Statement of Intent
The title of this project is Mood School. The message of my portrait will be to show the change in mood of a student in ISB on a school day. While the work might seem very normal and average, I want to reflect the pain and frustration that a student has to endure throughout the day, and I want my audience to feel surprised and frightened that an ISB student has to go through so much pain every day.
Identity Photography – Mood Board
Identity Photography/Photographer Inspiration
For my identity portrait, my inspiration is the type of photography that have solid color backgrounds and generally a table in front of them. In the photos, the colored background can generally provide the vibe and emotion in the scene of the shot, and I can utilize the table to place objects (clocks, food, paper) to provide context to the photo. This is because I want to take a set/series of photos that represent the change in mental state and mood of a student over a school day at ISB, and I can place a clock on the table to represent the passing of time, and the background can be chosen to correspond to the pose/emotion that I want in the specific photo.
Here are some examples:
Singer-songwriter, Cale Tyson. By Chris Daniels with a 24mm – 70mm, edited with Mastin Labs preset Portra 400.
Musician, Jessey Dee Clark by Chris Daniels with a 24mm lens, edited with Mastin Labs preset Ektar 100.
By Chris Daniels with a 24mm lens
Identity Photography: Finding a focus
My identity portrait will unfortunately fail to reflect a societal/cultural issue, because I think the issues are very difficult to reflect through photography, and it will also be difficult to make the viewers of the portrait interpret the issue. Instead, I want my identity concept to reflect the change in the mental state of students throughout a normal school day. I want to effectively show the passing of time through various lighting and colors, and my model will do poses and facial expressions according to the average mental state of students during the period of time during the school day.
Identity Mind Map
Selected Photographer Inspiration: Lee Friedlander
For this street photographer unit, I am selecting Lee Friedlander as my inspiration. This is because his photos have a lot of variety, whether the photo’s subject is a person, place, or thing. However, his works are mostly in black and white, but I hope to have photos in both black and white and color.
👆 Photo from The American Monument, published 1976
👆 New York City, 1971
Working the Scene – Concepts of Street Photography
- “The Decisive Moment”
In street photography, there are many moments that are captured within very short amount of times, so photographers must develop the ability to take a photo before or during the event/moment that happens.
👆 ‘Street Hunters’ by Mark Darbin, 2016
2. Work the scene – don’t just take the photo
Over a period of time, “the decisive moment” can also be captured within tens, hundreds, or even thousands of photos, and they must be selected carefully. It is near impossible for the perfect moment to be captured within one photo.
👆 Emily Allen’s contact sheet for decisive moments, 2014
3. Don’t move – The fishing technique
It is important for a street photographer to be able to stay in one place and take photos around them, like in an interesting corner or busy street.
👆 Henri Cartier-Bresson’s bicycle shot, 1932
4. Capture Gestures
To capture strong emotions, facial expression, eye contact, body movement can all contribute to the emotion of a photo.
5. Get close – one arm’s length
Moving close to the subject during street photography not only enhances the emotion of the people/things, it also builds confidence in the photographer, especially when they’re afraid to take photos. It is important that photographers aren’t scared to take their photo.
👆 Hollywood, 2011
6. Eye contact
👆 Trolley, New Orleans by Robert Frank, 1955
7. Framing
If framing is performed successfully, the photo becomes mysterious and evokes a story-like thought in the viewer of the photo.
👆 Katsura Villa Portfolio, Yasuhiro Ishimoto
8. High contrast color/tones
On sunny days, photographers are able to create photos with high contrast with the needed amount of light in the environment, which makes the photo spark and pop to the viewer.
👆 Untitled by Mike McCawley
Street Photography Mind Map
Set 2 – Contact sheets
For this set, I have taken a variety of photos in the weekends, in which more than 30 of them were taken at the TeamLab exhibition made by Epson at Chaoyang Joy City. The exhibition was very interesting, as it utilized various lights and shapes in the projectors to make the attraction fun and mesmerizing, which was perfect for my artist vision, Tom Reaume.
All photos contact sheet
After eliminating the duplicates and selecting the photos that were good and fit my artist vision, the photos with the yellow tag were selected:
The green photos were carefully selected to specifically represent the photos of Tom Reaume.
If you noticed, the top three photos have been continuously selected to be in the next set because they are actually the photos I want to use in my final triptych.
Red photos — these will be the photos I want in my triptych.
