camera demonstrating how we can easily transfer images and memories between one another. When providing my friends with the camera, I will simply instruct them to take 3 photographs. This is the only guidance I will provide them. Doing this will ensure that they are not conscious of the brief and fabricating photographs that are not representational of their lifestyle. I want the photographers to produce work whilst unaware of its purpose.

A mood board of Travel Photography which demonstrates the kind of work I wish to be producing for this project.

My second idea also incorporates the use of a disposable camera but for a different purpose. For this project I would focus on tourism and travelling. In early April, I am travelling on a cruise around the Mediterranean, visiting dozens of cities around Europe. This includes locations such as Rome, Florence, Pisa, Athens, Pompeii, Monaco, Marseilles and Barcelona. Typically, disposable cameras were perfect for tourists, allowing them to carry small, lightweight cameras to capture their adventures that were inexpensive and temporary. They prevented the hassle of packing a chunky camera that could be easily damaged, also ideal for families and travelers in the late 20th century who could not afford professional cameras. Nevertheless, disposables have gone out of fashion, rarely used due to the introduction of smart phones and their ability to take great photos whilst maintaining the compact lightweight physicality shared by disposables. Although disposables are still sold in stores, their popularity is a shadow of its former self. I would use a disposable to capture the culture and individual atmospheres of each city, looking at landmarks, historical sites and famous locations.  This is known as Travel Photography. Travel photography is a genre of  photography that may involve the documentation of an area’s landscape, people, cultures, customs and history. The Photographic Society of America defines a travel photo as an image that expresses the feeling of a time and place, portrays a land, its people, or a culture in its natural state, and has no geographical limitations. Many travel photographers specialise in a particular aspect of photography such as travel portraits, landscape or documentary photography as well as shooting all aspects of travel. Alternatively, this can idea can be done without a disposable camera and then I can produce a larger quantity of work.

Analysis, Presentation, Recording

Documentary: Plastic Pollution – Results

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Since deciding to look at plastic pollution from the viewpoint of agricultural plastic waste, or ‘plasticulture’, I was ready to complete my first documentary shoot for my environmental awareness project. Because of where I live, my previous travels around this side of the island, and the immense size of the potato farming industry in Jersey, these scenes where not at all hard to find. To complete this shoot I simply walked around a few fields that I have noticed displaying this agricultural technique. As well as the plastic covered fields, I was also looking for examples of used and discarded plastic that will contribute massively to the growing problem of plastic pollution. The aim of this shoot is to represent the darker side of Jersey’s most famous product as well as a pollution issue that is directly related to where we live. By using straight photography I can give more context for my symbolic shoots where I try to show the problem of plastic filling our surroundings, the effect it has on animals / marine life, and our connections to this issue. As this is my first documentary shoot for this project I wanted to make sure not to manipulate any of my scenes, making sure to capture the subject exactly how I found it. Below is a select few unedited outcomes, taken from many different locations around the northern side of the island…When choosing my final outcomes below I found that it was very hard to narrow them down. This is because of the many different scenes and subjects shown above that, for me, are all important for documenting this massive pollution issue in Jersey. Therefore I have ended up with my eight final edited outcomes below that I will choose from when putting together my final piece. When editing these outcomes I decided to include a mixture of colour / black and white outcomes to produce a vibrant and dramatic variety. This kind of plastic was really interesting to capture as the texture and light contrast was easily emphasised in post production. Below are my final eight results which I will choose from when creating my final piece…

The first two images above are vibrant and abstract pieces documenting this issue from up-close. The first photograph on the left shows the contrast between the green leafs from a potato plant and the bright shine of the plastic used to grow it. I love the simple composition of this piece as, the fact the plastic takes up the majority of the scene, represents just how much is needed to grow these important plants. The meaning behind this photograph is to give a close up view of this type of plastic paired with the product it helps create. Overall I really like the dark tone and abstract composition of this image as well as the obvious symbolism (created by the vibrant leaves hovering over the bleak plastic) showing my previous idea of ‘man vs nature’. The photograph on the right however has a much more simple point. Here I have captured three sheets of plastic with the thin dirt lines running in-between. By depicting this in such a simple yet intriguing way I was aiming to give a quick insight into where this plastic waste is coming from and how it is used. Although this is a very simple image, without context, this mixture of dark and shimmering light could be seen as very abstract. I love the different textures, reflections and depths that can be seen on these ugly sheets of plastic, emphasised during post production in Lightroom.

