The Final Shoot out

Last Thursday, I had my final photographic shoot for my current college project.

I had intended, originally, to shoot on location, in either a museum or restaurant, to depict my "couple" having a nice time together. However, I decided that my series looked slightly unbalanced in terms of emotions. Three were happy scenes, with one (the car scene) showing the couple in a tense, angry moment. I therefore decided that my final scene should complement that somehow, and show something of a more serious nature.

I decided my couple would therefore, have a moment where their reactions, feelings, and ability to work together would seemingly make or break their relationship. I decided that I would shoot them in a bedroom scene, with a pregnancy testing kit.

For this shoot, I booked out the studio lighting - specifically using barn doors. I asked my friend, fellow photography student Laura, if I could borrow her room for the shoot. She had used her bedroom as a scene for a shoot for a still life project earlier in the year, and I really liked how the light in that room works.

I shot a range of images, as I wanted to explore the different reactions. I focussed the camera, and the light, on Olivia, as she was holding the kit. However, the real changing factor in these shots is the male - Colin, in terms of his reaction. I wanted to explore his behaviour, from being supportive; to indifference; to feeling absolutely distraught. I moved him around the room, aiming to focus on his body language, and how that might be in regards to Olivia. The images in this blog are a selection from many (over 250) which I narrowed down and decided I liked sufficiently. On reflection, this small selection shows a broadly similar range of Colin's reactions - the hung head, the hidden facial expressions, a mood of despair. Perhaps that's really what I want to depict in my photos, and that's why I chose them.

My decision to shoot these shots in this way wasn't as a reflection from me upon my attitude towards unplanned pregnancy. Rather, I want the focus to be on how the couple, as individuals and as a team, feel about the prospect of potentially being parents. It's less about a moral stand point, and more about their relationship - whether either of them had wanted children at any point in their life; whether they had ever envisaged being a parent with the other person (or if they had other ideas of what their future parenting partner should be like). As an individual, I have no strong feeling either way about the idea of unplanned pregnancy. I know women who have had unplanned children in their teens, while others were in their thirties or forties. I also know women who have chosen to terminate their pregnancy. For each of them, in my opinion, they each made a decision which was right for them, and having never been in that situation myself, I choose not to cast judgement - even in my photographs.

Part of the inspiration for these photos came from a book I recently bought "Art photography Now" (Thames and Hudson). The first is by Sarah Jones, and is called The Bedroom. It shows a young woman, in a brown long sleeved floral dress, sitting on the edge of a bed with long black hair. She seems to be looking down, and her face is hidden. The bed is covered with a light eggshell blue cover, and the walls are red, and the window is partially open, revealing a brick building outside - it looks like it is twilight.

My second source of inspiration came from a photograph by Jonathan de Villiers, called Waiting, which was part of a series commissioned by Roma Vogue. The viewer is looking through a door frame of a bathroom, to see a young man sitting on the edge of a bathtub, looking down, while a young woman wearing only a baggy pink sweater, frowns slightly while reading the instructions for a pregnancy test. Here, perhaps, the female looks and feels slightly stronger as a character, while the young man looks like he has only just left adolescence.

For my images, I decided that direct lighting would give a dramatic feel to the scene. I also made a point of adjusting the exposure and brightness, so that the room feels dingy, it feels dark, desolate, and also the highlights of Olivia's bone structure are pushed a little further. The situation was that actually, it was a bright and warm sunny day, and there was a bit of light coming through the window. Unfortunately, the window is covered in a plastic backing, as workmen are currently working on the facade of the building. On one hand, this makes it look dirty, on the other, it acted as a diffuser with the sunlight. I will have to work on the spot correction of the window though, as there are some spots of grit on the plastic sheeting.

While I'm now finished my photographic work for this project, I still have a lot of other work to continue. Namely, I need to break my selection of images down (I currently have a shortlist of 41 images for the entire series). Then I need to edit the images, and make them work together; put them onto a canvas, deciding on crop; send them to print; finish my workbook information with contact prints and risk assessments; make electronic copies of my images available to my tutors; assess my work on my project, and then hopefully, next week my window mounts will arrive and I'll be able to finish off the presentation of my images, ready for hand in next Tuesday. I've also learned that two of the five images will be used in the end of year exhibition.

Its a bit nerve wracking, although in a good way. I'm excited about it, but also nervous at the same time. I'm hoping nothing will go wrong in the next week that will delay my work being handed in, or cause problems with the quality of what I hand in.