Conceit Evaluation

Evaluation

Despite having changed my idea midway through the project, which can be a risky thing to do. I am pleased with the final result of my images and the completed slideshow. I have never attempted to do a photographic series using solely myself as the subject and have relished the challenges faced and overcome, both technically and emotionally.
The biggest reservation I had during this project, was whether the images would be believable, and display the right tone and sentiment without looking too contrived or potentially, ridiculous. This I think was the greatest challenge I had with these images, as in order for the them to be truthful and effective, I would have to let all self-consciousness go, and break down any barriers of pride and (ironically) conceit. The most difficult shot both technically and personally, was without doubt, the 4th shot. The image where I am naked, with my back to the camera. Technically, it was challenging due to the focusing, and composition. I wanted it to be clear that I was nude, without exposing any part of myself, which proved to be quite difficult and in the end, I had to crop the image to the right arrangement. The focusing of the image was also quite awkward, and I ended up having to use a mannequin set in the right place on the bed, focus on it then with the camera on timer quickly take its place. It took several attempts to get this one right as and inch out of place, would render the image blurry.
It was also challenging for personal reasons, as the image is quite an unflattering one, and I am literally exposed and vulnerable. However, I feel it is quite a powerful shot, and if I had been modest about it, it would not have been as successful.
In conclusion I have enjoyed producing this series. I feel it has taken my photographic skills in to new territory and have learned some new skills in the way of presenting images and sound together in using Garage band. I have enjoyed the process of creating photomontages using text and imagery as I have never done that before and am happy with the overall piece.
However I am pretty sick of myself now!!

The Final Slideshow

FINAL IMAGES

Here are the final images for the series "Conceit" starting from the top.

Image Story Boards

These are the story boards which i created for the "Conceit" image series for the photo project.
story boards, much like mood boards in design, are a good and quick way to produce a visual guides to ideas either for your own remembrance or to show other people. They are good things to get in to the habit of doing.

This is a how i would like each page to progress. for example if the user were to click on gallery, the "logo" would become the title of the page and the navigation bar through that page would move to the left hand side of the page and vertically.

Things to Remember

Another thing to remember is when saving the sliced images, apart from saving them as JPGS, is to try and save them with lowest resolution as possible, as it will take less time for them to upload in dreamweaver. So when saving for web, have the page on the 2up tab, so you can see the difference between the original and the eventual; and play between medium and low res to see which you can get away with!

Once you have sliced up your titles and headers and go to save for web devices; when it comes to saving text titles be sure to save them as PNG files, in order to make them 'transparent.'

Slice and Dice

This is a useful step by step youtube tutorial on how to slice up web designs in Photoshop and take them in to Dreamweaver. There are several different ways to do this to essentially achieve the same result but this is the same way we learned in class.

Web Design 4

I recently posted my most current design of my website on my Facebook Photography profile (below) asking for views and comments. And the most constructive ones i received were that although the pattern was good, that it is slightly to overpowering. so i have created a 4th design with this in mind. All i have done in order to make the pattern less forthright is change the colour to a darker shade of grey on the layer in photoshop. Another change i have made is the font of the logo. Having thought i had exhausted everything Dafont.com had to offer i found this font called Dust Mites, which i liked as soon as i saw it and am almost certain will keep. I think it is much more captivating and memorable than the last one which was a very basic font, without being too much.Due to this i have removed the swirl brushes which originally flanked the logo as i feel the font is loud enough on its own.

Web Design 3

Having acquired a few more strings to my bow and looking at more websites and designs, i have completed a 3rd design for my web page. I have added to the background a textured layer which i found on the web and simply added in as a layer in photoshop to the current design and have also flanked the triptych of images in the centre with corner brush strokes on the bottom left and top right corners. I like the added texture layer as i feel it gives the site a bit more depth and makes it more personal and inviting.

Contact Sheets

Photo project -Why the Echo?

Even though i have incorporated text into the images i always wanted there to be sound. As i said before i love playing with slideshows to music, but i also love narrative over slideshows, so often seen in documentary photography and news reports, which is why i have chosen to add an echo effect to the reading of the poem, as i feel it is a compromise between music and narrative. below i have posted a link to a recent slideshow with narrative of Capt. Alexander Allans capturings of the Iraq war which i admire.

PLEASE EDIT AND COPY LINK INTO YOUR URL. UNABLE TO EMBED CONTENT

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8518479.stm

You Tube Conceit

Below is the slideshow of "conceit" Which i have uploaded on to youtube.
it still has a bit of tweeking to be done to it, but wanted to get it out there for a trial run.

Final piece of the puzzle!

i have finally completed the last stages of my photo project. i have been stuck on the line "now let me be myself" but yesterday at dusk i drove up and into the downs in a howling gale and got this final image. its not the final image in the series but the last one needed. it was quite a challenge getting this as my tripod kept blowing over, i had nothing to focus on and as you can see the moon was out and i had no flash! but i like this image. it captures exactly what i wanted. a bleak abyss.

my decision to alter the way in which i present the text on my images is because i felt was completely detached from the rest of the image. it is the only part of each image that was not created by me. . and i feel cheapened them in some way which is why i decided to write the poem out myself with ink and integrate that in to the image giving it more of a gritty quality which is what i am aiming for.

more examples

here are some stills from the nearly completed movie.

