Liquids & solids

For my next project I want to go back to exploring liquid photography. This time I want to try to go in-depth with how solids affect the liquids. I want to try liquids going on top of solids and solids entering liquids. I want to try some shots like ice falling into a drink, a liquid being poured into different shaped containers, inversion of a background image in a drop of water and I want see if I can get a photos of bubbles right as they are being popped by different items (needle, finger, maybe try popping with water...). This time I want to try shooting in the studio to see if the lighting in there could help with some of my shots.

Words

let me be ME

My project is about how words affect people and how society can make people go crazy because of trying to fit in and be normal. I had first wanted to make it look like someone was breaking out of the prison of words that society creates around us. Once I started taking photos I found it was to hard to make it look realistic when pushing and bending bars away and breaking free. I changed my path that I was on with my project to the way that society traps us and drives us crazy. For my photos I shot against a white background to show that society wants everyone to be the same. I wanted it to be part of the cell and it shows how society traps us and keeps us from being who we really are. To finish my project I put the black behind all the words words to create more of a bar look making it feel like the person is really trapped in a prison created by society.

Creating Bars with words....

I tried creating the "bars" with different types of font because I wanted it to symbolize actual people thinking these things. If the text is closer to a actual hand writing it is easier to think of a person you know actually writing things like this.

1. I like this one because the letters are curly and help to take the eyes between the bars.

2. I like because more people have this style handwriting than the amount that have #1's style handwriting.

3. This one I like because of the multiple fonts. I used all of the fonts to show that everyone thinks things like this. Each person writing in a different style, so by showing more than one font it creates the feeling that more than one person is thinking this.

4. I like this one because of all the curls to the letter. It helps to bring the eyes to the center of the bars just like #1 but I feel like it does a better job of doing so...

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   3          4  

These are just a couple of my 150 ish photos that I ended up taking. I had tried many different poses but a bunch of them I didn't end up like either because she looked awkward if she happened to be moving at the time (I just had her keep doing all the poses in a loop) or she lost her face in a few of them. I ended up using a photo from her wearing the gray shirt because with having the bars be black it would have blended the black shirt and the bars together.

This was the type of photo that I had wanted to go for while I was shooting. However, Getting the model to look like they were really trying to pull bars apart while having a certain emotion on their face was a huge challenge and in the end I decided to change how I was doing my project by a little. I changed it so that the model is stuck behind the bars and they are posed to make it look like they are getting really frustrated and upset about all the words around them (What society wants us to be like). I actually didn't happen to find this photo till after I took my shots. I had tried finding one for a while before, but because of my bad luck it seems, I only found it afterwards.

The photo below is one of the few examples I could find to try to find a person who looks like they are tired of what is pressing in on the from the outside.

The reason for doing what I did for this project was because of how society molds us into who we are. Eventually though, we all break down because we can't live up to the image that society wants for us. The image is to be perfect, but no one is perfect, we just can't and shouldn't live up to that standard.

I used sites like TED and some other sites to get other peoples thoughts on breaking free of society and being your own person. It helped me to really figure out what I wanted for my project. http://www.ted.com/conversations/10541/is_modern_society_s_prescripti.htmlgg

http://www.choosing-life-my-way.com/go-on-your-own-way.html
"There are many rules and regulations set by the society that we live in. Some of these are good and necessary. However, what I do have a problem with is the pressure that is put on us to conform. There are countless spoken and unspoken regulations on how we ought to live our lives. From major life choices, such as whether or not to get married, through to daily habits like not eating dessert before dinner, we are overwhelmed with 'shoulds' and 'shouldn'ts'".
This was basically my thoughts put into words by someone else, they were on the exact same pathway as I was. I took this small paragraph and I used it to help create a stronger idea behind my project.


This was my starting place for my project. It was just the basic idea of maybe what I wanted to do and some information that I looked up. My project really changed as I went on as continued exploring the idea.

In the end I can't really decide if I liked my project. I really wish I could have gotten it so that the bars were being pulled apart but I just couldn't make it look good, making me change my idea a little. The part I like the most with my final piece is probably the bars with the words over top of them and how each sentence is written with a different font to show the idea that anyone could be the person behind the bar and how everyone, even if they don't realize it, help to create the bars around everyone they know.

Critique 

Peer:

    Like...

         The bars represent being trapped

         Vignette unifies project -brings eyes to center

         Emotion -powerful

         Many texts- different peoples opinions

         Picture -symmetric

    Try...

            One text unify

            Fade bars -create even softer edge on both sides

            Fade colors on model

            Try black and white -more powerful emotion

            See through text

Teacher: 

     Like...

           How it tells a story

           Different fonts show different people saying each thing

            

    Try...

            See through text

            Black and white

            Having text smaller so none of the letters go off of the bar

            Have all of the sentence on the bar 

               -don't have it run off the screen

Magazine cut out w/ words

Meaning...

When you are in a hard time in life, never give up hope.

 Always find ways to keep pushing forward.