Photography And The Self
This project was the 2nd part of the themed projects, as before we had the
Vision Machine one. This one was named Photography and the Self. For this project, we looked at self portraiture, and anything relevant to us. We didn't have to do self portraiture, but I decided to focus on it a bit in my work, as I've always liked portraiture and decided to take my own approach to it. Thinking this, I decided to use silhouettes. I also wanted the final image to be of myself as I went with the title "photography and the self".
I used silhouettes but I didn't want to do the conventional silhouettes, which are cut out portraits of people. I wanted to do full body, and action silhouettes like skateboarding ones. The idea of this came to me when I was shooting some skateboarding in sunsets, and was creating silhouette photos. I wanted to focus on it and learn the technical side of it as I like to focus on the techniques of photographs.
The reason I wanted to shoot action silhouettes is because the common silhouettes are boring in my opinion, and not actually as fun to look at, where as if you had a skateboarding silhouette or something else with something happening in the photo, you are more interested and the photo is much more eye catching.
I chose silhouettes because I like the idea of knowing what the subject is, without actually seeing it. As with a silhouette, you see the subject, and the outline, and you may or may not know what it is, but there is no detail telling you what it is. Such as with a skateboarding silhouette, you'll see the skater, but not know if it's a boy or girl, or anything about the person, or who it is. But you know it's a person skateboarding. So I like the fact it's a sort of hidden identity.
Pros: The good things about this project is I learnt alot about silhouettes, and the technique of it. I also learnt how to think conceptually about the project and why I liked doing the photos. I loved taking some of the photos I took, and think some came out really well. I also learnt some new techniques such as using smoke infront of the light to bounce it off.
Cons: I had alot of bad things happen with this project, one of the main ones was weather. Because I wanted to use smoke as it was the best way (other than sunset) to cast the silhouette, the wind kept messing up the photographs, especially my final image. Also because of the rain I couldn't go out to shoot alot so couldn't do the action silhouettes. Also because I used car lights as my final photo, where I hadn't run my car properly and the weather was bad etc, the battery died on me the next day, and I had to sort that out later on.
Conclusion: Although I had a few bad points I did have fun doing the project, and enjoyed it alot. I took some good photos that I like, but would change alot of things about it. If I had more time I would definitely do this project again, or even just if it was better weather, I could of got much more successful results, and a much cleaner final image. I do like the photo, I just don't like the way that the smoke has been blown infront of me and cut off a piece of my board. Also my board got soaking wet in the process as it was wet on the floor. I love silhouettes and will continue to take the photos, and experiment more with the smoke and lights. Especially through out summer where there isn't as much wind. I did enjoy the project and learnt alot, but would definitely change a few things.
