In order to create my photobook I went to Adobe Lightroom and went to my catalogue and pressed the book feature:

In there I was able to see and further develop my images as well as figure out a narrative for the book:

As we can see above, once you press the Book method in Lightroom it takes you to this screen where you can drag and drop the photos from the bottom in to the book.

While figuring out a narrative which talks about my personal life, relationship experiences as well as addiction and religion, I did find it quite difficult as I thought, “How will I mix all these 4 themes in to one photobook without it looking disorganised?” However, as I started experimententing I started to figure out the narrative as we can see below:

Here we can clearly see how the book starts with what appears to be a happy couple; portrays them as really happy and having fun, then there’s a break where I’m thinking of adding my first essay.

The book then goes to show the couple on dates with messages from a gay dating application called Grindr. The messages reveal a kind of example of the type of messages I get daily. I have ordered them along with the couple on dates images in an attempt to show how people always get in the way of some relationships which is clearly shown from the oxymoron of the two images. This can be clearly seen in the following:

Here we can powerfully see a happy couple on one side and the other side a text message from a Grindr guy trying to make me feel or look bad. This oxymoron may make the viewer feel like there are some issues in the relationship which indeed is true.

However, I soon found out that the Grindr texts were a bit too colourful and ruined the aesthetic of the photobook.

So, to combat this issue, I followed Broomberg & Chanarin’s inspiration with the Holy Bible and created something similar; overlayed the text messages over the bible texts. For example:

We can clearly see the correlation between Broomberg & Chanarin’s Holy Bible project since they overlapped photos over Bible texts and I over lapped text messages over the passages which creates a sort of controversy since the passages talk against homosexuality and the messages reveal a few of my same sex experiences.

During my experimentation with these images I attempted to not only show a same sex couple having fun with each other while attempting to portray this relationship as some sort of dream. This was powerfully achieved through the use of blur and gloss on some images. This is clearly shown in the following:

My idea with the blur and gloss was to get the reader to feel or see a sort of fantasy or dream; something that is not quite real. This idea originated from the song lyrics, “painted a picture, I thought I knew you well. I got a habit, of seeing what isn’t there. Caught in the moment, tangled up in your sheets. When you broke my heart I said you only wanted half of me. My imagination is too creative, they see Cain and I see Abel…” (In my head, Ariana Grande). What these song lyrics mean to me is basically, for me it talks about having a habit of seeing, creating and falling “in love with the version of a person that you’ve created in your head, that you are trying to but cannot fix…” Therefore, this is what I attempted to achieve with the glossy/blurry images.

On the other hand, with the hi-res images I attempted to portray a feeling of reality because the experiences were real and true. This creates an oxymoron which successfully shows how relationships can be beautiful but negative events happen all the time meaning this “love” becomes nothing but a memory.

I have chosen these to be my back and front cover. The Front cover image has my model looking straight at the reader which could be interpreted as the reader diving into this same sex relationship since there’s a saying that “the eyes are the window to the soul.”

The back cover portrays the couple cuddling / comforting one another which makes sense after the reader has been through the whole book.

The book then goes to show the couple having cute intimate moments which makes the reader feel like they are diving into their story which is exactly the aim.

The black and white images with high contrast are there to show how there are negative moments even during intimate moments.

The colourful images however mimic the happiness in relationships.

Similarly, I attempted to create the same effects as shown above but included extracts from both the bible and text messages/experiences I’ve had with guys to attempt and tell my own story.