Shoot 1 Work Record

Date: 18th April 2016.
 My aim for this shoot: 
For this shoot I intend to capture different ways which people encounter depression. The way I shall do this is to edit them in a way to form this mood. I also hope my use of lighting will be clear in this shoot. I will manipulate it to help build my mood, for example I hope to use a variety of gels (colours) to make my raw images appear as if they've been edited.

What I actually achieved…

I believe this image clearly shows my aim for this shoot. I have used a blue gel to manipulate the lighting and have also clearly positioned my subject in a way that her shadow can clearly be seen. My reason behind this was because shadows are emotionless, yet the subject herself is clearly showing a depressed mood. On my subject I was able through the use of manipulating makeup, to show her tear marks, yet no way would I be able to make this shadow here appear sad. I thought this was a good symbolic way of showing depression because it shows how when people are depressed, they may only show their shadowed self, not how they are actually feeling. The use of the blue colour gives it the connotation of depression because blue lighting is stereotypically used in media products to show sadness. However the denotation of this image is just someone sitting there with her shadow painted on the wall beside her. The camera setting which I used were…
1/6 shutter speed, 5.6 f-stop, ISO 1600. The reason for this is because as I were display mood, I didn't want to form that depth of field look to my images, so I had a lower f-stop. Additionally, my shutter speed was quite low because I wanted it to be quite dark, to be symbolic of the stereotypical depression, If I had a higher shutter speed it would be way too dark, if I had a lower shutter speed, due to me not having a tripod, it would have resulted in being very blurry and showing motion, which for this image, I did not want. Overall, I like this image because even though there is blue lighting, there is still natural lighting in the far back, my resin for this was to show a transition of mood, the blue (stereotypically sadden colour) is domain, although there is still some highlight in the far right, showing there is still some happiness there, it's just depression is much more dominant. This effect was achieved by only covering 3/4 of my light with the gel, leaving the rest exposed.

Much like the image above, I used the lighting to show a change, yet this time, I put my gel half over the light, I then positioned my subject so her face had the line across it- with the blue light symbolising the depression thoughts, and the white light symbolising the non-depression thoughts. This forms a half and half connotation of emotion sufferers feel through depression even though the denotation is just an image of someone with half a blue face and half a white face. I wanted this to show a use of tone in my shoot. Tone with lighting is where you can see a transition across the face, half the face highlighted, the other half shadowed, then across is the transition area. This is symbolic in the use of depression because it suggests there is conflict between herself. Half her body says one thing and the other says something else. With my subject looking crammed in the middle helped this conflicting between herself is clearer. Using the rule of thirds, I held my camera so she was as much in the middle as possible, leaving the top third blank. This is because the top bit is all blue- in this image symbolising the depressive thoughts. As this third is empty it appears the depressive thoughts are pushing down on her, she is trapped within herself and the depressive thoughts at this point is winning. My camera setting for this image; The shutter speed- 1/6, the f-stop- 5.6 and the ISO 1600. This image has the same camera settings as the one above. This is for the same reason, I wanted it to be dark but not so dark you cannot see my subject and not light enough to show lots of movement. If you focus on this image, it appears a little blurry, this is due to me hand holding my camera, although for this image I wanted a small bit of movement, this is because I believe it helps show that conflicting battle. Overall I like this image because I believe it helps show the mood of depression through the use of lighting really well.

For this image I wanted the blue on her face to be lighter than the  rest of the image, this is because otherwise I felt it would have washed out my subjects face and her crying wouldn't have been as clear. This image holds the nostalgic side of depression. It shows how people who suffer from depression can hold on to things from the past- wishing they had that back, instead of enjoying the life they are living at this time. I positioned my subject so she had her hand on the collage of images, a sign of pain- giving the connotation that she is trying to re-grab those memories. I don't really like this image compared to the rest of my photos because I believe the darkness of the blue washes out the nostalgic depression which I had aim for, this is because it is almost unclear what she is looking at. Although I wanted the blue to be this dominant to symbolise the depressive mood- it just didn't work here. I would defiantly reshoot this image by changing it so my focus is on both my subject and the photos, to me there is too much going on- too many photos, this may have worked better if she was looking at a scatter of polaroid images. My camera settings were the same for this image as well,  I just don't think it worked well in showing my purpose.

 This is a similar photo to one I had got from my test shoots, which I really liked. Although I do not think this one worked as well as it had before. This is because as my room is quite small I had to be close to her and I couldn't show that pain of depression. Here it just looks like I took a photo of my subject between shots. Depression isn't clear here. Therefore this is why I do not like this image. If I could I would reshoot this image the way I done it in my practice shoot because it worked much better then, this would mean going to my friends house. The camera setting are also the same here than there were before and much like the image above, I do not believe they worked well here. This is because this image is too dark, to solve this I would have to lower my shutter speed, but because I don't have a tripod, it would be much blurrier.

Overall...
 
Overall I believe this was a very successful shoot. I am really happy with my outcome images because I believe they show depression really well. I also believe I carefully positioned my subject so the mood which I intended was clearly conveyed. Alongside this, I think my use of lighting helped further show depression as a mood, this is because the colour blue- stereotypically used to show sadness- came across clearly in the conflicting mood people suffer with when they have the mental illness of depression. I also believe this shows my research really well. When preparing for my exam, I came across various photographers who have used the mood of depression in their work manipulating lighting and carefully positioning their subjects. For example Christian Sampson shows bipolar depression, which is where I stimulated my ideas from about showing the different sides of depression- it isn't always just sadness, lots of factors come together to form depression- nostalgia, conflict and also the hardest thing, happiness, some people with depression can also show happiness, just going from one extreme to the other.