Photography and Physiognomy (Portraiture) [March 2011]

Media: 35mm colour film.

People in general are quite stereotypical towards others, especially when looking at portraiture.

What interests me about self portraiture is the way that people choose to portray/photograph themselves. People will take photo after photo until they get the "right" photo. They feel the need to find the right light and their "good side."

So just to mix things up I decided to give groups of people a disposable camera and let them take photos of themselves, I told them they could pull whatever pose/face they wanted to. It was completely up to them.

It was a brave decision to make as all control was out of my hands and I would have no idea what they had photographed until I processed the films.

Once I processed the film and printed some of the photos I began to see that the poses/faces the people were pulling were very generic, for example; smiling, acting close/friendly to other people and one even putting a hand infront of the camera to prevent her photo being taken. The photographs also showed how much the media these days has influenced us by these generic poses.

I decided to progress further with hairdressers as they seemed to be the most stereotypical people out of the other groups I chose to phtotograph. I then took my camera out to Newport city centre to try and capture some more hairdressers.

I decided to print them a small size as they started to look like snapshots and I felt a smaller size would be more effective.

Here are some test prints:

Here are my final 8 prints:

"Underneath" (13th March, 2011)

Whilst photographing for the 'One Photo a Week' project I am currently taking part in, I actually managed to photograph some really interesting compositions that I just couldn't let go without making a post for them:

Lamb to the Slaughter script, 1953. Film Noir theme. Gregynog (7th February 2011 - 9th February 2011)

Media: 120mm Medium Format black and white film.

During a three day trip to Gregynog, I was put into a team and we were given the script; Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl. As a team we then responded to the script and chose to pinpoint all the main scenes from the story and then do some photo shoots re-enacting those scenes using models.

Here are a couple of our work prints:

We have decided to display our final prints as "steps" towards the final outcome (of the story).

Here are our 7 final prints:

Gregynog (7th Febrary 2011 - 9th February 2011)

I visited Gregynog with my university for a Film Noir style project. Whilst there I couldn't help but ignore the scenery! The place was beautiful.

Here are some of my photographs from my time spent in Gregynog House:

I also took some photos of a few of the set ups/behind the scenes for my team's photo shoots: