Shoot Two - Work Record

For this shoot, I planned to create a representation of mental health like I did in my last shoot, however, I decided to create the representation physically through makeup. I decided I would get somebody to do bruised makeup on somebody's face and photograph them in the studio.

For the shoot, I hope to create a physical representation of mental health issues through makeup which acts a a metaphorical representation for pain somebody is experiencing mentally.

This is one image that I feel went well from my shoot

I feel this image worked due to the positioning of my subject. I took the picture from a mid shot perspective, which I feel captures the mood as it show's my subject's posture. I also feel the facial expression of my subject is one of the things that makes this image a successful image, as his cheerful mood creates a contrast to the bruising on his face that represents the mental health problems that are not visible on the surface. Also, he is placed right in the centre of the frame so we get a sense of symmetry, which can have connotations of hope and control over a mental disorder. In addition, I feel that the fact he's looking into the corner and not at the camera means the picture feels more like a candid photo and less like it's a staged image. However, this image is slightly underexposed, which is something I will fix in Photoshop when I'm making my edits.

On the other hand, here is an image that I feel didn't come out as well as I hoped it would.

  

One reason why this image was not successful is because it's overexposed. The overexposure of the image means the makeup around his face is not a visible as I hoped, meaning the theme behind the image is less obvious. Additionally, I feel that I didn't frame the image as well as I could have. At the top, you can see that the blue studio background I decided to use doesn't quite fit in the frame, which I felt was something that interrupted the mood and tone of the image. Another reason why I feel this image is not very successful is because of the positioning of my subject and the camera. With the previous image, my subject was placed almost perfectly in the centre of the frame, however in this image, he is off centre so as a result isn't fully in the frame. Also, the angle I shot the image at was too high, meaning the background did not fit in frame.

With my edits, I used five of the best images from the shoot and added noise and saturation to them to make them look like old technicolor style film photographs. Using photoshop, I also adjusted levels and brightness to fix pictures that were under or over exposed.

With this shoot, I touched on the social stigma of mental illness as well as representations of mental; illness. For my next shoot, I would like to use social stigma as my main focus and develop more studio based shoots based on this.