Presenting My Ideas:
 

Chosen Theme:
what ideas from the initial theme do you have? What direction do you want to take the theme in?
My ideas for my photography is to study and capture Mental Health Disorders. Themes of darkness, depression, isolation are the key themes that go around my work. The direction I will take them in is a deeper exploration into these themes and ideas as well as developing them into physical and graphic imagery.

what genre of photography do you think your work will fit into? Why?
My genre for my photoshoot is Digital Manipulation. This fits the work I will produce as much of what I want to create are not something I can visually capture but are photographs that must be enhanced and altered to convey a specific message. This is because as Mental Health is a heavily mental process and internalised so it can not be observed this means I must create environments and digitally manipulate photographs to bring these unobservable conditioned to an observable state.

 

Primary Sources:
What will your primary source be?
My primary source will be my artist research. The four main artists I will look at are Christian Hopkins, Alex Stoddard, Rosie Hardy and Shawn Coss.

What can you go out and photograph initially?
Initially I can photograph self-portrait images of myself that can be altered anyway, shape, or form that I desire. I can also go out and photograph landscapes and scenery that can be applied to the backdrop of photographs. Such as forests or trees and even lakes.

What imagery/subjects would effectively explore your theme direction?
Imagery such as a blank mask or a sheet over ones face could be effective to explore, as this will allow my identity to be hidden. This could communicate how disorientated someone’s identity could be who suffers from mental disorders however further connotations can lead to these photographs I create been more generalisable to a wider audience of males and females.

Why have you selected these primary sources?
I have selected them as these four artists (Christian Hopkins, Alex Stoddard, Rosie Hardy and Shawn Coss.) have a high level of understanding and well developed photography / artwork around the theme and idea of my work.

How easy are the primary sources to access?
My primary sources were easy to access. Most research had to obtained outside of college / six form as the school system has blocked most websites because of key words and the “inappropriate, explicit content” that the photographs include. However some few searches online and a read through articles and websites allowed me to find my primary sources and gain some deeper understanding into their thinking process when it comes to portraying Mental Disorders

What other types of research will you gather?
I can gather research from website research into mental disorders. Ask clients, nurses and doctors about certain conditions and symptoms. The artists could be interviewed for their different techniques and processes. 
 

Artist Research:
Which artists do you intend to study
The artists I intend to study are  Christian Hopkins with his surreal work. Alex Stoddard with his self-portrait work. Rosie Hardy with her Shadows work. Shawn Coss with his Inktober 2016 work. Edward Honaker with his documentary work. Laura Hospes with her documentary work. Maren Klemp with her documentary work. Federico Bebber with his digital manipulation work. Lee Jeffries with his homeless work.

Explain how the artists will inspire you through their use of media, processes and techniques
The artist Federico Bebber inspire me through his processes of creating Digital Manipulation work. Christian Hopkins will inspire me through his portrayal of mental disorders his techniques to create surreal and striking photography with elements of physical and digital manipulation.
Shawn Coss inspires me with his depiction of certain mental health disorders, his art work can help be a foundation of what I visually need to portray in live action.

Explain how these artists could inform the ideas and meaning behind your work
My artists will inform the ideas and meaning behind my work as they provide a foundation and a basic understanding of what I physically and visually have to capture and then create. Shawn Coss, for example, does ink drawings for his work drawing mental disorders in a creepy fashion. This allows me an image of what I need to make live using physical subjects to successful and accurately depict these disorders.

Techniques and processes:
Which techniques do you intend to specialise in and why?
I intend to use Photoshop Elements 14 to digitally manipulate my work. I will be using different techniques for each photoshoot. However similar ones will be used across photographs such as the lasso tool to extract different parts of photographs to bring them together as well as alterations with lights, saturation, colour, and contrast in my photographs to capture eye catching work. On occasions gradient maps will be applied to shape the colour or even in the style of Federico Bebber dispersion effects will be implemented and used.

How do you intend to improve upon your skills in this area?
I intend to improve the quality of my work, Making each photograph more striking and smoothly blended together to avoid rigid ends that are clear indications that I have layered different photographs together. I would like to improve my dispersion effects however more importantly to me I want to decrease my reliability on digital manipulation as I believe the more real life and physically altered the photograph is the more realistic it feels to the audience. Making them question if it is real or is it digital manipulation gains a better reaction. 

What experiments are you interested in exploring?
I am interested in exploring techniques of Christian Hopkins, Rosie Hardy and Alex Stoddard as well to use their processes and techniques to further develop my work. While with Shawn Coss, I would like to experiment in creating real life portrayals of his artwork.

How could you use your artists to inform these experiments?
I could use my artists to inform my experiments with their techniques and processes

Experimentation:
Explain how the work of others has informed the exploration of different materials, techniques and processes?
The work of others has informed my exploration because of the different materials they use (Christian Hopkins using leaves to create wings, or sticks to create wings, or mask to hide identity) Techniques ( Rosie Hardy use of shadows to create a fourth dimension) and processes (Alex Stoddard with his use of forests and water to create different meanings and messages.

Was the experiment successful?
The experiments I have completed so far have been successful  to the degree of creating what I had visualised and capturing different mental disorders.

Was it well informed by your artist/photographer?
My artists Shawn Coss heavily inform the experiments, as his artwork is near identical to my experiments. While other artists are informing my work with their techniques and processes while creating their photographs whether that be positioning of the subjects and objects (Rosie Hardy and the shadows) or the colour pallets they use throughout the photograph (Christian Hopkins, use of purple and blue colouring).

What improvements could be made and why?
The improvements I could make for my experiments on Shawn Coss is to give the photographs a real-world background to go with them instead of static or a plain grey background. Allowing the photographs to have a more solid foot in reality. Improvements to my photoshoots vary between shoots but for example my fourth photoshoot in the style of Rosie Hardy titled “Me and My Shadow” could be improved with a different process used to capture the shadows. This could be done my having the light close to the wall and having a female hand for that slender quality and pointy nails look close to the light to make it more hard of an outline.


Development:
Have you reflected on the development of your ideas?
I have reflected on the development of my ideas. I have done this by looking through my bubble map and mood board to find where I could develop my ideas and pathways I could take to gain a deeper meaning and a more developed idea.

Have you successfully communicated your initial intentions?
I have successfully communicated my initial intentions as so far the work I have produced, to me, have not failed in representing Mental Health Disorders and continue to communicate my ideas and the symptoms and feelings people with Mental Health Issues go through and deal with.

What areas need refining and why?
I need to refine each of the photoshoots I have done so far to further develop their quality and message to the audience. I will do this by creating another photoshoot and this is because I want to continue to improve my work and make it to the best quality it can be.

Which artists has informed your ideas?
The artist Christian Hopkins, Shawn Coss and Rosie Hardy have informed my ideas so far and I hope to develop them further with other artists gathering more techniques and different processes to inform my work and develop my photoshoots.

What is the next step?
My next step is to produce more photoshoots for my work influenced by my artists. I will finish experiments on Shawn Coss and develop experiments on Christian Hopkins and Alex Stoddard next.