Assessment 1 - Black & White Themed Photography
Rationale
My chosen word for the theme for the following photo series is delicate. Initially when choosing the word, I wanted to capture clean, classical, crisp, simple and emotive portraits that depicted a fragile state. Through the images I wanted to convey a sense a naivety, a sense of uncertainty, a sense of being out of place, and both an emotion of wonder for the new and fear from the uncertainty. I wanted to convey this feeling by placing my subject in an environment that they could be submerged in and framed by. I wanted the environment to be drastically different from them, not having any sense of similarity or connectedness. I wanted the environment to not be a minor part of the image, instead I wanted it to be a character along with the subject.
With this in mind, I decided to photograph my girlfriend Jasmine in the pine tree forests surrounding the Sunshine Coast. Having explored the forests earlier I knew that placing Jasmine against and within the pine trees would create a contrasting effect; of not person belonging there and being susceptible to the harshness of the environment.
In deciding makeup and costume, I wanted to keep things simple. Jasmine is wearing a plain classical dress that is flowy. With makeup, the choice was not to apply any, showing again the rawness and the fragility of the subject.
Having chosen to shoot portraits, I decided to not shoot candidly, but create intentional connection between subject and viewer. Each photo is directed and created intentionally and carefully to reach the required emotion. For most of the images I asked Jasmine to look directly into the lens, even if she was a long distance away from the camera. I asked her to express minimal emotions, I didn’t want to delve too far into an emotion (for example by showing an expressively large smile) that it would pull away from the sense of delicateness. Every now and then I would ask her to give me ‘a hint of a smile.’
The gear of choice was my Fujifilm XPro2 with my 24mm lens (converts to a 35mm in full frame). I also used an old Olympus 50mm OM-System lens from the 1970’s with a Fujifilm XF to Olympus OM adapter. The older lens created a charm that was lacking in the new 24mm lens.
