JON CRISPIN
Jon Crispin is a photographer who takes photos of many suitcases taken from Willard Asylum residents. the objects look old, rusty, dirty and dusty. He explores mental illness and how its a subjective diagnosis. He has been taking these types of photos since 1980. His exploration of this topic had turned into a career after he saw people were getting kicked out of asylums and were left with no support.
He uses high-key lighting to add the background in his work and now a black background. his photos are vibrant and colourful. His images are saturated and clean with no special effects added to it. Many of his images consist of old objects that were brought by patients of the Willard Asylum.
Many of these images signify the mindset of the average Willard Asylum patient and it impacts as many of the objects are quite random and would not have been brought by an average person. This shows the deeper meaning behind Crispin's work and it shows his goal behind the camera
Contact Sheet - RAW images
In this photoshoot I used a phone camera with the flash on to capture these images.
I have used many different objects for this shoot. These objects consist of a suitcase, old papers, scissors, a speaker, a fire extinguisher, a weight, a keyboard, headphones, mouse and a microphone.
I have chosen these images as Crispin takes photos of peoples suitcases from the Willard Asylum. This means that no one in their right mind would bring a fire extinguisher or a weight in a bag/suitcase.
These images give insight on the mindset of whoever packed the suitcase and what went through their mind while packing it. For example, the composition with the headphones could convince you that the person who packed it is very dedicated to computers and devices for computers.
I have experimented using brightness and contrast. I have tried to make the suitcase pop out more by tuning the brightness and contrast. This darkens the background and brings out the brighter shades of the images. I have also drawn using the healing tool to remove unnecessary details in my work. These images evoke a feeling of confusion in the viewer as they wonder what the purpose of the objects are to the person who packed them. I believe that the Contrast/brightness change further brought out the images more than the original images. I could improve these developments by adding noise to convey an 'old' feeling in the work as Jon Crispin works with old abandoned suitcases.
Black and White Experiments
I have explored my images further by evoking a neutral sense of colour that resonates with my artist's tones. I have been layering these objects to further experiment my compositions. This neutral ses of
colour also evokes the feeling of calmness in the viewer as there isn't a wide range of colours to focus on.
I have used the black and white filter on these images and have used the curve tool to change the contrast and brightness of the images. This lack of colour relate to my photographer as most of the suitcases that Jon Crispin has used were taken from an abandoned asylum which suggests that these images are old just like the suitcases. I believe a strong point of my photos is the gray background which matches the monotone aspects of my work. I could improve these images by working more to make the objects in the suitcases more eye-catching than any other aspect of these images.
Series Experiments
In these developments I have used a series template border in order to get the black border around the images. I have put 3-4 images in the templates which make a series of images. I have made both black & white and coloured series in order to experiment further with this photoshoot. I have chosen to experiment with series as in Jon Crispin's work, he explores a 'series' of objects within a suitcase, this suggests that these 'series' of images could relate to my Photographer. I believe the best part of my experiments is the various different objects in each suitcase which shows the diversity of the suitcases. I could improve this by having higher quality images and more previous developments to work with.