prints.

This is the final version of my multi-screen project. I'm really glad that my idea went from simple fingerprints to something much more fascinating, and I think the final film does it justice.

I realise the audio is not perfect, but my main aim is to come back to this and actually extend it even further, making it into more of a film than an after effects experiment.

To my surprise, when playing around with opacity and blend modes, I noticed that  exclusion  created a sepia-like tint to most of the imagery. This was simply a happy accident in the editing process that actually ended up shaping the rest of the project. With forty-two videos on me, I decided to cut them all down to one second, speed them up and loop them. This was my original idea. However, when I came across the beautiful colours that the blend mode offered me, I decided that instead of a repetitive and unchanging loop, I wanted the fingerprints to interact more. 

So when it came to it, I actually layered two of the same videos on top of each other. The bottom layer was reversed whilst the top one was blended using exclusion. That's what gives the effect of movement in some of the shots, whilst others remain still (apparently my hands were shaking at different speeds when holding the camera.. heh). 

For the ending I actually layered the clips three times, the third layer also being blended with exclusion, creating a somewhat golden and blue haze. I found it fit in well with my ending shot of a golden fingerprint, and worked perfectly for my colour-scheme of yellow, white and blue.

Happy accidents when editing are the absolute highlight of my life. I didn't expect the visuals to actually look so mesmerising but now I can't picture the film being anything but what it is. It worked perfectly well with what I created in After Effects prior to that, and at the end the screens really seemed to interact with each other.

fingerprints.

With my plan ready, all I had to do was create the fingerprints. At first I wasn't sure how I was going to get them but I thought light might play a part, so I decided to dip my fingers in some acrylic and press them on tracing paper. I did a few black ones before using charcoal on a new piece of paper and dipping my fingers in white acrylic to create a contrast. I also did one that was golden because I thought it could go well with my idea of black/white/gold colour-scheme.

Then some sunlight decided to make me aware of it and I had the idea to put the tracing paper against the window to get a natural-looking lightbox. To my surprise, through the macro-lens it looked absolutely stunning. At first I tried to use a tripod, but the angle my window was at proved to be difficult to reach without tilting the tripod in some weird angles, so I decided to just film it hand-held. I did use the tripod to stabalize it a little.

I also decided to try and shoot a little ending - I wrote some text on two new pieces of tracing paper, and filmed myself putting them in front of the lens.

This went so smoothly there's not much I can say about it except that I'm excited to work on the footage and see where it takes me!

lines.

From the start I knew I wanted text to play a part in this project, simply because I felt like it was a good tool for an interaction between the screens. Currently I have two parts that require text: one being this malfunctioning/meltdown of the system, and the other being the  hello?  slowly being typed on that links itself to the other screen.

The current plan requires six parts to the right screen, these being:

one - going through numbers

two - the world rotating

three - linear journey to picking out one out of many

four - loading and selecting

five - malfunctioning

six - showing a sense of awareness

one:

this part is important because together with the fingerprints on the left screen it symbolises a large amount of people/information, until finally it seems to narrow down something and ask for time to process this information. for this i wrote down a random eleven letter number and used character offset in order to generate numbers time*24.

two:

this part is my way of showing that the system is looking around the world - two simple circles, one moving around the other. i made the decision to make the other circle black, thereby fading away with the background. this was done using a null object and checkbox control.

three:

this part symbolises a kind of a journey/picking out a single item out of many (in this case it picks out an individual). i like the idea of it going a bit crazy and all over the place before fading into a single dot. it required using three polystars and trim paths keyframes.

four:

this part is important in terms of the system processing. even whilst loading it seems to be breaking down a little bit. this was done using a circle and a solid + stock footage + displacement map, as well as an alpha matte.

five:

this part is mostly text based and is a warning about the meltdown the system is experiencing, unable to understand what's wrong. similarly to the previous part it required stock footage and a displacement map to create this kind of glitch effect on the text.

six:

and finally, the last part was just a single word. it's meant to imply that the system is somewhat conscious and aware, and is trying to contact the other (human) side. this just uses a type on effect.

our prints and your numbers.

     

For some unknown reason, I can't think of anything else that could possibly symbolise humans as much as fingerprints. Perhaps it comes from watching the series The Alienist, which is actually one of my inspirations for this project in terms of style, in which the birth of forensic science is discussed

The opening sequence of the series has dark and moody atmosphere, and I adore the deconstruction of buildings, grain and scratches shown within it. It has a heavy feeling to it in terms of colour but the deconstruction carries a sense of lightness and beauty despite its actual weight of steel and workforce.

