Items - What I hope to achieve
For my final shoot I have decided to follow one of my very simple, yet creative, ideas from my Component 2 project. This idea is using specific items that are related to me to help the audience understand who I am and what I love. The use of these items will portray me as a character and will now help the audience identify who I am as I have now identified who I am.
What I have achieved
I believe that I have achieved what I wanted to created within the second photo shoot. I have taken images of 5 distinctive objects that are either sentimental or personal to me and/or link to the idea of self-identity alone. 4 Images link to me personally and 1 image links to self identity as a whole.
Edits
Every image was edited using Photoshop. They were all edited using the same tools but to different extents. Also, a few images used a tool that was not used on other images.
Firstly, I took the unedited images and adjusted the lighting within the images to appear brighter but not too harsh. This helped me see the colours within the image easier which made the colours appear brighter. However, When brightening the images, imperfections in the background, on the items and on my hands were becoming more apparent.
To remove these imperfections, I used the spot healing tool and eliminated any marks, reflections etc. from the images. I did this as I wanted the images to be as seamless and perfect as possible with no distractions. The use of this editing tool also links to me as I am obsessed with the beauty world and looking perfect is a large factor of stereotypical beauty.
I next took the saturation tool and increased the saturation of all images to different intensities depending on the image and what item was in the image. For example, The first image was only intensified by +5 as the colours were already made more vibrant by the lighting increase. However, the second image was intensified to +20 so that the true colours of the lipstick were not masked by any shadows.
As I wanted every detail to be seen within the images, I then took a sharpen filter to further intensify detail on all images. I sharpened all images by +10 so that the images still looked seamless and not grainy.
I then, finally, flattened all images to compress all of my editing into one layer and saved them all as JPEG files.
This first image shows me holding two products that are a part of my skin care routine. Skin care is a big part of who I am as I am obsessed with the stereotypical media representation of beauty. The products are from one of my favourite skin care brands; Mario Badescu. To personalise each image I featured my hand holding all of the items in one way or another. This helped intensify the self identity aspect of my project as the items belong to me.
This next image shows me holding one of my favourite lipsticks from another favourite beauty brand. I linked two images with the ideas of beauty to link back to one of my previous ideas within Component 2; The representation of fashion and beauty within yourself. I am again holding the item to show that it belongs to me and is also a part of me. I wanted to use a plain studio background so that the focus of the image is clearly seen without any possible distractions.
These next two images feature items that are personal to me and have sentimental value.
This first image shows me holding a picture frame of me and a friend from my secondary school Prom. The images within the photo frame show me as my Drag persona which alone represents self identity. This image was personalised in two ways. The use of my hand holding up the frame and also a reflection of myself within the image in the frame. The use of reflections links to a photographer known as Vivian Maier and her work of self identity with the use of reflections.
This next image is of me holding up my phone. As my phone is a very important thing to me and who I am, I decided to photograph it alone as opposed to the previous shoot where it was feature in images that held other items within. This image was composed differently to the rest as it was taken portrait instead of landscape and also used a different background. This background was more white than the other background and also had more light reflecting onto it as it was positioned in a different part of the room. The reason I used this background for the this image is because of the change in composition, I wanted the image to look very different to the rest to show versatility in my photography skills.
All of these four images above represent me and who I am now. The previous shoots within both the Exam and Component 2 mainly show experiments of my self identity and don't show the present me. I decided to show who I am now within the last photoshoot so that all of my work itself is a storyline and shows the audience my story over time.
This image of a Rubix Cube represents the ideas of self identity alone. A Rubix Cube is a puzzle where you use trial and error to try and sole the cube to make it perfect. The puzzle itself can be quite frustrating and sometimes cannot be solved.Self identity is a similar concept; To find yourself as a person you need to go through a lot of trial and error to find out who you really are as a person and people execute this in a manor of different ways. Many would get frustrated, like myself, in finding who they are as it can be difficult and may take a lot of time as you can see from my work within the Exam and Component 2. I wanted to use this image as my last image to cap off the project with a message that self identity can be a struggle for many people who're trying to find out who they are. I felt that by using a blank image with a simple toy that is universally known, more people may be able to understand this and link the inanimate object to self identity.
How I have improved
The way these images were taken was differently to the way that I previously took photos of objects. Within Component 2, I took photos of objects within the form of still life and at home. These images were taken differently and were taken using a studio background. Both photo shoots used natural lighting despite their different ways of composition. I experimented with studio lighting but the photos were coming out very harsh in terms of lighting and I did not like the appearance of the images. I therefore stuck to natural lighting as it gave a softer appearance to the images.
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