sophie hack macleod

Through the course of a week and a half each day’s photo shoot had a different intention and feel. As we familiarized ourselves with the camera and lighting, a trend began to emerge. Out of our vast collection of photographs, we ultimately chose images that we felt contained various emotional and dramatic visual components.

In choosing our final image selection it became apparent that beyond the inherent importance of lighting in a photo shoot, our usage of served to enhance the manner in which we had served to highlight and enhance the mood/emotions expressed.

The prevalence of dramatic element in our pictures manifested itself through the camera angle, lighting, and positioning and posing of the subject. Our props being primarily costumes or textile based in nature, texture and colour played a significant role in determining our placement and emphasis of subject. Drama doesn’t necessarily mean high contrast, can also be resulting from evoking a strong response in the viewer. The impression of being a dramatic situation.

Shadow

Over the top gesture/body language/facial expressions/costume

Close up focus on the subject

Manipulate lighting to emphasize texture

We focused on spotlighting shadow, gradation of light

Posing, colour (pops of)

Element of drama

Dramatic lighting, camera angles

Good exposure

Emotional aspects

Some properties of traditional style portraiture

Hard to resist tending towards some properties of traditional styles of portraiture because of the “covergirl” lighting makes your face look so good.

Collaborated using a variety of props

In experimenting for this project I was particularly interested in creating shadows of different sizes using height of objects as well as distance between the objects and the light source. I found the the arrangement of objects also served to compliment or contrast with the shadow they cast as a body. The choice of color in the objects was also a crucial element for me. I liked the simplicity of using primary colors as to not fully distract from the main concept yet still add another layer of meaning. Experimenting with the light source was probably the most interesting challenge I faced during this project. I cut out different sized holes in black cardboard and mounted them infront of the light so create a sort of spotlight effect. This led to sharper shadows when the light was a significant distance from the set. This also meant that our main light source was very dim, but I think this worked well with the aspect of bed time stories. Overall I think we were successful at creating the atmosphere that we intended. The background of books served as an appropriate “canvas” for our shadows that in themselves created a narrative, although we had no specific story in mind when creating the set.

The concept of our project was the manipulation of light and shadow and how it can create an atmosphere reminiscent of children’s night-time stories. The use of primary colors became central in our idea because we wanted to emphasize the simplicity of tales that are told to children. Our most challenging issue in creating the set was experimenting with the light source and the distance from which the projected objects needed to be in order to induce appropriately sharp shadows and dimness of light. This project was especially helpful in demonstrating to us the affect of light shining through different sized apertures (simply holes cut into black card board) and how this can change the shadow contrast and sharpness. We originally began this project working with shadows cast onto the books, as well as how aluminum foil reflected on surfaces. In the end we decided to our concept of shadow manipulation gave for a stronger meaning, but we do wish we could have incorporated reflection in some way as well.