To push this idea further, I was also inspired by the ending of ID from LaTurbo Avedon. To me those fingerprints looked like little islands, which got me thinking about how I could use differently acquired fingerprints to portray more people.

With that in mind, my idea is to create a balance between imperfect individuality and a perfect digital force. By that I mean I want the left side to showcase a number of detailed fingerprints and the right side to respond to the left by acknowledging the prints and attempting to discover a person, leading to an interaction between the two.

I'm not sure if it makes sense in words yet but my mind's running free so I'm excited to try and see what I can create.

Fingerprint:

[n] \ˈfiŋ-gər-ˌprint \

 the impression of a fingertip on any surface; also : an ink impression of the lines upon the fingertip taken for the purpose of identification. human fingerprints are detailed, nearly unique, difficult to alter, and durable over the life of an individual, making them suitable as long-term markers of human identity. 

five 'o.

The five images to start with. I like unevenness of having an image in the middle that does not have a pair. From the five photos above, I have only truly decided on the three middle ones. The two on each end are not necessarily the strongest ones so I'm still planning to review this before making a decision. 

The images tell a story within a poem, which I'm going to add as soon as the final photos are picked. Something I didn't really cover previously is just what I want from my series visually. Mind you, this might come across as rather artificial but I want to bring texture into my images through adding text with a pen (and maybe some paint). I realise this is risky because if I get something wrong, it's the print ruined, but perhaps quite stupidly that's what I want from the outcome. I want it to seem rough, like a note to myself. In the editing process for which I've used Lightroom I have played around with the tone curve and content of red, green and blue within the images, but most importantly I have added a small amount of grain.

Recently it's become an unusually controversial thing to add grain. Some say it's defying the whole point of it being digital. Some say it's overused, unnecessary, pointless. Some say it ruins the image.

And that's fair but the reason I add grain is because I am so sensitive to whether there is or isn't any. The grain reminds me of when I used to mix paint with spoons of sand to create a textured painting like Anselm Kiefer or Gerhard Richter. To me this digital grain is that little bit of sand, that small amount of dirt that makes the photo imperfect and flawed, and thereby touchable. This might just be me babbling nonsense but I am simply a fan of adding that pinch of texture.

And like I wanted to at the beginning, I have decided to crop the images in a different aspect ratio - 9:16. I still plan to mount them on a foam board, although I did initially consider using clips (this might be a useless excuse but all my lovely rode gold clips are packed away in the bottom box of the storage place where all my stuff is whilst in the process of moving.. so unless I can miraculously get a hold of them, it seems I'll have to stick with the good old board).

a mirror of our own.

I was very upset because I couldn't think of a journey my images could portray, nor did I know what I wanted to achieve. Apparently my first idea was discomfort and so I pushed myself to come up with a list of visual changes I could use in my work which was my first mistake because that's what got me stuck.

It was only after Avery told me to spend some time consuming art did I find something that I was actually excited to try. I had bought those little triangle mirrors at the very start of January because their shape really stood out in a music video by Garrett Borns but I pushed this idea away because I felt it wasn't good enough to create a journey. But soon enough I also found this photograph by Erik Johansson called Impact (2016) and suddenly I knew what I wanted to do. The photograph is surreal but warm, and it focuses on the man standing in the middle of the image but because there's so much going on in the image, it almost takes the attention away from him. That's what stood out for me.

As a starting point, I carried my little mirrors with me everywhere, waiting for the perfect moment to shoot. Because I had been stuck for so long, I was suggested to think of the written part before I tried to do the photographs but I found that as soon as I took the first image, the text started forming in my head and helped me find a narrative. After that, I found it easy to just keep going.

I had a lot of fun using the mirrors because, as I found out, there were a lot of different things I could do with them. One of the most fun is actually this image below. It was difficult to take because even the smallest movement would ruin the alignment of the lens info and the eye but it remains one of my favourites simply to me this was the point where I started enjoying what I was doing.

From there on out the series formed themselves and I was left with the difficult task of combining images and merging them with text, although thankfully I already knew what I wanted from them. My other favourite was the fact that without a camera - without getting very close to the mirrors and having the right depth of field, all that could be seen was the shape of mirrors and not the portraits of the people.

three contemplations.

the three contemplations:

the echo repeats itself
in the quiet ambience of the house,

don't feed the wolves, they said,

but they are my thoughts and

i don't really want to starve because i

am already empty everywhere else.

the complexion fades per day and that

is all you see, oh darling,

in life nothing is but complex shards

of sobs in a cold stranger's kitchen

and walking miles to go in circles.

i will smile for you,

and they will smile for me,

and we will all smile

and sip on that tea for the wolves.

