book making

Today I aim to start making my book, I still have to write the ending letter to myself but I can start laying out the pages to get an idea of how many pages I am going to need.

I am aiming to have this finished by Thursday but as I have never used InDesign before it is going to hard for me. I have the basics down and am starting to get the hang of it. I like the way it is shaping up but I want the book to be black or grey so I will have to learn how to do that tonight. I am still sticking to the images on the right hand side as they are the first thing that is to be seen and the writing on the left hand side.

Contests

I aim to enter 5 contests, 3 with a prize and 2 for exposure. I found a site that lists individual contests in an array of themes, from architecture to photos of the year. Most of these are free and you have to sign up but it does not take more than 20 minutes to create a profile (or you can sign in with Facebook)

https://www.photocontestinsider.com/ 

http://www.viewbug.com/ <<entered 2 today.

Some of the competitions have prizes such as camera bodies and some up to £3000. I have already entered 2 today and one has a grand prize of £3000.

Updating cv

Updated my cv to include more work experience, will add the lighting workshop as I worked as art director for the shoot.

new cv

I will also update my portfolio images and the images on my cv.

more notes

These are the notes that I have been taking every other day/week, I think they should go on the left hand side of the book and an image on the right. Some of them are just thoughts that have flickered in and out of my mind all day and some one them are detailed journal entries describing my day and how I have felt. I still aim to print and destroy a copy of the letter to myself and possibly write a reply so the book will start with depressions letter to me and I will write a reply back and this will be the last page of the book. 

I aim to also include image of myself that others have taken on nights out to show that I am not just one person i have 2 halves and each has their own life. 

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.