City: Anton Furst

For this project, i am trying to show the darker side of the city. I looked at how the city is portrayed in films and television, and came across the designer Anton Furst. He was the production designer for the Tim Burton "Batman" films, for which he won an oscar. His dark noirish nightmare styled sets are a massive part in showing Gotham City as a dark place run by criminals.

These scenes are not unlike some parts of modern cities. The idea behind these designs is that the city was constantly expanding, and being built upon. Because of the lact of space, the city was built upwards on top of existing architecture. This is very similar to the expansion of New York City, which grew up as the population increased and space became less available.

In most of these scenes, the city is shown at night, and it made me think about how the city takes on a completly different dynamic. I want to try and show these changes in the city, comparing the differences between the daytime and night.

Body: Richard Avedon

My tutor introduced me to Avedon's work early on in the project, and the style of his photographs really appealed to me. I looked at his book "In the american west", as series of portraits focusing on the people living in the rural west.

 The series was not about glamorising the people of this part of the country, but showing the day to day lives of the people who lived there. The models were ordinary people, not changed or dressed up, but photographed as they were. It was these details on the models that defined who they were, what they did, and how they lived.

The series contained 124 images, which were taken between 1979 and 1984. During this time, he travelled through 13 states, and visited 189 towns, taking these photos as he travelled. He used a 8x10 camera to capture his images, which gave a great depth of detail in his images.

All of the images were taken with natural lighting, although they look as though they are carefully planned studio photographs. I think that in the studio, i would be able to accurately recreate this look.

Body: Finding the Model

I asked many different people to model for me, ranging from tatto artists, to people in bands, and a few who have normal every day jobs. I struggled to find people who would be available on the days i needed them. Eventually, i asked one of the members of a local hardcore band i watched in Chatham. His name is Dan Lloyd, and he played guitar in a band called Alaska from Thanet. After meeting with him a fair few times, he was really interested in the project i wanted to do, and was really happy to help out. This is some background information on my model.

Dan is 21 years old and lives in Ramsgate. He has been a part of the local music scene for years, playing with various different bands as a drummer, guitarist, and vocalist. His current band, Alaska, are a hardcore band that have toured the UK and Europe, and have a big fanbase around the south east and other areas.

He studied Music Tech in Bristol for a year before returning to kent and starting up his own home studio, in which he records bands from around the area. Currently, daniel is also training to be a tattoo artist.

Our discussions eventually came on to the topic of his tattoos, and how they would affect his future. As he doesnt have a conventional job, and has no intention of getting one, he see's no issue with getting completly covered with tattoos, but he does see the issues that people with tattoos on show have getting everyday jobs.

At the moment, Daniel has his full torso covered, and one full sleeve on his left arm. He also has a number of tattoo's covering his leg, some of which he has done by himself for practise. He said that as soon as he can find the right person, and the right tattoos to cover himself with then he will eventually be covered.

I was very fortunate to have found Dan, as we both have similar interests, and getting to know him before the shoot will really help in making the day less awkward for both of us. He hasnt had any previous modelling experience, but is excited to give it a go.

Body: Pose, Costume, Lighting

To prepare myself for the upcoming body shoot, we've been doing a few workshops that have focused on using different lighting in the studio, as well as considering our subjects attire and body language, and how this can help us to achieve what we want to show in our photos. In the first of these workshops, we were using continuous lighting to light our subjects, and were given 4 different emotions to try and portray. Venerability, pride, intimacy and aloof.

Only using one light source, i had to focus on the subjects posture to try and create these emotions. I found this difficult through the day, and discovered that some emotions are alot easier to show than others. This is my contact sheet from the day.

 Out of these shots, my favourite would have to be the middle top. This image was trying to portray venerability. I decided to make my model very small in the image, and had the camera aim from above her. I also used the shadow to emphasise this feeling of loneliness. Because of this i feel it was my most successful image. For my shoot, i am intending to show someone as being proud of their tattoo's without looking confrontational and conforming to a stereotype, so i will have to work on the proud look further before my shoot.

The second workshop involved showing peoples professions rather than emotions, and was meant to focus us on using different items of clothing to show these. Also this time round we used 2 flashes rather than a continious light. This ggave me a chance to experiment with the type of lighting i wanted to use on my final images. We has to pick 3 out of worker, intilectual, sales assistant, waitress and cleaner.