Doing my project A Reflection in Nature, I felt as if my work didn't have a deep enough meaning to it because I was simply just taking photos of flowers and manipulating them in photoshop or using a mirror/ glass ball to create a reflection. I wanted to make my work mean more to people and the viewer especially and present a series of images that have a powerful meaning behind it. I wanted to create a powerful meaning especially considering recent events because we are slowly destroying and killing nature and slowly we will eventually killing ourselves. Climate change is a big thing in todays society and scientists say that we have until 2030 to turn things around and reduce pollution levels before permanently damaging the earth forever. However governments do not seem to be doing much and causing the rest of the people to suffer. For example, in Brazil the Brazilian government keep cutting down trees in the rainforest for multiple reasons, such as cattle farming, oil drilling or using the wood to sale, either way they are having little care for the rainforest and only concerned on how much money is in their pockets. The amazon rainforest is one of the main sources of oxygen for the rest of the globe and by cutting down millions of the trees, it effects the rest of the world. Additionally, when they use the land for cattle farming, the cattle permanently damage the land and nothing can ever grow in that area again naturally. The permanent damage of nature is not just in Brazil, this is a global problem and I wanted my series of photography images to help reflect this problem and highlight that we are running out of time to make a change. However, I was struggle to come up with a concept that fit this message and the term 'Reflection'. I was talking to friends and doing research on my own and then in a casual conversation I had, one of them said "sometimes you just need to stop and reflect in life" and I realised how I could create my photos to seem more deeper. I realised that I was taking the term 'Reflection' too seriously and physically, and I didn't think about reflection in an emotional way.
Therefore I decided to change my approach slightly to help present my further way of thinking, and now I am going to edit nature photos into people to create the appearance that they are thinking/ reflecting about nature and realising how we need to save and treasure what we have left. After doing a lot of research, I found an artist that does more or less exactly what I was thinking about doing. Christoffer Relander edits nature pictures into people who have a serious or concerned look on their face. When looking at his work, I made me think about what positions I would want the model to stand in to get the best effect. I personally preferred the model looking off into the distance the best because it made the model seem as if they're deep into thought. Here are some examples of Christoffer Relander's work which I could hopefully come out with something similar.
So far I do like my shoots because they have helped my produce more ideas on how to create reflection due to reflection being portrayed in a different way in each shoot. In my opinion, my favourite shoot was the first one because I was really able to experiment with my photos in photoshop by creating different ways to produce a reflection. This technique was one of my favourites in producing a reflection because I liked the affect it created because some of my photos didn't really look like flowers anymore, they looked more abstract. Using this technique I was able to produce a lot of photos that looked different and unique to each other, even though they are all pictures of flowers and I have used the same technique in photoshop to produce this. However, I did not like my second shoot because I felt that the photos did not portray reflection clearly enough. Additionally, I do not think that these photos contribute to my final portfolio at all because these images do not link to any other of my shoots. This shoot does not demonstrate reflection clearly like my other shoots because the water is quite mirky therefore the reflection in the water is not clear.
No comments:
Post a Comment