Unit 2 - Identity
Idea 2: Burning Images
Contact sheet
To further develop my final piece photo shoot, I decided to burn my images. This took lots of trial and error and was quite difficult overall. The act of burning the images represents the idea of disempowerment and loss. I felt it was important to still be able to see the face in the image however, so I decided to leave the main features of the model visible. It is harder than it looks to burn images in a controlled way because I could not just set it on fire or it would get out of hand. This meant I had to experiment with different ways of burning the paper at home. The most successful way I found, was to heat a metal skewer over the gas hob and then use it to sear into the paper. The holes were cut prior to make it easier and controlled. I used a metal skewer to go along the edges and slowly burn and darken them. On many occasions, the thin paper I was using set on fire but usually there were just orange highlights which slowly burnt the paper away in flakes. After I had traveled around the edges of the hole, I used a tealight candle to
make brown areas on my paper to make it look more realistic and naturally burnt. I did this by simply hovering the paper over the fire rather than placing it directly in it. This made circular brown marks on the paper and depending on what angle and how long you held it there, it was either blotchy or smooth, dark or light.
Developments
After I selected these images for my final piece, I needed to edit and enhance them accordingly. I wanted to see contrast in the image between the shadows, highlights and colors and used Photoshop to do so. Importantly, I needed to maintain the silhouette of the model against the background. Because the photo shoot conditions were slightly different between shots, I had to adjust the contrast setting differently between each image. I chose to use this technique to simply enhance the qualities I have already achieved and make them more distinguishable; for example the block shadows in the center image. After burning the images on paper, I needed to create a new photograph. I did this by creating a white backdrop on the floor of my kitchen and then capturing it with the natural lighting. I had to crop the unnecessary paper edges out of the image. If I could change something, I would have given more time for this process because it took longer than I thought, and it is an important part of the final presentation.