abaigeal's blog

This is the final photo I chose for the identity unit. I chose to do my piece on toxic masculinity, the meaning behind my photo is that the blue background represents the sadness. This is the feeling that the boy in the photo is actually feeling but what he’s showing is how he’s choosing to cope as “boys don’t cry”. The reason I chose to use the phone screen to represent the anger instead of the model making an angry face is because I felt like the professional model could do a better job at it and make it look more authentic. I also liked the “hiding behind the phone screen” meaning behind it. Not necessarily about hiding behind a screen, but, hiding behind the angry emotion with the sadness.

Downloadable version of annotated photos: annotated versions of photos for identity unit

Justifications

Yellow: This was one of the first photos we took after fixing the ISO and I feel like it just doesn’t look very good. His hair is cut off, he isn’t centered and even after cropping it looks weird. On top of this the emotion his face is meant to be representing behind the phone is sadness and his eyes look quite happy so this photo isn’t very fitting.

Green: This is the very first photo that we took and nothing about it is right. After this we had changed the background colour, moved the light around many times. I lowered the ISO in hopes of making the blue look deeper but because my model was wearing dark clothes it didn’t show up the way I wanted it to. Also for some reason that made my phone screen look to dark so you couldn’t even see the eyes.

Red: Although it isn’t super in focus and I had to cut it weirdly, it was my best option.  I really liked the way that it lined up and the imperfection of it. Either way the cut was going to be square so I don’t have a huge issue with it. Even though I prefer the person holding the smile, my model had difficulties showing the sadness in his eyes so we went with this route.

These are my reference photos. Another photo 1 student took these during our abstract photography unit but when looking back for inspiration these photos spoke to me. Griffin took these it was to test the way different lights looked but it gave me the idea to use lights to represent emotions. My plan is to have the background light represent sadness with a blue light and have the model look angry in some way. This is to show toxic masculinity, and how men are told they shouldn’t cry, leading a lot of men to act out in anger.

My mind map shows different ideas but not many since from the beginning I already wanted to use colours to show emotions. I want to use the studio to take these photos and ask my friends to model for me. I want it to be easy and clear to tell what the main point of the photos are.

These photos were my first two sets/my yellow photos. This is where I went more off of Miguel Ribeiro’s Abstract Body Photography. But I couldn’t really get the person and the lighting to focus at once, and I found the photos nice on their own but difficult to put together. I also felt like they just looked like portraits and not super abstract. I had one photo of me with a shadow over my body which we took on accident that I really liked, so for my third set I built off of that.

I wanted to take abstract body photographs, and at first I used Miguel Ribeiro, and took photos of different parts of the face/body. I took around 150 photos, and only 3 made the cut. I had to go back into the studio to take more photos around 3 times throughout this process. Below you can see the 3 final photos that I chose. I ended up continuing with the idea of body photography, but I didn’t like the way the facial feature photos were turning out. This led me to instead manipulate the photograph with light and shadows. This is an idea that I found on Expert Photography, 7 Best Techniques for Abstract Body Photography. Finding good angles, which lens, which colour, which light was quite difficult. That is where majority of my photos came from. Then, I had to do a lot of editing to try and get the photographs to have similar shades of black and white.  I am happy with my final set however I think I could’ve been more creative with it.

Sources:

7 Best Techniques for Abstract Body Photography

https://www.miguelribeiro.net/abstract-body

Above, you can see my final sketches, measurements and plans for my Yo-Yo. I need to use the lathe in the FABLAB to create the round shape of a Yo-Yo and the saw if I can’t find rounded pieces of scrap wood.

Materials needed:

• preferably 4 circular pieces of scrap wood
• 50cm of string
• 3mm wood cylinder
• wood glue

Plan

Day one:

• Draw sketches
• get measurements
• saw wood to correct sizes
• glue wood pieces together
• prepare the rest of the needed materials

Day two:

• sand down wood pieces so the edges are all even
• drill hole through the middle of each piece
• measure the 3mm wood in the hole
• begin using lathe to round out the wood pieces

Day 3:

• finish rounding the edges
• sand until same weight
• once both pieces weigh the same amount, push the 3mm wood cylinder in one side
• tie the 50cm string to the side with the cylinder
• push the pieces together

Success criteria:

For the Yo-Yo to work, both sides of the wood need to be equal amounts of weight on either side. So, as long as both sides weigh the same and look even the Yo-Yo will work. This is what I will base my success off of.

I would name this photo floor lines. There are many interesting aspects. It took me a while to figure out what the photo was. Also, the lines were great. The best thing is the shadow of the lines.