Brief 3

For this brief I wanted to take portraits on how people saw themselves regardless of if I new them personally or not. To do this I asked those I photographed how they see themselves and and if thats how they think others see them, I then thought about how I could translate that into a photograph. For the 1st image which is one of a stranger I saw that outside my apartment complex there was some nice lighting so waited for somebody to walk past and asked them if I could take a portrait of them. The man I asked when talking about how he would like to be seen said that he finds himself un-photogenic but likes to think that makes him somewhat unique and interesting and if he did look any different in photos it wouldn’t be representative of himself. So for the photo I wanted to bring across this serious tone he was giving off but also an element that was none traditional and confirmative to general rules of photography so what I did was I changed the shutter speed so that the image would have too much motion blur to distort the subject but I also placed them off of centre frame and added a fair amount of space at the top of the frame, by shooting in portrait over landscape, to show the interesting colour of the sky and also some other elements of the foreground which resulted in an unusual but I and he thought of as an interesting image and an accurate representation of how he wanted to be photographed.

For the second subjects image I photographed one of my good friends when he came up to visit me, when I communicated him about what he wanted he said that he would like a simple image that first of all made him look like himself and we both agreed that the best way to do this was to use artificial light and create it so that he seemed like how he sees himself sometimes an be fake and not all real hens the decision to not use natural light but that despite not always feeling like he’s 100% himself all the time he was still happy so I got him to laugh and took a photo of it as the fake light represents some of his anxiety towards whether he is as legitimately happy as he comes across but to the viewer and as me the photographer and his friend we see him as someone who is generally happy in that moment. Finally when editing the image I added a slight crop to the image to bring the focus into him to really draw on the importance of his expression over the lighting.

For the final image which was self portrait I asked one of flatmates how they saw me and they confirmed what I wanted to be true which was that with me what you see is what you get and when I feel happy and am laughing it isn’t fake or forced so I decided to wear bright colours and also to shoot using only natural light and got one of my friends to make me laugh whilst I took the photo on a timer. In doing so I think I got a good and accurate image of my mental state which is ultimately happy and joyful occasionally cast in some darkness and vulnerability but these are all genuine feelings about how I feel within my own skin and also showing myself to the wider world.