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.