Single image

Final (single image)

The narrative behind this image is insecurities. Wanting to be skinny and thinking you’re not or you need to be skinnier because of today's society portraying that if you’re not skinny you’re not beautiful. 

I think insecurities and identity is quite a common thing in photography, you find it everywhere I guess. Maybe people are getting sick of it I don't know but I wanted to have emotion in my narrative there's probably thousands of other topics I could have chosen but I feel this is more personal in a way. I found that people around me talked about their appearance a lot and what you needed to do to be "perfect", it’s all kind of a load of nonsense really but we all have our own insecurities.

So the image I chose to present is of my sister. My original idea for this image was to try experiment with Polaroid, which I used on my other sister but it

didn’t really turn out that well so I disregarded them and instead went with digital. I captured quite a few shots of this pose, getting her to disfigure her stomach in different ways but I though this particular pose showed exactly what I was wanting. I do actually like some of the other images better but I wasn’t sure about them. I edited my image in Photoshop, changing the tone to black and white then adjusting the shades on the curves graph. I also deliberately blurred my image using the blur tool. I decided to go with a black and white image because to me with black and white images you just get more emotion I find that I wonder more with black and white. It’s very beautiful I think. I also decided to blur my image because I thought that it added to the insecurity and meaning of the image. In a way I guess it could represent a thought, this is what she's thinking about herself and how she wants to look.

These are just showing the process you could say I went through on deciding whether to blur my image or not.

Before blurred

Some blurred (hands, bra)

All blurred

My original plan was to add some text on the image, but from feedback I was told that it didn’t need text and was already strong without the text. In some ways I do agree but I would still have liked to experiment more with it. This isn’t a great interpretation of my image with text but you get the idea, I think it would have been more successful if I had wrote the text on her stomach before taking the picture or it was suggested that I could write on the print itself which made me think about Douglas Gayeton's images he capture about life in a Tuscan town. I would definitely like to experiment with this idea, I think it would be interesting to see how it would turn out.

And these are the different poses I experimented with, I decided to rather have them all blurred out to try some in focus. I think it also works, my favourite (in focus) image is image two. I did blur out the bra because I thought it took the focus away from the stomach with all the patterns, I think if I was to edit it more I'd blur it out more. My favourite photo I think out of them all is image 3. I like the composition of it, I think I need to edit the tone of it more maybe make it lighter in some places more so around her stomach to emphasize the distortion. And maybe try it in focus to see what sort of effect it has.

1

2

3

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5

Im going to continue with the theme of insecutites for my series, I have a few ideas with how i want to experiment with them Im looking forward to see how they turn out and where it takes me.