film shoots

The original idea for this project was for me to use film to document how I felt and as the weeks have gone on i have used both black and white film and colour film to do this. I have also used 120 and 35 mm. I am yet to develop the 120 mm black and white but I can say the colour is unusable as it far too dark. There are a couple of stills i would like to use but I have cannot 100% say that they will be in my final. 

I have decided to print my final piece as a book and possibly 3 a2 prints as well as they are too good not to have larger. 

These are the images I have taken on film and scanned in. 

These are the the collection that i want to be in my final piece 

 this was taken when I was feeling erratic, my mood had just not been stable all day and I filmed myself earlier that night and hated the sound of my voice. I have stripped myself down and scratched out my face which I think is one of my biggest flaws. 

 my bed is my home, nearly all of the photos i have shot during this project have been taken here. It seems best fitting to show this. 

I like these images the most as they are raw and unedited, there are also impurities on the film like scratches. Most of these images are either out of focus or focusing on a different thing and I like the blurred look on them as they are shot quickly and without thinking (either when i have been at my lowest or when I have been having a panic attack) 

Quick shoot.

These image were shot the same day as the last shoot, they were taken that night after I had a breakdown. I think the realisation that people will see these image had hit home, not only that but this is something that I have had to deal with for the last few years and trying to show that in a time where I am accepting the fact that I need help was a little too much. I was editing the last set of images when I started to feel myself well up and shake. These are what I took.

It was really difficult to take these, I felt really uncomfortable taking photo's of myself crying which is why I went back to shooting my hands and how I placed them. 

These are my edits.

I didn't want to over edit these images so I kept them simple, the bottom image is being lit by my laptop and the top is by flash. The camera I have has a flip out screen so I can see how I want to angle the image. I like the bottom image because it is very raw, there is only a slight bit of editing done on this. The light off the laptop gives the image an overall blue tint. 

2nd shoot

2nd Shoot

I knew I needed to do another shoot and unfortunately I had no film with me so I played around with the dslr again. Before the shoot I had a panic attack as I had just filmed a video diary, I do not like the sound of my voice or what my face looks like when I talk (or ever for that matter) it's been something that I have had to deal with for the last few years as I have always said yes to helping out with shoots. When I have a panic attack I start to shake and my vision becomes blurry, I also tend to bite my hand or arm (I also do this when I get really angry) to steady myself. It is almost the same feeling as fainting as I have a tendency to do that too, mainly around blood.
Recently when I get really stressed out I forget lumps of time, when we were all in our group tutorial and were talking about our projects I was really worried about how mine would sound and because I stressed when it came for me to talk the words came out and before I knew it my turn was over. I still cannot remember those 5 minutes. I asked the doctor what this meant and she said that it is common for people with depression to black out moments that are hard to deal with. With this all said this was why I had a panic attack. 

This was also the same day that I started my medication and I started to document that as well. This shoot was in my room so the light was minimal and decided it would be best if I explored using flash. I quite liked the outcome and after a few tried to capture different angles of my face. I started to feel a little anxious about it and started to grab my mouth trying to calm myself down and decided to shoot it and see what it looked like. Throughout this I wanted to see how my face looked when it was under pressure as I myself have never looked in great detail at it. 

When it came down to picking my finals I was drawn to the images of my hands as they had more expression in them than the rest did. These are my finals. 

  

I have edited them multiple times as I am not sure what I prefer. I was thinking about making a book and having black and white one side and colour on the opposite but I have not looked into the idea yet. As much as I wanted to solely use medium format (I have 3 rolls to process) I do like these images as they are striking and quite emotional. 

Some journal entries.

I plan to keep on writing these, I want to print them out on to acetate and print them in the dark room, I have thought about printing them on plastic or glass the only problem being that I don't really have the money to make them. I would really like to slightly destroy the prints like I did with the other (smug fingerprints on them) to make them look worn.  

Update

After my 2nd doctor's appointment I have been prescribed Fluoxetine for my depression and anxiety, I am in two minds about how I feel about this.

1.Finally I have done something about this and I am on my way to clearing my head,

2.Did I come off that bad that I really need these?

I will document before and after taking this as I have a busy Halloween weekend (my friends from home are down visiting me) and I will start taking the medication on the monday as it is 'advised' that I do not drink with them. 

I have started to record a video diary and started to keep a journal as well and will be scanning in entries every week. 

1st test shoot.

For my first test shoot I decided to shoot on my dslr camera to work out how I wanted to shoot, I used natural lighting for this as I didn't want to images to brightly lit and although I wasn't using my first original idea of cameraless photography I still wanted the images to look dull and grainy. I sat just beside my bedroom window and started to take profile shots. I noticed that the left of my room was quite shaded and decided to try and adjust myself so I was bang in the middle of the light and the shadow.

I turned up the iso and seeing as this was just a practise shot I was happy enough to use this a base for editing. These are just a few of the edits I came up with. 

I used the burn tool to draw over the image, I wanted it to look busy and dark. I was happy with the result and layered the image with the cling film layer that I used for my flower images to see what that would do wo the image. I prefer the b/w images as they are darker, the colour images look slightly orange when darkened. I used a film grain filter and added a darker boarder around the image. I printed it onto acetate, one with the cling film layer, one without and one I printed over a flower image I had edited the day before, it looked busy and chaotic which was what I was trying to capture all this time.

These are the end results. (I forgot to invert the image so they came out like this. I will invert them)

Out of all them the last is by far my favorite. Once I had printed the images out on to acetate I dabbed my finger on one of the prints to make sure it was dry and I liked the effect it made so I started to dab all over the image.  This is it inverted.

I will need to print it again as it is quite grey but overall I am happy with the outcome of today's test shoot. 

my notes from the darkroom:

Artist research-Philip Toledano

Maybe

'When my mother died suddenly in 2006, everything changed. I thought that parents were forever, but when mine vanished, I realized that nothing really was. 
Obvious to most perhaps, but not me. The future became a shadowed landscape, filled with uncertain paths 
and ruinous storms. I wondered-what other sudden, dark turns lay ahead? Rather than wait helplessly for my future, I decided to confront my fears. I would try and anticipate my fate. Guess at the abrupt and unforeseen directions my life might take. I would see myself as an old man. I would envision failure and loneliness. I would be invisible. Unable to walk. Obese. I would suffer a stroke. I would lose myself. I would slip sideways, into the irrelevant. I would see my own death.

Photography is always about the past. The moment picture is taken; it's behind us, in history.

This project is about the future-but how do you research what has not yet occurred? I took a DNA test that told me what illnesses I was likely to get. I consulted with fortune-tellers, tarot card readers, hypnotists, numerologist’s 
and palm readers. I researched insurance company statistics. I looked within, at my greatest fears. I worked with a skilled prosthetics expert, so I could physically become my future selves. I took acting lessons. I learned how to lose myself in character.' 

It was in a tutorial I found out about his work, it was when Natasha was telling us about the Paris trip that she mentioned him. His work sounded interesting as it was all about what if and the future rather than the past. 

I liked his work as it was dramatic and looked like film stills, the images didn't look too staged and where rather natural.  For Toledano, throwing himself into work has always been a way to process what was happening in his life. He worked on a series about caring for his father, and recently completed a body of work that dealt with the loss of his sister when he was 6 years old.

Although I do not plan to take images like his I do admire his composition and the great lengths he went to to create these images. I plan to talk to a professional throughout the entire process of my project and create images after the appointment. So in that respect his work is something to look up to.