Lens Based Media - Week two.

This weeks project has turned to Lens Based Media. We were put into groups of four and asked to draw characters which we had seen in our lives that shocked or meant something to us, maybe being a lunatic that crosses paths with us three times a week. Or the classic old couple that always shops in the, Co-op, a friend who has an obsession with repeating the word "dogs", it  was a free minded task where it didn't matter what we drew as long as it was an intresting character. We also had to draw a place that meant something so beautiful to us and was known as our 'Happy Place' as well as the 'Sad place' and 'Dream place'. After this we all interlinked our drawn characters on an A1 sheet and made up random stories from each persons character, it had to involve an introduction, a struggle, three dilemmas within this struggle and a final out come which solves the crisis. We all thought about how we could engage an audience and leave them feeling emotionally touched in some form. We did three story boards and presented them to the class, discussing and group-criting each one, after that our home study task was to produce another story board using only photography, playing with the images to create almost a lie by fooling the audience into thinking what you want them to think, with composition, the subject and how its positioned, the lighting and colour enhancing. I decided to base mine on a lonesome hedgehog who lives in a world of black and white. He is miserable and seeks an adventure to discover some colour in his life. He goes to the land of colour and his world turns from grey to paradise. Throughout it shows his struggle, his adventure and his final destination, starting with a negative and ending with a positive. I really enjoyed this task, particularly choosing the character and creating my own setting, this was a challenge for me as i had to create my story visually through pictures without any text. My story board is shown below. In my final story board i selected 6 images.

Fred's Journey.

Five Emotions or sounds where read out to us, which we then had to explore using our photography skills in capturing the particular emotions. These where - Happy, Sad, Echo, Jump and crush. I thought hard about what i could do to present these words, for echo i took a close up picture of giant water ripples. For Sad i went into the o2 arena and captured a traped dimmed light slightly streaming through a pair of closed black curtains which i thought was quite succesful as it presented a mellow, miserable feeling. However it also didnt work as it could be looked at as being present as hope. For crush i zoomed in close to crunshed up paper and plastic in a waste disposal, in order to really grab the crushing effect. Lastly for Happy and Jump I pictured up a close almost a rainbow full of colourful jucies and fizzy drinks cap lids, and for Jump I captured myself lying down with my feet on the floor but then turned the image around on photoshop. 

 Ten Items that Relate to me.

We had to think of ten items or scenes that linked to how we are as people, and what makes us who we are. I decided to use photography within my house and took pictures of objects/scenes which I relate to all the time. My main image i based this on was Mugs of Tea. I used my kitchen tabel and layed out all my empty tea mugs in rows and took a picture of them from a birds eye view angle. This was because the shape being circular also reflected life and my life as a continuous journey, the mugs also being empty symbolised me gaining energy and not always being full, how all my encounters do evolve around me having tea, or meeting people for tea in so many different areas. It was a good image to work with as it portrayed so many beatufiul colours but also a dark feel was emitted from the image maybe reflecting the all my emotions. After doing a tweny minute sketch teared pieces of paper up and put it on top of our piece to change the sketch in someway to trick the audience into thinking what it could be.