The two final outcomes on the top row of the contact sheet above depict the material, after is has been used, but before it is thrown away. The photograph on the left is a portrait shot of the plastic, bunched up, and shoved to the side of a potato field. I like this image for emphasising my point because it is clear that the plastic has been used for a short while then pushed aside before being binned. I love the vibrant and natural colours of this image contrasting the white plastic as well as its interesting composition. The photograph on the right is a very similar piece depicting the plastic bunched up between two rows of potato plants. I like the composition of this as there is a really good sense of perspective to show just how big of a problem plasticulture is. The meaning of this documentary image is obviously to depict the nature of this topic as well as being a good symbol for excess plastic waste. Overall I love the dark tone of this image along with its interesting depth of field. The fact I have made it black and white also increases the dramatic shadows in the plants and highlights the subject matter.

The first photograph depicted above on the left is a close up abstract shot of the plastic sheeting all tied together, ready for disposal. To create this abstract look I have shown the most textured spot that the plastic was tied around itself, in a simple square composition. The meaning behind this image is quite strong as this is the perfect depiction of this type of large-scale plastic going to waste. To make this subject matter more interesting in post production I changed it to black and white and increased things like the clarity, contrast, shadows and highlights. Overall I think this is a very successful photograph that would pair nicely with my presentations of plastic waste previously done in the studio. The next image on the right shows this same waste plastic but with its composition and surroundings as well. I was very happy to find this scene as it perfectly represents what I am trying to say about plasticulture. The white plains of plastic in the background emphasis the dramatic impact of the subject matter and states where it has come from. In the context of documentary photography I think this photograph works very well for portraying my meaning of this subject as well as not being staged at all.

Lastly are two of my favourite images from this documentary shoot. I like how these images go together as the second scene, shown in the image on the right, was found right behind the tree line of the first scene. The photograph on the left depicts the texture of the plastic, being caught in the wind, with trees and the sea in the background. The meaning behind this image is to give a clear idea of how this plastic is used and just how much is plastered over Jersey fields every year. The trees and the sea as the background, along with this images vibrant colours, give the viewer a false sense of beauty for this scene. This is why it is important that it is paired with the image on the left, depicting exactly why this scene is corrupt. This photograph depicts an area in the cliff face I found when walking on the beach directly behind the previously mentioned field. Here you can see the horrible consequences of farming industries using plasticulture, as plastic pours out from under the shrubbery, partially ripped away by the sea. The meaning of this image is to show that our actions have horrible environmental consequences as well as that this material will never just disappear.

Planning, Research

Documentary: Plastic Pollution – Planning

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After fully exploring representing the problem of plastic pollution, using symbolic studio techniques, I next wanted to move on to showing this issue in a documentary style. As I mentioned in my plastic studio planning, I am aiming explore this topic from a photo-journalistic point of view, showing plastics effect on our island. Because plastic is used for near enough everything these days I have chosen to pin point my work to one specific plastic pollution type. Below I have made a list and contact sheet depicting a number of plastic pollution topics I could look into for my next shoot…When thinking about our island and the ways in which I could capture all of these subjects that I have listed above, one topic for me really stood out. Because I will be looking at a mixture of pollution materials when documenting things such as beaches and landfills later in my project. Subjects like plastic packaging, grocery bags, fishing plastic and micro-plastics are all things I can show together where they are found. So in conclusion I will be concentrating on agricultural plastic waste because it is so common to see on our islands as well as being a massive contributor to global plastic waste.

The reason ‘plasticulture’ is so prominent in Jersey is because of our famous Jersey Royal potatoes. Our export of this crop accounts for around 70% of agricultural turnover, 99% of which is shipped to the United Kingdom. The term plasticulture refers to the practice of using plastic materials in agricultural applications. Unfortunately this method is used for Jersey’s potatoes to produce earlier harvesting, improved quality and larger marketable yields. Polyethylene is the plastic film used by the majority of growers because of its affordability, flexibility and easy manufacturing. I think this topic is a fantastic example of plastic pollution on our island because of huge amount of this material spread over large areas (representing our problem with over using this material in every sense). Polyethylene is the most common plastic, we produce around 80 million tonnes per year, its primary use is in packaging (plastic bags, plastic films, containers including bottles, etc.). Agricultural films are one of the largest contributors to the billions of pounds of plastics that are discarded by farms across the globe each year.

