Tuesday 10/11/20 - Self Portrait Experiments

The purpose of this experiment was to play around with different practical techniques of taking self portraits in a non traditional way. My group took a variety of photos with different outcomes and inspirations behind them, trying to come up with different ways to portray an altered state.

The first set used a projector to create a background for the model, unlike the previously where I used it to project an image onto both the subject and the background. To do this I had to position myself enough distance away from the project so neither my shadow would appear nor would any of the image project onto myself. We also had to use LED lighting on a tripod to help light up myself so I would better blend in with the background, using a reflector to stop any light from actually hitting the background itself. We would determine whether the warmer or colder light was a better choice and used gels to change the colour tint too. The first two I chose something more down to earth but still unusual, being out in the snowy mountains away from everything but still wearing a mask. The other being on the surface of Mars. At first the images came out worse as we didn't fully understand where to place the lighting and what changes to make however, overall this set was a success by the end. The images felt like I blended in well with the background.

The next set was the one that felt interesting as to how we could experiment as it was using acetate sheets either with a preset design or one we drew in ourselves. Because these were on acetate we could decide between using it as the background or we could overlay it on ourselves. I chose to use a forest sheet with one showing the clouds of the night sky above whilst I was sitting against just a plain white brick wall. It was similar to my first set but this time it was black and white and now in the foreground, because of this it ended up looking like shadows. I then decided to add a pink tint to the sheet (Inspired by the colour scheme in Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel) and flip the sky so it would be on the ground. It ended up looking like smoke and clouds behind me and strangely enough it didn't fully project over me. For the last one my friend decided he wanted to have the word human written down alongside a bunch of arrows. We placed him with a very distressed pose surrounded by this. It was my favourite. Whilst this one was more interesting to play around I feel like it was my least favourite in terms of outcome, if I had a more solid idea on what I wanted to create I feel like the outcome would have been better.

The last set was using a camera with long exposure, so naturally it had to be placed on a tripod. This one was the most fun and created the most unusual photos of the sets. We played around with subject placement and the use of light for these photos. However a problem we often ran into was that due to the lighting if someone wasn't standing still for long enough they wouldn't show up at all. We also had to figure out the timing so we would know how long to stand in one place before moving. The first experiment was inspired by this image, a widely known image that has been replicated and used multiple times in internet culture:

We also used the torch on a phone to create streaks of light across the photo as if they were going around the subject, this worked really well as the torch also provided some lighting to the subject so you could make out aspects of them. Another experiment was having someone sitting and then halfway through someone would stand behind them to give the impression of a ghostly figure, this was inspired by William Mumler and how he used this to scam people into thinking their dead loved ones were in the photos with them. One idea that came to mind in this was to switch the gels on the lighting midway through the exposure, this actually turned out different than I expected as the colour choice made it look like the old red and blue 3D movies.

Inspired by the work on my moodboard and a scene from the Lighthouse I decided to take one last photo with the light directly behind the subject to create a silhoutte of sorts. I also used a long exposure so it would blur the subject slightly.

This had some of my favourite outcomes despite the issues we ran into, I really felt that this created photos that were inspired by the idea of an altered state, in this case I feel like dreams and the supernatural would best suit them.

Overall the entire experiment was very useful to me, it gave me the chance to not only experiment with new photography techniques / ones I've had very little experience with, but also a starting point to help develop ideas and gain more inspiration for the rest of the project.