That's a wrap!

After having spent 16 weeks creating four final pieces, it is now time to tie them up nicely. The way I plan on showing my four pieces is in a rather creative way. My plans are to use a box, big enough for 4 A3 pieces (perhaps A4, depending on cost and box-size availability) and paint the outside of it black. On the inside, I will glue in some black felt (which is 1m x 1.5m, but I will be resizing it accordingly.)

My four images will go on one side of the box each. The box will hang from the ceiling, and will hang at a height suitable for an average-sized person to be able to stand up in. 

As the box will be relatively dark, I will be supplying a torch to anyone who enters the box. My teacher had the idea to stick some fake fur onto the torch, to make it that little creepier.
The whole point of doing this is so when people enter the box, they experience a tight, dark, confined space. This will hopefully bring out a little Claustrophobia and Scotophobia whilst in there. The fur on the torch will represent Doraphobia, the fear of fur - which is a nice little touch (pun definitely intended.)
Although this idea is the one I want to pursue, it may be a little bit difficult to achieve. If this is the case, I will be using an A2 black card board, and sticking my photos to it. I will then use the 1m x 1.5m felt to cover it. What will happen is people have to lift up the felt and go underneath it to view the images. The torch idea will still be used to view the images properly.

Scotophobia Part II

To conclude my fourth and final piece, I reverted back to the original image and tweaked it a little from there onwards. In the end  I began disliking the green/blue effect as it made the image very flat and dull.
I added the text so the image matches the other three final pieces I created prior to this one.
In general, I am content with the images I have produced and I feel they are all of good and equal quality.

Here is the final image:

That image concludes my Unit 1 coursework with the theme of viewpoints.
I feel I have created some images that nicely represent the viewpoint of someone with a phobia, though I may be a little biased in that statement. In terms of improvements, there is always room for improving - but only when you feel as though the improvements are necessary. I am content with the results my images have given me (or, well, are going to give me...)

Scotophobia Part I

My fourth final piece is called Scotophobia, the fear of darkness.

Here is the contact sheet of my shoot:

You will have to click to enlarge.

Out of all the shots, I chose the image I most liked (which is named DSC_0158 in the picture above.)

Here is the original:

I like this image most because of the harsh shadowing on the face, and the emotion that I, the subject, am portraying through this image. 

One thing I do dislike about this photo is it's warm, orange-nesss (for lack of a better description.) This wasn't a problem though, as I could easily correct it in post production. 

Using Picasa, I added a vignette and made the image darker around the edges to make the image a little more claustrophobia, per say. Here is the image:

I further edited my image by adding a duotone on Photoshop CS4. I actually tweaked my image between the vignette and duotone, however I didn't save the changes to then upload to the blog. 

Here is the duotone effect:

I actually cheated a little and after applying duotone I took a Blue/Green gradient and applied it to give it a little more colour, so it's not pure duotone. 

Next I will be adding text to my image, I will be writing the definition of Scotophobia so this image fits in with my other ones. 

Additional information:
Subject:
As this is a self-portrait, I am the subject.
Costume:
I wore a blue and white t-shirt mainly because that happened to be what I was wearing that day, but I also felt it was subtle enough that I could get away with it in my shoot.

Location:

Situated in my bedroom.
Equipment:

Nikon D5100
Nikkor 18-55mm f3.5-5.6
A bed-side table and a pile of books to act as a tripod.
Lighting:
Candle-lit
Risk Assessment: 
As I used used a candle as my one light source, I had to fiddle about with the camera settings a fair bit before getting the right settings for a good image. This meant I was leaning forward near a candle to fiddle with my camera, and although I was being cautious there was a risk of me burning myself.
As I have rather long hair, I had to be extra careful none of it went near the flame, or I could have accidentally set my hair on fire - and that wouldn't have been fun!

My Fourth and Final Artist

I have decided to change artist. I was recommended to look at Jane Brown by my teacher, and I much preferred her work to that of Alyssa Oliver.

Brown was an English photographer who worked for The Observer newspaper from 1949. Her portraits primarily photographed using natural, available light and are often black and white.
Since her death she has been referred to as "a kind of English Cartier-Bresson" by Lord Snowdon, claiming she "produced photography at its best. She doesn't rely on tricks or gimmicks, just simple, honest recording, but with a shrewd and intellectual eye."

Here is some of her work:

Samuel Beckett by Jane Brown, 1976

John Lennon by Jane Brown, 1967

The reason I have switched to Brown's work is because I feel I could benefit from her photographic style more than Oliver's. This is because for the next shoot, I was planning on taking a photo in the dark, where the only source of light my camera would be able to pick up on was from a candle. Like Brown's work, I wasn't going to use any fancy studio lights nor was I using any form of artificial lighting.
The harsh natural lighting seen on Lennon and Beckett's faces above is something I would like to be present in my next shoot for Scotophobia, the fear of darkness. I feel the harsh lighting will give the image some edge. 

So, What Next?

My fourth and final piece will be Scotophobia, the fear of darkness.
I have chosen this fear because I feel it will round up and string up nicely my photo series.
I have come across an artist on Flickr named Alyssa Oliver. Unfortunately, I have no personal information for this artist as she hasn't posted anything on Flickr apart from her photos.
Click here for Oliver's Flickr profile.

The image that has inspired me is named Scotophobia, by Alyssa Oliver.

Scotophobia

The idea I have had is actually quite similar to this one, however mine will be a self-portrait and I will not have any hands surrounding me. 

In my image, I will be sat in a dark space (perhaps a studio, or maybe at home) and I will be holding up a candle, or some source of light which won't light up the whole area.

Developing My Final Pieces

In order to make my current final pieces better, I decided to add the definitions to all the phobias on the images. I did this by looking up the definition and phonetic spellings of all the phobias I have done so far.

Here are the images:

                   

This proved more difficult than I had originally anticipated, because when I copied and pasted the text onto the image in Photoshop, the software didn't recognise most of the phonetic symbols, and so it came up with boxes where the letters were meant to be. What I then had to do, was add the image into Pages, past the text, and then screenshot the image. 

My only concern with this method is that the screenshot will lower the resolution of my images and when it comes to printing, they will look unfocused and/or pixelated. If this is the case, I will have to re-do the images at home on a simple programme like Windows' Paint.

A Little Editing...

The image below is the composition for my third final piece; 'Haphephobia - the fear of being touched.' This is before I decided to try out a few experimentations in terms of colour.
Here is the series of edits I have experimented with:

Posterised Effect

Grayscale + Colour

Grayscale

Personally, I was torn between the Posterised Effect and the composition which was effect-free. I wasn't too keen on the Grayscale + Colour or the plain Grayscale images. I felt they were too boring and I wanted my images to have that extra je ne sais quoi about them, which I felt was most well displayed with the Poster effect. 

However, I think I am going to stick to the effect-free image for now, or at least until I experiment further and perhaps find anther effect that I really like.