Cindy Sherman

Below is a quote from a biography of Sherman which i think is very interesting. What this is saying is that for a portrait to be personal, it has to have some kind of reference or title in order for the viewer to connect, and that because Sherman's film stills are mostly "untitled" or numbered it depersonalizes them. I completely disagree with this. What i love most about Sherman's work is the fact that she doesn't title her work. i think it speaks much louder than if she'd conjured up a phoney title. The images speak for themselves. Her work i believe is very autobiographical despite the many guises she puts in front of us to distract. For example, in 1976 when she began her untitled film stills which were predominantly, her isolated self in the city, very reminiscent of Hitchcock's portrayal of women; she had just moved from Buffalo to New York. If she had titled any of these images, they would have lost their enigma. Instead you are left with an interpretation of your own with no bias from a title instilling a preconception.

"For a work of art to be considered a portrait, the artist must have intent to portray a specific, actual person. This can be communicated through such techniques as naming a specific person in the title of the work or creating an image in which the physical likeness leads to an emotional individuality unique to a specific person. While these criteria are not the only ways of connoting a portrait, they are just two examples of how Sherman carefully communicates to the viewer that these works are not meant to depict Cindy Sherman the person. By titling each of the photographs "Untitled", as well as numbering them, Sherman depersonalizes the images."

Inspirations

i generally believe self portraiture to be a very personal exploration and expression. i have always taken portraits since i first began taking photographs. Last year i did a personal project called "Vanity's a Bitch" which was a collection of self portraits dated back to 2002, but this is the first time i have taken a series of concentrated, considered portraits. i have tried to shake any fear of self consciousness which i hope translates and creates more of an impact. My 2 biggest inspirations in self portraiture however are Cindy Sherman, the queen of guise and self expression and Robert Mapplethorpe, particularly the image he took shortly before he died which was the inspiration for my image below.

First Recording

The one thing i have always been clear on from the beginning of this project is how i wanted to present it. I have always, since i started taking photographs, been obsessed with creating moving slideshows to music using iPhoto. So this is what i have done except, instead of music, i have recorded myself on garage band speaking the poem, and have applied an long panning echo effect. I found it quite difficult to master as it's very easy to speak over yourself and lose the words in the echos, but after several recordings, i cut together the most successful recordings and saved it as an "iTune" so as to easily apply it to the slideshow. I then saved the whole piece as a "movie" so here is a first draft of what it will be... hope it works!

Tiny Alteration

i have slightly altered my photo project again! upon looking at the images i decided against the text.Not against the text entirely, just the presentation of it. Aesthetically i just do not think it looks right. This whole project is very intimate and natural which i believe is clear, accept for the computerised font plonked on top of it. So i wrote the poem out myself with ink and photographed it. I have then placed the images on top of the text and brought the opacity down to roughly 60% and then using the eraser tool, highlighted the corresponding phrases.

More Conceit!

Brushes

Mood Boards

To develop ideas of colour and fonts, i created a series of mood boards for inspiration taken from magazines, newspapers current websites and online articles. The idea of mood boards is to draw inspiration, be it colours, texts, fonts, designs, which i could then implement in to my designs. Mood boards are used throughout the art world from fashion to fine art. here some examples of other industry mood boards as well as my own.

Second draft

What i have done here is completely erase everything of the first design from my mind and get back to my original idea and inspiration which was this website...Bottle Bell Gallery.I love the design of this. The earthy texture, the titles of the imagery and the 3 "hero" images on the home page. It makes me want to continue on in to the site and can immediately gauge what kind of imagery i am going to find. People are going to judge what kind of photographer i am by the home page. Therefore it has to show what and who i am. So after stripping away the excitement of dafont.com and deviant art! i produced a second draft with "Bottle Bell" in mind.

WEB DESIGNS

The web design process has been very frustrating and rewarding. the one thing i have learnt is that less is more. . . its very easy to squander and splurge all the new techniques we have learnt on to one page. Brushes, fonts, and effects and produce something like this one. When i first created this in class i was really pleased with it. I really liked the brushes i'd used and the font. But no sooner had i got home and looked at it again, i realised that aesthetically it was nightmare! The shade of green i'd used was far to garish and flat, and the the combination of the text and brushes i had used did not compliment one another; instead they clashed horribly and detracted from anything else on the page. It reminded me of this awful web design i had found when researching websites.

I used to carry this poem around with me, written on the inside of a notebook. It had one soul purpose to me and that was to indulge my self pitying and sorrowful anguishes, we all so often feel and endure like martyrs of the soul!!

So, i am going to produce a series of self portraits, placed on to backgrounds i have also photographed which will emphasize the words and the image. For example: "conceit that kills us" image of myself smoking on a decaying background.

CONCEIT

Conceit

It is conceit that kills us
and makes us cowards instead of gods.

Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal!
we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important, fatally entangled in the cocoon coils of our conceit.

Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any more,
I only entangle myself in the knowing.

Now let me be myself,
now let me be myself, and flicker forth,
now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods.


D H Lawrence

My idea for my project has changed. i felt the war veterans topic was too big a subject matter to complete in such a short space of time. Instead what i am doing, and have almost done. Is a series of photo montages to D.H Lawrence's poem "Conceit"