As a class, we faced a series of obstacles. Firstly, our tutor was taking part in a strike. Which was fair enough. Unfortunately, the strike fell on the days when we had our Graded Unit class, meaning we didn't have the same assistance with planning as we otherwise may have done. To add, our college network collapsed for a couple of weeks, meaning we didn't have access to the various papers.
We had our first deadline scheduled for the 2nd of April (and then the deadline was extended to the 4th). Unfortunately, it was only the week before, when our teacher managed to confirm what we should include. Cue a mass rush from pretty much everyone to produce what was needed. And I was no exception.
I managed to fill a book with notes - mainly studying artists and their photography, and filling my workbook with commentary on what I liked. In addition, I also explored the practical issues of my plan - such as permission, property release forms, and so on.
And this week, I started shooting.
My plan has developed somewhat from my last post here. What I have decided to produce, is a series of images, which link together, and show a story. The images will be presented as if film stills for a fictional film, and I've got two friends - Olivia and Colin - to pose for me.
The first shoot was in my car, in the West End of Glasgow.
What I wanted to consider, in this project, is how couples interact and behave with each other in different situations. I want to produce some of the images in public, and some in private spaces.
The car was an interesting combination, in a way.
The car is a piece of property. It's not unusual, therefore, for people to behave as they might behind closed doors. I wanted to look at the car like it's a pod of private space, despite being like a mini-goldfish bowl in public areas. We do all sorts of things in cars that we definitely wouldn't do on public transport, and sometimes people act in the car as if nobody can see them.
The other thing about cars, is how a car journey can be stressful, or content. The problem being, that when it's stressful, and tensions are high, there's nowhere to escape to, and we're forced to be in this little bubble of hostility and anger until it's either subsided or the car has come to a stop.
So that was sort of the theme of this weeks shoot. Colin and Olivia sat inside my car, and with the aid of a map as a prop (they were lost - no wonder, I gave them a map of Loch Tay when they were in Glasgow). I wanted to try and tease out that sort of tension and arguments that people have in cars. However, the tricky part was trying to get Colin and Olivia to be in bad moods, and not giggle. I actually quite like the last shot (bottom right) most of all. Although Olivia is fighting hard not to giggle, she's doing that thing where she's looking away, as if she's trying not to show her hand to Colin. As if she's using her body language to tell him she's in a bad mood with him and doesn't want to talk or listen, but also to hide her expression. It's like she's gone full-circle and out of the stage of being angry with him.
I plan to pick one of these to be my final shot for the "in the car" part of the story. However, there's something not quite right for me on these. There's something missing, and I don't know what it is. Perhaps I need to see the final car shot as part of a final collection of the entire series before I can see what's right and wrong with it. I don't think it's necessarily about my models, more about my photography.
No comments:
Post a Comment