Work Record One (prep shoot one)

Work Record One (prep shoot one):
Plans For Shoot:
For this shoot I took photographs of a human skull surrounded by dead flowers.  I chose to use dead flowers as they are relevant to the theme of juxtaposition, and I chose a (fake) human skull as it is a recurring theme throughout this project.

The juxtaposition in the flowers was that they are mainly given to people as gifts and thrown away when they've died, and so keeping them and photographing them once they've died is irregular as people would no longer want dead flowers as they're considered ugly. This is also the case for the (fake) skull. I have used a recurring theme of skulls as they remind us of our mortality and, much like the flowers, are buried when we die. Never to be seen again. 

By combining these two independent reminders of death I hoped to create a small scale Memento Mori (an renaissance art genre that was designed to show us a reminder of our imminent mortality). Memento Mori is my favourite type of juxtaposition. This is because it is used to remind the living that they're going to die, this is juxtaposition as the living aren't dead yet and don't need to concern themselves with death. We shall all die but that is the price to play for living. Here are some examples of a Memento Mori. 
   


I also like the idea that the flowers on the skull are a remembrance of the person that has died. The irony in this is the fact that bones and flowers are left in graveyards to remember or morn the dead, and here I have these two reminders of death completely isolate away from a graveyard. 

Contact sheets:

Images that need improvement:

DS7_3567.JPG:

This image was on of the first out of this shoot. This means that I was still setting up my camera so that the exposure and the F-stop were at the correct points for the exam. This image was out of focus as the camera was focusing on something else. I noticed it was out of focus because I was reviewing my images as I took them and adjusted the point of focus accordingly.

DS7_3701.JPG:

I dislike the point of focus on this image. I was using a low F-stop of around 8-4, this would allow me to create a Bokeh effect. A Bokeh effect is where the main focal point is in focus and the rest of the images aren't. This leads to the viewers focus being immediately drawn to the main point of interest. I was using a low F-stop to create this effect as I wanted the viewers focus to be completely on the skull's eye sockets and the flowers surrounding that area. However, in this shot I've positioned the focal point somewhere in the middle ground of the image. This means that the flowers at a similar depth are in focus which distracts from the flowers near the eye socket, which was what I was aiming for. 

DS7_3698.JPG:

Later in this shoot I was using a manual focus on the camera as I was sprinkling cosmetic glitter toward the skull which lead to it going out of focus trying to track the individual glitter grains. To fix this I used the camera's auto focus to focus on the skull as the camera is more accurate than a human eye. I then switched the camera to manual focus so that the camera wouldn't changed the focal length, then I sprinkled the glitter. I chose to take these images this way because I was fighting the camera on what the focus of the image was and this fixed the problem. 

My Best Images:

A01:
I chose to use skulls as they represent death and the Memento Mori that I have seen are dull and uninteresting as it is thought that death is a morbid thing to dwell upon. However, other cultures celebrate the dead . The most famous of these celebrations is Mexico's Del Dia de Los Muertos (Day of The Dead). They paint colourful sugar skulls and make traditional celebratory meals. This is because they don't fear death, they celebrate it. This is what I wanted to do for this shoot. I wanted to celebrate death like the Mexican's do, and so I used colourful flowers to add to the skull. However, I used dead flowers to show that we are still mortal and although I think it's wrong that we fear death we should also cherish our lives. 

Another photographer that influenced this shoot was Jordan Parks. She is mainly a portrait photographer but she has had success in another area as well: Bokeh. Consequently I used what I had learnt when I'd researched into Bokeh and the camera setting/ composition to make it effective. In response to the exam I'm going to create a colourful and bright Memento Mori. I want to make it as colourful and as beautiful as possible to completely juxtapose any of the pre existing ideas of Memento Mori. I want to do this because it will display my opinion visually. 

