Skip to main content

Shoot 5

I honestly wasn't very inspired for this shoot but thought I ought to experiment further and so went an did it anyway. However, because my motivation, mental health and inspiration were running low the images aren't my favourite, but they do work.

From the beginning I wanted to experiment with having people in my images, but then as a I played around with light I changed my mind and wanted to show the presence of people without showing them. With this shoot I met both ideas halfway.

I started with the idea of tracing a noose in light, however it just looked gimmicky and I soon scrapped it. I want this series to be meaningful yet classy. I want it to be respectful.





I then went ahead and and played around with more light trails as we had tried before. These were much more effective however they didn't seem to have much relevance to the tree or the history behind it.

I then tried lighting my feet as I walked in front of the camera, which worked a lot better and showed a presence that is not completely opaque - more like a memory or a trace of what was. It shows life yet it still has no identity as no faces are shown. You can see the pink trainers and skinny jeans in the image which are modern clothing, and the way the figures seem to rush through the image shows, to me, that the tree can go without a look. People just walk by it without realising as while it was hugely significant to women in the past, it doesn't still hold that element of safety it once had. 


I then decided to try out getting our faces in the shot, however I didn't like the outcome as the walking make it look too glitchy, too segmented and not as smooth as i'd like. You also can't see our faces. 

So I sat down in front of the camera and gently moved throughout the 30 second exposure.





in some of the images you can see my phone torch however that could be easily edited out if I were to use these images further.
I like the way the images make it appear as if i was levitating as you cannot see the ground i was sitting on, which gives them that otherworldy feel I want.
In the last image the tree was lightpainted at the same time shaving the exposure on me, so draw a little more attention towards the tree, because at the end of the day it is the star of the show.
I'm not sure if I like these because I wanted the images to be more about the place taking the lead in the images rather than people. While they do have the creepy feeling im not sure I'd use them in my final piece.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Women Accused of Witchcraft were Treated

In 'East Anglian Witches, Ghosts and Strange Tales', the first chapter opens with how one widow, Agnes Fenn, 94, was harassed and punished in attempt to get her to confess to witchery. She was forced into a chamber with a diseased man and offered money to confess she bewitched him, to which she refused. By her own accounts she was further punished physically; pricked, pinched and prodded with daggers, stabbed in the face. She recalls how the witch hunters "cast gunpowder and flashed it in my face". She was also charged of bewitching a child to death. After a lot of time, she was cleared and allowed to go home, but she claimed people still tried to overthrow her for being a witch. 94 may seem like a silly age to try and prosecute a woman of witchcraft, but really any woman who acted oddly or had something 'wrong' with her body she could be prosecuted. Of course, whether the judge would actually accuse the 'witch' is a different story. However, as Agn...
Post a Comment
Read more

THE TREE OF LIFE

The tree of life is a very well known and refereed to tree in mythology and religion, all having different significances depending on beliefs. In Celtic Times Celts were people who were very connected to the nature around them, they had a connection with the Earth. The Tree Of Life was a "tangible part of everyday existence." They created the 'Tree of Life Knot' - an image of a tree with branches and roots forming a circle around said tree. The circle makes the tree the centre of the depiction, as trees were the centre of their lives and all that happened. "Celts realised that the absence of greenery would be the absence of life itself." Celtic mythology then then progressed this into a more otherworldly meaning; the roots and the branches were no longer connected with the roots and instead were reaching up to the top of the diagram, reaching the realm of the gods. The roots grounded the tree the the human world. The tree being the centre is...
Post a Comment
Read more

Matthew Hopkins

Matthew Hopkins from the Manningtree area was born in 1620 who gave himself the title of 'Witch Hunter General'. His career as a witch hunter began in 1644. He was mostly known for his witch hunting capabilities in East Anglia, where it's thought he prosecuted over 300 women between 1644 and 1646. Hopkins had an accomplice; John Stearne. Between them, it's thought that they were responsible for over 60% of all the trials between the early 15th to late 18th century. It's thought that Hopkins was from a very puritan family. When Charles came into power and introduced a less modern form of Protestantism, restoring and bring back the pre-reformation days. Puritan communities were not happy about this because all they held pure would be desecrated, their work undone. In 'Witchfinders; a Seventeenth Century English Tragedy' it says 'if there was one aspect of his (Hopkins') childhood more likely than any other to have initiated and inspired Matthew...
Post a Comment
Read more