Final Finished Fin

So the semester is drawing to a close as we reach Week 12 and I've decided what photographs I want to use for my final folio for this class. Over all I have really enjoyed this class and feel like I have gained some new photography skills throughout the semester. I hope that the class enjoys my photos and will let me know what they think they mean. I think that is more important than what I think they mean, and even though I have selected my folio photos I am still stuck on what to name them. Do I follow Cindy Sherman and just leave them untitled? I'm not sure just yet but here are some of the photos I've selected for my final folio. 

Anyway this is Rachel signing off. 

Keep snapping!

x

Bed Black+White

When you have plans but people cancel at the last minute is the worst. Which unfortunately and fortunately happened to me the other night. I was meant to go out to meet a friend and got myself all done up only to be told that they couldn't make it. Exasperated, naked and with a full face of makeup on I got into bed. After a while I looked over to my camera and decided to stuff it and spend my evening in a more productive way and take some photos. I didn't really have any idea on what I wanted to do I just played with the settings on the camera and clicked the button, What I ended up with was mostly fuzzy out of focus photos but I liked it. Following with my theme of strong shadows and black and white I edited the photos which resulted in these beauties. 

Beers and Thoughts

A lot of my inspiration in life usually comes along when I've had some alcohol in me. Especially when I'm out with other artists. Peta and myself caught up with some beers the other night after class and our conversations are always crazy and interesting. At some point I thought it would be interesting to start taking some photos of myself during the night to see how my face reacts during conversations. I just kept taking photos kind of absentmindedly while focusing on our discussion. 

These two were my favourite of the night. 

 I noticed that I tend to touch my mouth when listening to people, I'm not really sure why I do it, maybe it makes me look more interested. 

Bruises

For some reason I am constantly ended up with bruises on my legs and arms and I have no idea where they came from, I am a massive clutz so its probable that I just walk into things a lot. However I ended up with a huge bruise on my arm the other day because I walked around a corner and bashed my elbow right into the wall; hard. It was pretty sore for a while but what fascinated me about it was the interesting colours that form in a bruise, especially the big ones, and how those colours change as it heals. Purples, blues, greys, greens and yellows. Its quite extraordinary. So as any artist did I took photos of my bruise and played around with effects to see if I could enhance these colours.

Here were the results. (Its kind of gross but I found it interesting)

Bathroom Selfies

Today after class I played around with taking some photos in my bathroom. Using my reflection in the mirror I was about to get some interesting shots, allowing people to see my bathroom - somewhere where I spend a lot of my time doing my make up and making myself presentable - the bathroom is seen as a very personal space that's why I wanted to show it in my photos, show that it is messy and unorganized  which reflects myself a lot of the time.

I edited and posted the photos on Flickr.

I also took some photos up against my white bathroom wall which allowed for an effective backdrop. 

 Blur

Resting Bitch Face 

Rain: Pretty Lights and Shadows

The other night after some drunken escapades at the local bar with some friends, I was on my way home in an uber, it was pouring down rain and the street lights looked amazing through the rain on the windshield. I was memorized by it in my drunken haze so decided to take some photos.

Another thing I noticed during the car ride through the rain was the interesting shadows the rain made on my legs which I also took some photos of. I feel like the uber driver thought I was a weirdo taking photos of my legs. 

Cindy Sherman

For my research assignment it didn't take me long at all to choose who I wanted to focus on, Cindy Sherman.
Her works focus on self portraits, she turns herself into different characters through costume, make up, staging and sometimes even prosthetics. I was instantly drawn to her work, having a background in performing arts and also Cosplay - (Costume Play) I have had to transform myself into different characters and I have always found it an exciting and creative experience.

Here are some of my favourite works of hers.

https://bppct.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/cindysherman-beauty-1-300.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/sherman.shtml

And here are some photographs of me as different characters.

 Because of this influence by Cindy Sherman I would love to include some of this change of character in my final folio. 

Self Portrait

The focus for today was self portraits and coming from a love of taking selfies I wanted to base mine around one of my selfies that I had recently taken and alter the colour and exposure of the picture to give it different perspective and meaning to the original picture.

Original photo: edited from Instagram

Here is the first thing I ended up with.  I was happy with how it turned out with the dark, cool colour that almost looks like its glowing.

After looking at some images of  artist Lindy Lee I decided to use the same image and create kind of an opposite to the first I made using brighter colours but still going for that glowing effect.

Then I put the 2 photos together in a Andy Warhol inspired way leaving me with this finished product. 

Inspiration: Part Two

After taking a photo I've found that most of the time I don't like just leaving it as is. I need to change it to something completely different than what I begun with. Most of the time I do this by drastically changing the contrast, brightness and colour hue and saturation to create different trippy effects. A good example is some old photos I took back in early high school.

For my folio my photographs won't look so much like a acid trip compared to these, instead I want to work more with black and white than bright colours, but I will be playing with contrast to achieve a darker otherworldly feeling to some of my photos. 

Sunlight + Shadows

 Two things that I think go together brilliantly in photography is natural sunlight and shadows. That's what I played with the other afternoon when I had finished my makeup and needed to find some clothes to wear. I notices the sunlight pouring into my room through my blinds and the wonderful effect it made, creating lines through the shadows. I lied down on my bed to see how it would look on my skin and decided it would be a good time to do a little photo shoot. After I has taken a few photos I played with the contrast and the highlights to get this shadowy almost film noir effect.

Inspiration: Part One

As my blog name suggests my main focus for my final folio will be based around self portrait but instead of tradition portraits part of what I am going to tap into the new art form of the "selfie"
selfie

ˈsɛlfi/

noun

informal

1. a photograph that one has taken of oneself, typically one taken with a smartphone or webcam and shared via social media.

   "occasional selfies are acceptable, but posting a new picture of yourself every day isn't necessary"
2. 
   

 No I am one to take a lot of selfies but I won't be posing or making the duck face in any of these photos, no what I want to center on for this work is the unexpected selfie. The idea came to me after I realized my phone would take photos of me randomly and most of the time really unflattering but others the photo would catch me in a moment of laughter or deep thought, with the image and colours blurred in some which I thought look almost dream like at times, so I thought would be a good starting point for this folio.

Here are some of the shots I have captured.

DAY OUT IN FOOTSCRAY

Hello my fellow photographers,

Today for class we ventured out into the wonderfully strange Footscray to take some photos, I got some really good shots, mostly of graffiti and rubbish but good shots all in all. Footscray has kind of a grungy dirty charm to it which is what I wanted to focus on for the day.
We set out in groups as well and it was interesting to see that a lot of the time we took photos of the same thing but each photo had its different take on the subject.

Here are some of my favourite shots taken.
Some of the photos I have slightly edited through cropping, changing the colour, contrast, etc.