A02:
To further these ideas and opinions I will edit my images in Photoshop, paying particular attention to vibrance and saturation. This is because vibrance and saturation will change the colours within the image and so the flowers, and as I mentioned before I wanted the flowers in my images to be as bright and colourful as possible. I want to edit my images in this way because they shall reflect life.

As I shoot my images in RAW+FINE format, I have two different formats of my images. The FINE format is simply a fine JPEG file. The RAW files capture date about each image, this means they can be edited more subtly that JPEG files. 

This is what my images looked like when I opened them in photoshop:

I adjusted my images using the sliders on the right hand side of the screen. I raised the exposure and the contrast, this brightened the images and allows for a greater contrast between the different colours and tones. I lowered the highlights and the shadows, because I'd raised the exposure the all of the image had been brightened when I only wanted parts of it highlighted. By lowering the shadows and highlights it regains some of the details; within the brightest parts of the image I lost some of the details I'd have liked to have kept so I lowered the highlights. I also lowered the shadows as I wanted the details within these shadows to be removed as they were distracting to the overall image. Next I raised the vibrance and the saturation of the image to make the colours in the flowers boulder and brighter. 

After I'd finished changing the image with the sliders I clicked OPEN IMAGE. Once the image had loaded I applied a filter. I found the filter in the drop down menu called FILTERS. I then opened Filter Gallery.

Once in Filter Gallery I experimented with different filters until I chose the one that best suited the image. 

My favourite was the glowing edges filter. However, this was too dark for the colourful effect I wanted to create with the flowers. To make the image clearer and lighter I layered the filter over the original. To do this I duplicated the original layer and then applied the filter to the duplicated layer. 


The duplicated layer sat on top of the original. To merged the two layers I lowered the opacity of the filter layer, this let the flower's colours through.
 
However, the layers together were too dark. To the image lighter I used curves which affects the exposure and so lightens the image. 


This process resulted in a neon effect being applied to the image. This effect suits the exam topic of juxtaposition because I have used it to create a bright and colourful Memento Mori, when the original Memento Mori are usually a dull reminder of death. 

Although I like this outcome I don't think it is bright enough for it's purpose as I want my images to be blindingly colourful when compared to Memento Mori. 

I furthered my experimentation into different filters and layering them onto of one another. As I still like the Neon edges filter I kept that filter on one of the layers and added a filter to the original layer. Here is the layer I chose, it is called  . 

Once it was applied to the original layer I went back and further manipulated curves to bring the neon colours out of the image.
Here is the end result:

I have used layers and filters to edit my other images in a similar manner to the image above.

I like how my images have been processed as I have retained the colour of the flowers, even where I've put multiple filters onto the same image. If I was to change any of the image it would be to make some of them brighter as some of the filters I've used are naturally dark and so dull the colours slightly. 

I chose to use computer experiments rather than physical experiments because I liked the different effects the filters gave the images. Using computer experiments is also less time consuming as it only takes the filters the time to load, whereas the physical experiments would have to be shredded or torn and then rearranged and presented. I would also have to source the materials to complete the experiments and find a working space that is suitable. 

Edited images:

I like the neon colours in this image as it contrasts the classic view of what a memento mori must be. 

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For my initial ideas I thought about using crosses and other types of skulls/ bones in the images as they repeatedly feature in Memento Mori. However I chose not to use them as I was trying to break away from the existing imagery around death. I wanted to form my own ideas about death and create a new style of Memento Mori, one that is bright and colourful. I want to create a Memento Mori that reminds people life is short and celebrates their life along with their death. 

I feel I have responded well to the theme of juxtaposition. I have achieved what I set out to: create colourful and bright depictions of death. I wanted to contrast the drab images people associate with death and mourning with beauty and vibrant colours, so that people won't be sad that they've died but happy that they've lived. 

 I wanted them to be beautiful and bright as this juxtaposes the classical image of them reminding people of death and twists it into the celebration of death. I wanted to show the juxtaposition of life and death, without death life would be worthless.