Shrinking Violet stemmed from a short film that she created as part of her project about her mother. She made a film based around an interview that she did with her mum and made it up of archival images as well as documenting her everyday life. Part of the interview sparked her interest when her mother said ‘I’m not one of those shrinking violets in the work place’. This caught her attention as her role as simply doing what is expected of her, something that she want to challenge through her photographic work. This brought on the idea for creating a parody shoot as a dress as a persona, similar to her mum, and pose around the house mimicking the role of her mum portray. Shannon wanted this photo book to embody the traditional role of women our society perceives and for spectators to view the images she created to recognize themselves, their mothers, their sisters and their wives. Gender defines everyone and, at times, can be limiting. It makes us feel that we need to belong and conform to the expectations placed on us at birth solely on whether we were born male or female.

I have used the studio to create a selection of imagery using a camera and objects to do with occupation and liberation. For this photoshoot I have used two different lights on the objects. One of these lights was on and I used a diffusing light so that the objects shadow created from the light was minimized while keeping the object looking as though the light was still coming mostly from one side.Below are a selection of the best images I have taken using this method.

Throughout this personal study, I intend to explore the idea of hiding in plain and my sense of belonging in the environments around me. Through previous experiments last year exploring portraiture I covered the topic of concealment and following an unwanted path, so I wish to recycle these images due to their relevance in narrating my current story. These images are revealing a completely different side that’s never reflected in a normal every day setting. I will also continue this theme and expand on how I think and express myself now compared to how I historically thought.

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What I learnt most from the occupation vs liberation project is that occupation doesn’t have to be physical, such as the occupation of Jersey in WWII. There are many other forms, be that mental, subconscious or many others. This opens up a wide possibility of subjects; ranging from far-fetched government conspiracy theories, to technology and how we use it more everyday.

I was inspired most by high contrast techniques in this project. I really enjoyed the visual aspect of making the subject of each photo ‘pop’ and stand out from the background.

• Mind-map + mood board on how I interpret occupation vs liberation now.

From my personal study based on the occupation in Jersey entitled OCCUPATION VS LIBERATION I developed a large amount of skills and furthered my knowledge and understanding of taking images, reflecting and responding to other inspirational artists.

Originally we started this overall project by exploring different types of landscapes using wider lenses which allowed more details of the picture. To help increase our skills we went on a trip to visit the Jersey bunkers in St Ouen’s to look out across to see where the Germans would have viewed France, as well as the stunning views of across the island. This gave us the opportunity to fine tune and grasp the proper understanding of how to take landscapes images to our best abilities. Furthermore when we visited the bunkers we were able to explore inside them, this helped to improve our camera skills in darker areas, for example adjusting the IOS to a lower level allowing as much light that can be produced in such a dark room leading to much better quality images, and would ensure that the images wouldn’t be underexposed. This skill also was practiced when we visited the war tunnels later on in the year which closely linked with our OBJECTS title project. By photographing in the war tunnels it helped us focus on different types to lighting as throughout the tunnel there are inconsistent lighting in each room and we had to adjust our camera to enable us to produce and focus on interesting objects that would help us develop our project. As well as this factor for photographing objects we also developed our ideas in the studio, this taught us about the different types of lights and backgrounds used. For example an infinity wall which means a continuous background behind an object which I believe to create more dramatic experience. In addition we we concentrated on the lights used- continuous lights, camera settings; manual mode, aperture of F/16 and a shutter speed of 0.5 seconds to 0.8 seconds depending on the reflection on each object. To continue this led us to learn about developing initial ideas, by using white backgrounds to start with and developing on to colour ideas, to me this was a beneficial task as it taught be the ideas of exploring and developing initial thoughts into something more interesting. This meant as well as the actual photography it taught me how to develop my thoughts and ideas properly on to the blog by portraying them through mood boards and descriptions.

After visiting the bunkers, we were taught to use the computer software called Indesign which enabled us to produce and develop our own zines. For this particular production it meant using the following techniques which later proved beneficial. It taught me how to refine hundreds of images to just a select few, which meant I had to grasp the idea of quality not quantity, additionally I taught me an essential lesson of story telling through photographs, this was something that initially I found extremely had as at first i was just placing random images in a random order without careful consideration. eventually i learnt to refine my images ad begin to really tell a story. Although this particular zine was not my strongest in enabled be to dramatically improve my understanding, and skill when making my next zine at the end of this particular area. I found that when making my second zine I had much more fun and I had a much better understanding of how to tel a story through the photograph I had previously captured.

Next we look at PORTRAITS and photographing individuals, family and friends. For this part of the project we were lucky enough to have some of the people who were children in the war come and talk to us about their own experience’s, taking part in this task provided me with the skills of note taking and portraying someone’s history and experiences through their own portraits. After talking to Joan and talking about her history we went down to the studio to take some portraits of her. When I was photographing her, it was important that I was able to get the best quality images, i did this making ensuring i had an appropriate lens with the correct setting that wouldn’t lead to any defaults in the final photographs. This ability encouraged me later on when developing my own portraits of my family at home, the idea of different facial expressions, angle and lighting which would convey a certain meaning. Lastly for the portraits section we were given a task entitled ‘home sweet home’ which gave me the opportunity to help practice certain skills at home in my own environment, and gave me control over my own ideas and how I wanted to convey each image with each individual. This skill will defiantly be consistently essential through the rest of my photography project.

Finally, computer software, as its clear we had a lot of photo shoot throughout the project we learnt how to use LightRoom Classic which presented all our images from each shoot and enabled us to discover our best images compared to our worst images, going through different stages to allow us to select our final images from each shoot that I wanted to display and develop on to the blog. In addition, we learnt specific, quick and easy skills on LightRoom that helped us fine tune our images for example the Spot Removal tool which helped removed any marks that may have been produced on the image giving it a better final picture.

Of the areas of photography that were explored thus far in the occupation and liberation module, I have found most inspiration within the landscape and object photography. I found that these allowed for the most creative freedom as well as opening more opportunities to explore different editing techniques. I liked to use strong geometric structure within my shoots, often using squares within the image to better frame the rest of the image. The use of the still life setup also allowed for the most creativity in manipulating the compositions and experimenting with various visual and thematic themes within the shoots. the landscape photography forced me to explore texture and form in order to create visually interesting compositions, they allowed me to better explore black and white photography to help bring out the textures within the images. such as the image shown below in which the contrast was manipulated in order to bring out texture within the background of the image.

Attached below is an image demonstrating the studio, still life setup in which I was able to explore various compositions to try and achieve an aesthetically pleasing shot. from there I was able to easily manipulate/remove any blemishes due to the simplicity of the background.