To record this problem, using straight photography techniques, I will have to travel around the rural areas of Jersey looking for examples of ‘plasticulture’ and the waste it leaves behind. To do this I will begin by simply walking around the fields in St Martin and Gorey, as I have already spotted quite a few examples in my day-to-day travels. All I will need to complete this shoot is my camera and natural light from the sun, it will be interesting to see how much of this plastic waste I can find (supporting my point of this being a massive plastic pollution issue). My goal for this shoot is to dive into documentary photography and explore the truth about my chosen topic in-depth without manipulation. When researching this farming technique for images to inspire me, I was very surprised to find that there where hardly any examples of using plastic the way Jersey farmers do. The images below show narrow lines of plastic spread out across fields whereas, from what I have seen on the island so far, we truly cover our fields from top to bottom in this lightweight plastic film. 

Evaluation, Presentation, Recording

Symbolism: Plastic Pollution – Shoot 2

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For my second shoot looking at symbolism and plastic waste in the studio, I used a volunteer model and captured a mixture of head and half-body portraits. These photographs below are the result of, planning my ‘studio’, lighting, model, material and symbolic message, as well as, inspiration from fashion photographer Matthew Lyn. From researching Lyn’s series ‘Trapped and Wrapped’ I decided to experiment with his beautiful themes of light and shadow as well as trying to show examples of movement and form.

Although I was planning to take full body portraits, my final results below show only half body compositions. This is because I felt this cropping  made the plastic material look better arranged whilst wrapped around her body. The symbolism I am hoping to show with the idea of using plastic waste is the problem of plastic being used for everything (filling our surroundings), the effect it has on animals and marine life, as well as our connections to this issue. To carry out this shoot I created a makeshift studio in my bedroom by hanging a white sheet up on the wall and using a large desk lamp for artificial lighting. Like I have done in my last shoot I took each shot using a very dark exposure so that I could capture all images in focus and with a high contrast finish. As I have already experimented with different plastic waste materials in the studio in my last post, for this one I just chose to use my favourite prop, cellophane. To properly get across the symbolism of this shoot I tried experimenting with the ideas of distortion, being trapped, and suffocation. I think the outcomes of this shoot will go nicely with the self portraits from the previous attempt at this topic. When selecting my finals, I was very picky as I have already got a few successful images depicting the same subject matter. Below are a select few of the original images from this home-studio shoot presented as a contact sheet…

The first image displayed full and in colour above is a side portrait, half boy shot, depicting the model carefully drapped in a plastic material. To create this look I used an interesting arrangement of cellophane and painted small purple smudges on my model for a bit of extra detail. The meaning behind this photograph is similar to one I explored in my last self portraiture shoot. The head facing away and closed eyes covered by plastic represents our failure to see what is literally right in front of our eyes. I like this clear metaphor I have created with the material along with the stern expression and strong jaw line of my model. The artificial lighting in this picture, as well as my alterations made in post production, has created some very interesting shadows and highlights. I really like the spot light effect I have added to all three of my outcomes as, for me, it symbolises how I am trying to ‘shine light’ on this grim subject. Overall I have chosen this image as my best result from this shoot because of its interesting composition, lighting and soft colour tones.

The next two black and white finals shown above are some of my other successful outcomes from this shoot, depicting the same material, but different poses and symbolic messages. The first photograph on the left shows the model standing straight, looking down at what she is wrapped in, with a simple composition. The message I was trying to get across with this pose was ‘having a look at what man-kind has created’. I like the modest look this composition has along with the dark contrast of the material and her hands. The plastic covering the models eyes also gives the image an abstract and almost fashion photography look. Lastly the image on the right shows the model gripping the plastic that is wrapped tightly around her neck. This obvious symbolism is to show my message through ideas of being trapped and suffocation, ultimately telling the story of the effect it has on animals and marine life. I chose this simple composition because it resembles a previously analysed portrait taken by my inspiration Matthew Lyn.