Shoot 5 (with research).

The idea behind this shoot is based upon social media and technology, mobile phones specifically. I was looking at the work of Phillip Lorca diCorcia and his 'Heads' series, and really loved how he lit up specific people surrounded by lots of other people. 

This led on to me thinking about how I could use lighting to create an effect in my images, to create a meaning within them. I decided that I seem to see a lot of people on their phones when I walk anywhere (myself included), and they are always looking down at them and not really focusing on the world around them as they are too invested on their phones. I then recalled seeing the work of Antoine Gregor, and how they use phones in the project called 'SUR-FAKE' to resemble how people are obsessed with their phones and go on them instead of appreciating where they are or who they are with.

The idea of the images below is to capture the essence of someone being on their phone in the presence of someone else. Although these images are staged, they could easily be taken spontaneously of that person as they are someone I know that goes on their phone in the company of others. For the images I used a dark room and asked the person to hold their phone underneath their face to light it up with the only light source being the screen of their phone, as if they are on the phone and aren't paying attention to the camera. 

These are some test shots I took of myself in my bedroom simply to see if I liked the way the images looked - I didn't want to plan to take photographs of someone else if I really didn't like how they looked initially. It was quite difficult to not move when the camera was taking the photo as the camera had to be a slowish shutter speed to allow the light in as it wasn't a flash of light that was happening. I think it would have been better to do this in either the studio where I could use lighting a lot better or if I had used a flash gun, neither of which I had access to. I really liked how these images looked anyway, minus the blurriness, so I decided to take it further and shoot with other people because I'm not planning on doing self portraiture for my project.

Although it is very difficult to see, the first image does contain the subject, but because of it being so dark it is very hard to pinpoint where she is in the image. Because of this, I had to change my camera settings to allow more light in because I wanted there still to be enough light to be able to see the person within the portrait. I then asked her to move into a different position on her bed because I felt that the light shining in through the curtains behind her was causing a distraction. I really like how the phone can be seen in the portrait frame images, but also think it works in landscape too because of the question of what it is that is lighting her.

These images are very similar to the previous images due to me using the exact same technique; taking a photo of someone using only the light on their phone to light their face. Differently to the images of the woman, I think the light coming through the curtain works really well on some of these portraits as it gives the image a warm, homely feel and doesn't cause a distraction as it is mainly behind the subject so looks like it has been used for effect. The only issue I am having with these images is that I am having to use quite a long shutter speed so the image ends up looking a bit blurry - I think this project would work better in the studio as I could use the lights in there to light the face instead of a phone and just make it look similar.