Production Diary

My journey from pre-production changed drastically as I have altered the final project that I am going to create. I decided that I wanted to change this from developing a magazine to capturing mental health issues through a series of photographs. I feel photography has such a huge impact as there are no words, just emotion portrayed through an image.

The key aspect of the photography that I needed to plan was the model, this, of course, had to be male as I am representing men's mental health. Luckily a male friend offered to help me by modeling for my photograph. I decided that I would have a black/dark background for all the images as this helps to keep the focus on the model as well as developing a sense of loneliness. I came upon the decision to edit my photographs into black and white, as personally, I feel this conveys much more emotion and looks

 With the first image, I wanted to represent the feeling

In the editing process, I added a lot of texture to create a harsh and rough appearance. I positioned his hair in this way as it frames the eyes nicely and bringing focus to the hurt and sorrow. I also drew the whites out in the bandage to bring attention to this and the idea he feels he can't speak about his problems due to society thinking this weak. 

For the second photograph, I wanted to use a basic pose and angle, so the attention is instantly drawn to the subject, this being the male. Furthermore, the backdrop amongst all the imagery is black as this contradicts the male and I wanted the male to be the light source, in the sense of living. The image is confusing to the eyes due to the multiple exposures, I wanted to develop the idea of his headspace being a blur and reinforcing the confused state of mind. 

With this photograph, you are instantly drawn to the blindfold, this is due to the whites in the image being exposed, the result of this focuses the viewer's attention here. The purpose of the blindfold is to suggest that society can not see this disability, Watsky's theory of  'people automatically perceive disabilities to be something automatically visible or detectable from their conceptions of ''normal'' people' reinforces this, because looking at the image he has no physical disability but he does have an internal mental disability that can not be detected unless stated.

To create this photograph I used cellophane and wrapped this over the models face, a few holes were inserted into the cellophane for the model to breathe. The idea behind this image is to develop the idea of suffocation, the man feeling like he is suffocating with his internal problems and drowning in sorrow. The highlights are increased in this image to draw out the crinkled cellophane as this can also appear as water in a sense, this reinforcing the drowning idea.

For this image, I used a long exposure to capture the movement of the subject. The reason I used long exposure was to show the two different versions of himself, one being the present and the other being his future. Many people suffering from mental health conditions do not see to the future, they look back on the past and reflect on that, in a negative way. 

This shot certainly conveys much misery, you can witness in the model's eyes. I positioned his face in this way and asked him to look away from the camera to develop a disconnected feel, he feels as though he is ashamed of his mental illness. 

Certainly, with this image the white stands out significantly, I did this in order for the head to be the focal point. In addition to this, I edited the grey and black tones to become darker in order to deter the attention to clothing or background. You can see that the subject is screaming, his emotions and thoughts are devouring him and he feels as though he cannot escape.