Linger: Some Final Thoughts.

Today I printed my assignment. Right from the start I knew that I just wanted to do a simple print for my first assignment, both because it would be easier and at this point in time it is just more cost effective for me. I would leave more interesting presentation thoughts for parts two and three of this assignment. 

I printed my black and white photo on some Ilford Galerie Smooth Lustre Duo instead of the usual glossy papers that I would use, because I might preferred the look of the smooth lustre. For presentation to the class, a bigger size might have been better, and I feel I've let myself down by not thinking of this beforehand. This is something to keep in mind for future assignments.

I have permission from both of my models to use my shot for portfolio work. As this was all that I needed it for, that was all that mattered to me.

What would I do better next time? 

Honestly? Everything. I didn't get the exact shot that I was hoping for, so next time I would do more than one photo shoot with the same model. I would do the first shoot, look at my shots and decide on what needed to be changed, then do the second shoot - and keep going until I got exactly what I was looking for. I would also remember to take my shot-list with me to the shoot, because I feel that this would have helped me greatly. 

In terms of the photograph itself, next time I would choose a better location, use a later time of the day, and use either fill-flash or a reflector to get some more light into my model's faces. I feel that this is where I lack in a lot of my portraits - I can just never get my outdoor lighting right, and my subjects always seem to lack the light and contrast that I'm always after. 

As already stated, in terms of printing I would print bigger than the A4 shot I have now, and perhaps print on canvas. Canvas is something that I haven't ever printed on, though I absolutely love the look of it.

Linger.

This morning I had the photo shoot with Gabby and her boyfriend - and despite thinking that I was as prepared as I could be, I still managed to forget my shot-list at home. Sadly this meant that I only made half the shots that I intended to, but I still managed to get one that I'm fairly happy with. 

Although on occasion I'm still tossing up between this and the previous shot of my best friend in the cemetery, this is currently my final shot: 

My original idea was to have a couple, one of whom was a ghost - young lovers who were separated before their time. The girl might have died in a car crash or some similar, tragic circumstance. I pictured her, transparent and hardly there at all, reaching out to comfort him from the grave; him staring into her eyes, knowing she was there - feeling her, even if he couldn't see her.

That was this shot: 

It didn't turn out quite how I pictured it, so I didn't end up liking it all that much in the end. If I were to shoot it again, I would definitely have them further away from the bush - to render it out of focus and have it less distracting, and maybe have them standing - shoot from the waist up. Definitely make it more intimate. I don't feel that the story really came across here, and that is important to me. 

So back to my final shot. It had the same story behind it, originally - the girl was dead and the boy was mourning her loss. In this one, he definitely didn't know that she was there, watching over him while he stared into the distance. But when I look at the shot now, I see a different story. I see a murderer being haunted by one of his victims - though he doesn't quite know it yet. It's the beginning of a horror story. 

To achieve the way that she looks like an apparition, I used a double exposure. 

As you can see, there is one shot with Gabby in it and one shot without. With my previous assignment attempt, I layered the photos together and simply lowered the opacity of the one with my friend until I got the result that I wanted. But with this one, I didn't like the way the shot looked when Gabby was completely faded.

So for this shot, I layered the two photos together and then used a layer mask to erase the parts of the top photo that I didn't want - a gradient was used to give Gabby's legs their faded look.

I prefer the photo this way because I like that at first glance, people might not notice the oddity. And in horror stories, that is quite often how things go - you don't realise that the ghost is a dead person right until the end, when it's already too late.

Ethel.

Yesterday my friend and I took an afternoon trip to Rookwood Cemetery so that I could attempt to get a decent shot for my assignment. 

My idea was simple. I wanted her to be a ghost, lingering behind in the cemetery even after she was "gone" from our world. So we traveled around to different sections in search of the perfect lighting and the perfect setting. 

The first shot I took was one in the Russian section of the cemetery; she was standing in a gazebo-type monument, and you could see all the graves behind her. But in the end, the shot just didn't work for me. The atmosphere was all wrong, and it was far too bright. 

Another shot I did was of her walking towards me between two rows of graves - so she wasn't attached to any one of them in particular, she was just "wandering". I feel that this shot might have been acceptable to me if only the two rows of graves had been closer together. As it was, the photo had too much sky, too much grass, and not enough subject. 

It was the middle shot that worked for me. 

To me, the atmosphere here feels right. She looks sad, she looks somewhat lost, and we even managed to find a girl's grave where the age was right - Ethel Francis died when she was twenty-three. The only thing off here is that she died in 1908, and my friend is clearly dressed for the twenty-first century. 

The process for achieving this photo is simple, but effective. I took two shots of the grave - one with my friend in it, and one without her in it. Then I layered them over the top of each other until they were perfectly aligned and lowered the opacity of the layer that contained my friend. The original shot had a washed-out sky, so I also added some more interesting clouds. 

Obviously, this wasn't exactly the shot that I had in mind. I couldn't find anybody else to model for me, so I only had my friend to work with. 

But even after the shot was done, I kept playing with the idea. And now I have another shoot scheduled for Saturday with another of my friends and her boyfriend, so I'm going to spend some time really planning out that shoot, looking for a location with the perfect light and fine-tuning the idea. Hopefully I will come up with something better - if not for this assignment, then for my portfolio at the end of the year.