Portfolio Week 1: Ideas and Planning.

First Brainstorm:
I've always had a problem with sharing and expressing my ideas. For too long I've had my good ideas used to benefit others, it is something I'm trying to change. I have a lot of ideas when it comes to photography, not all of which I feel I'm capable of pulling off completely. I want to mix creative fine art with editorial photo journalism. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do this yet, but what I want to do is a study of human behaviour. I want to photograph the little things people do, finger crossing, lip biting, etc. I want the viewer to question what is going on, who the person is, why they're doing these things, how they might be feeling.

I'm considering working in black and white and focusing a lot on light and shadow to portray my ideas. I think for this, I may have to use the studio or a flash in non-studio situations. I have my starting point, focusing on smaller body parts, hands feet, part of the face. I want to keep the identity of my 'models' a secret. I have a few friends that are very camera shy that I think would be perfect for this kind of direction, but I think using little things like hands, feet, knees, shoulders would be okay.

Second Brainstorm:
Since coming up with what I want the subject matter and nature of my photographs to be I have decided to focus mainly on the hands. The way people use their hands, things they're holding and personality traits, things they like as an object or things they like doing. I would also like to include parts of the face, so the viewer gets a small idea of what the person looks like or their gender if you can't already tell that from their hands.

I have taken two sets of photographs since deciding what I want to do. The first was with Kieran, who was painting part of a model car. The images were good, especially the lighting situation, but I didn't include any part of his face and wasn't overly careful about what was featured in the background. This shoot was a good indicator of what I needed to focus on and what I needed to be more careful of for the following shoot. The second shoot was my attempt at tethered shooting. For these images I used myself as the subject. It was a fun little experiment and I liked the results. There were a few things that I need to look at and possibly reshoot. I think I will reshoot because I did like the way they turned out. I would like to be able to include myself and I think it will put my models at ease as well knowing that I'm also featured in the series of photographs.

At this stage, I love the colour in the images, so I'm not completely ruling out black and white, but I am keeping an open mind about leaving the photographs in colour. For a few photographs, using bridge, I've sat the coloured and black and white versions next to each other to help debate my choices, but so far, both images have worked well in black and white and colour.