After deciding on the theme for my four images, I began thinking about how I wanted to go about achieving my goal.  I wanted to try and capture genuine emotion from my subjects, without it being forced or staged.  I think it’s so easy for photos to look staged (as obviously a lot of the time they are), but sometimes the emotion looks forced and therefore it kind of ruins the credibility of those emotions.  This was what I wanted to avoid.

I asked four of my friends to be the models for my images, and we all went out together one evening.  I searched for a little while to find a spot that I liked, that also had reasonable lighting.  It was very dark outside and ideally I didn’t want to use the flash on my camera, so I knew how important good lighting would be to increase the quality of my images.  Eventually I found a place that I liked, but I decided that I still wanted a bit of extra light, so I turned on the torch on my phone and got one of my friends to hold it (whilst one of the others was being photographed).  I then set the remaining two people a mission to make the subject laugh – something they were both more than willing to help out with.

I was a bit concerned about how well this would go – as I was very aware that my images could still look forced as a result of the subject knowing my goal was for them to laugh.  However, this turned out to not be a problem, as because there were five of us in total, we all ended up joking around with each other anyway and we were all non-stop laughing (even myself) for a lot of the photoshoot.  I managed to get my four images, and I was pleasantly surprised with the results.

I then decided to format my four images in the style of a triptych to showcase all of them next to each other (see below).  I tried to arrange them within the triptych so that the two zoomed images were in the centre, and the slightly more zoomed out ones were framing each side.

There are some things that I could have done better, such as improving the clarity of a couple of the images, but given the fact that this was my first proper nighttime shoot, I’m extremely happy with the results.  I also love how genuine their laughter is (it really was genuine!) and how they all seem to have a light in their eye (I assume from the torch on my phone).  I feel like I’ve achieved what I set out to achieve – capturing natural laughter within my photographs.

For our third assignment, the task was to take four portrait photographs, focusing on experimenting with lighting, composition, form and the pose of the subjects.  The images didn’t have to be linked, and we could interpret the brief in any way we wanted.

I struggled for quite a while to come up with an idea, as the brief was quite broad.  Although this was a good thing (because it gave us freedom to explore our creativity), I had no idea where to start.  Eventually, I began thinking about emotions and how people portray their emotions within photographs.  I thought about “selfie culture” and how, currently, a lot of photos involve the subject having a straight face or lacking emotion.  I wanted to try and challenge this by attempting to capture genuine emotion and happiness within a photograph.

After showing my triptych in class, I decided that I wanted to try photographing my images again in order to correct the faults that I highlighted in my last post.  Therefore, I set the camera and backdrop up in the same position that I had previously used (I used a grey zip-up hoodie and draped it over my desk chair beside my window).  I then took the desired three images.  I found it surprisingly difficult trying to match the focus in all three images, as I couldn’t get close enough to the chair if I used a tripod, so I was relying solely on having a steady hand (which I don’t have).

Additionally, I found that I still encountered the same problem of the third image being too zoomed out.  This was because, originally, my intention in the three images was to also show the cranes growing in size.  Because of this, I made them in three different sizes – with the yellow being the biggest.  Therefore, I had to zoom/crop the first two images to fill the same amount of space that the final image takes up in the frame – making the third image seem more zoomed out.

I came to the conclusion that the only way to amend this would be to remake the cranes, but seeing as I made them out of scraps of paper that I’d found by the water, it would be unlikely that I’d be able to find the exact leaflets/labels as before, and I really liked the contrast between the bright pink and yellow, so I didn’t really want to change them.

This was my (slightly) amended image, where I tried to make sure that the focus was the same in all three photos:

For my triptych, I decided that instead of finding proper objects, I would focus on finding scraps of paper that had been dropped by the water.  Then, I would turn these into something new – origami cranes.  There was no real reason in particular that I chose to turn them into these (primarily it was because I love to make them) but you could argue, however, that it adds context by hinting at the amount of swans in Lincoln’s water.

The three pieces of paper that I found included (from left to right) a neglected, tatty ‘Quack’ flyer, an old receipt, and a clothes label that had been ripped off of something (worryingly, there were actually several of these labels dumped by the water, hinting at theft).  I wanted to highlight the type and variety of litter that can be found on the streets, and how people really do not give a second thought about littering.  I wanted to take something dirty and crumpled and almost make it pretty through my images.

For the lighting in my images, I relied mainly on natural lighting from my window.  I experimented briefly with using a different light source (see image below) but I wasn’t happy with how it made my photo look – I much preferred the natural lighting, so I decided to stick with it.

Overall, I’m pleased with how my triptych turned out, but if there was something that I had to change, it’d be how the first two images are slightly more zoomed out (as seen by the lines in the backing material).  Also, the point of focus in the first and last images is the centre point of the crane, but in the middle image, the centre isn’t in focus.  I know these are just little things, but if I get the chance, I’d like to try and recreate these three images and attempt to correct these faults.

The second task we were given was the ‘Found Object’ brief, where we were told to take three still life images and display them in the style of a triptych.  Additionally, the objects in our photographs had to have been found near water of some kind.  For a while, I struggled to think of objects that I could photograph, as it was so broad and I wanted my images to have some form of meaning and context to them.  Eventually, however, I came up with an idea which I felt played a twist on the brief to make it my own.