Unsuccessful Photoshoot
Inspired by Gareth McConnel’s more recent work from his series, Dream Meadow, he captures nude photographs and utilises studio lights to completely bleach his models with light to create these ethereal beings of pure light. In my studio shoot, I did deviate from capturing nude images like McConnell as I did not feel it would best emulate the presence of my mother’s narrative as I wanted to capture various emotional standpoints.
I wanted to illustrate a mother’s embrace to support my mother’s short story visually in figure one. I feel the sitters’ posing captures that atmosphere perfectly as one of the sitter’s heads delicately lies on the other’s shoulder and holds onto the other shoulder in a manner that seems on the verge of desperate, unwilling to let go. This unwillingness illustrates what my mother described in her short story regarding our separation during my childhood. Her reluctance to let go of me is present throughout her writing. I wanted to capture this feeling for the viewers so they could empathise with her rather than judge her anger and admire her determination as I do. However, technically, this image did not turn out as I intended to light the photograph. My intention for this photoshoot was to completely blow out the models with light until they were only negative versions of silhouettes, a term deemed by my mother inspired by Gareth McConnel’s more recent photographs. Unfortunately, the light bled into the left side of the frame, and the model on the right was not properly blown out with light as it was not reflected correctly with the polyboard on the right side of the frame. A similar issue occurred with most of these images captured during this photoshoot.
Overall, I do not feel this photoshoot was as successful as it could have been due to poor lighting and a lack of dynamic poses that seem cliché. These images do not communicate to the viewer how my mother felt during our separation and reunion. They express more about how I felt during that period of my life. I spoke to her after the photo shoot, and she seemed to think these images were too generic and only figure one could portray her feeling and short story. For this part of the project, which is meant to emulate the hope she had for both of us for the future while feeling abject despair and the pure joy she felt reunited with me, she said these images felt too sad and hopeless. In the next photoshoot, I will attempt to correctly blow out the models and have some examples of poses for the models to easily visualise how they are meant to pose as I felt stilted for inspiration during this photoshoot.
