set 4
In this set I’m going to carry on with what I was doing in set 3. I’m going to take inspiration from Travis Commeau again but this time I’m going to take a few in focus and out of focus to show how social someone is or how confident he or she are. Adding on to that, I'm going to take sharp and blurred photos to show how people alter their personality and how they act when they're being watched by society or their peers. I’m going to use dull backgrounds like grey or blue to ‘show off’ the person in the foreground. I’m going to take photos at home of people in their ‘lazy day clothes' to go along with that relaxed vibe I want some of my photos to have. I have been looking at other photographers to take inspiration form and found Bill Armstrong who is a New York based fine art photographer, what I’m going to take from his work is the vibrant colors he uses along with the blurring of them. This links with my theme ‘changed’ as I’m showing how people have changed their personality or behavior so they aren’t judged or pointed out by society.
At the beginning of this set I wanted to carry on with my work from set 3 but take more photos in focus inspired by Commeau’s work. This set was successful as yet again it demonstrates what I want to show; with that anonymity of a lens blur people feel free to do what they want and not act to fit in with society. Adding on to that it shows how differently people act when having their photo taken, which could be one of the things I add into my final piece. In this set I didn’t look at Armstrong’s work but I did use some of his work to make mine have more meaning to it . I will still take inspiration from his work in my final piece, for instance I will use colors to show show someones mood or their mind set. The only thing that was unsuccessful in this set is the fact that I didn’t many photos so I aim to take at least 100 photos in my final piece.
This is one of my favorite photos in the set because it’s a perfect example of my work inspired by Armstrong’s wok and how he blurs his subjects to near unrecognizable and then shows their emotions through the way they stand. In this photo I’ve done the same thing but shown their emotion through their facial expression. Adding, on to that its my favorite because even though you can’t see his face you can tell they’re happy just be looking at the way this face is shaped at that time, showing that a person can be themselves and actually be happy knowing that society isn’t judging them just by seeing a photo which is what I want to show in these sets. I took this photo behind a blue wall and used a studio light on one side of him and a soft box on the other to reflect the light to give the photo a soft look to it to display that he (the subject) is actually happy as the lighting of a photo can change its mood. I set the camera on manual and zoomed in a little to give it the blurred affect. I couldn’t really do anything in post processing to this photo since its blurred but if I could do something better it would be to not blur it as much so it was a little more recognizable.
This is another one of my favorites in the set because it shows how Armstrong influences my work. In this photo I used a studio lamp to light up one side of his face, I done this because I wanted to show a fast contrast in the photo and also to reflect his mood. This photo was successful because even though you can’t see his face clearly you can tell by the way its shaped he’s annoyed and I thought I could show this using the lighting, quickly going from light to dark, to display him quickly becoming annoyed. I was going to blur it more to show how anti-social he really is but when he told me he was getting annoyed I wanted to show that more as it was his emotion. In Photoshop I changed the brightness of the photo because before it was really under-exposure.