For the past few weeks I felt what I could only describe as a photographer's block. I had so many ideas but none of them seemed good. I didn't want to create anything at all. I had an idea to ask people about what was the reason for when they last cried (hence previous edited photos with blue shapes) because I kept writing poems about sadness. Then I wanted close ups - to get really close and personal. I also wanted two people within an image and to get them into each other's spaces. 

But the reality is that I simply cannot create for the sake of creating. I know, I know, it's probably a silly thing to say. Surely as a photographer you learn to just create what you need to create.

Well.. I honestly don't think I can. I don't think I can create a deep, researched background for my photos before I take them. That was my issue this time around - I wanted to make something absolutely amazing, something I had previously never done. It's quite funny, really, because I didn't realise just how much I was forcing myself to do something I didn't really want to until Leah told me to stop and think before I just 'did things differently for the sake of doing something I don't usually do'. 

Truth is I'm quite an awful photographer. Sometimes I simply cannot create. Most of the time I hate what I make, and the rest of the time I don't even try because it upsets me so much.

And then other times it just clicks. Like with the photos above of Jack and Morgan on the stairs. It was 8am, and the fresh snow covered the ground. The house was quiet but everyone was beaming with excitement, despite our usual mood of anxiety and stress. 

Or the photo where I just dropped some mirrors on a table in a cafe and snapped a shot of Jack's reflection in them alongside a little bottle of milk. (I was too shy to ask the barista but I felt really happy and decided I want to take a collection of photos of coffee shop baristas)

Honestly I'm not too sure what I'm trying to say with all this except that I was very confused and frustrated, and now I'm not. In fact I realised I really liked the image of the mirrors because it sort of touched upon the idea of fragments of a person's face so I've decided to pursue this style. 

squares.

last night i cried over
the pain within us

created by the endless

youth and naivety

greens.

the shoot above.

In the previous post I mentioned that my mind was filled with countless ideas of the style I wanted my portraiture to explore. Perhaps unsurprisingly I found myself so overwhelmed by the stylistic ideas that I felt like I had some sort of a photographer's block - I felt like I couldn't take any photos until I figured out a meaning or a journey. It was almost like I refused to try until I had finally developed a final series in my head. To no surprise, that is a very nasty, worrying feeling. 

So I did what I do best and took a train, met up with my friend and just kept snapping images until the battery of the camera died. Whilst I wouldn't say this in any way relates to my previous train of thought, I did try to keep in mind that for these series I wanted to push myself to do something I hadn't previously done. 

And in this scenario that was me directing. Properly so. All of these images are wholly staged, including clothing and make-up. To my own surprise I found it very easy to tell Clio exactly what I wanted from her, something I never thought I'd be comfortable with. 

The last two and the bottom image are my absolute favourites from this shoot. I directed Clio to use her hands and legs as if she was moving to Madeline Follin's Funnel of Love - a feeling of free flow and feather-like lightness. I also tried a low angle - something I never do as I usually aim for shots from above or on the eye level. I found out that it is actually something that I like. On top of that, I really like the use of reflection I had in the first two images so that is definitely something that keeps sneaking into my photography recently, so perhaps I could explore that some more.

In the end, I realised that sometimes a photograph doesn't need a deep, thoughtful meaning - sometimes it creates it for itself after it's been captured. I'm thankful I did this because I finally don't feel stuck. Instead I just want to see what else new I could try.

And not to forget, Lightroom and Photoshop were a big part of why I feel these images are such a success. They were all individually toned and coloured, and I played around with the levels of rgb hue and saturation. Afterwards I added a thin white frame around them in Photoshop.

joke's on us.

The plan was simple. I was going to visit my friend and her roommate, and ask them to sit down in front of the camera. Little did I know that I would end up using toilet roll as a tripod and leaving the low-battery camera on for continuous shooting whilst my friend and I pretended to laugh at nothing (because the roommate was feeling too annoyed to accept the offer). And then at some point we actually started laughing (genuinely) and wouldn't stop until about 80 photos later.

So the hardest part was actually choosing images where the two of us didn't look like absolute bums, in disbelief of our bad jokes, and editing them to look somewhat nicely coloured.