When? Shoot.

For this shoot, I went the playground of my school - whilst it was empty and had been raining moments before the shoot and I placed my model in the centre of the empty playground, ensuring that there was plenty of space around her. I then asked my model to write in her own handwriting (similar to Wearing) the word “WHEN” and asked her to hold it up towards the camera, whilst wearing a COVID-19 face covering. I shot many different images, with a slight change in composition in each to attempt to achieve the perfect image that I was looking for. I took the photos using a Canon EOS 4000d DSLR camera, with a portrait orientation for the majority of the shoot.

Original Image.

With this image, I took it at a slight angle, with the subject closer to the right of the photograph. Compositionally, I noticed that with many of Wearing’s images a lot of her subjects weren’t placed directly in the middle of the frame, I believe that this was not only to the make the image look more authentic but also because contextually she snapped one quick image of each of the strangers featured in her concept – and I don’t think that she had the opportunity to compositionally pose the subject in her images resulting in a lot of them being slightly off-centre, so I attempted to recreate this in mine. What I like about this image is the environment in which the image was taken in, it was a damp and gloomy day which reflects the message on the sign that the subject is holding: “WHEN”, in referral to the pandemic, rhetorically asking when the pandemic will be over. I believe that the gloomy atmosphere mirrors the relatable and depressing question of asking when society will return to the normality of there being no pandemic, which is all precisely presented in the empty school surrounding the model and the face mask she is wearing.

Developments:

Final image.

For the developments of this image I completely altered all aspects of it. Firstly, I cropped the image in to bring more focus upon the model and her feelings. Next, I completely decreased the saturation of the image until it was black and white before adjusting the other aspects. I made the image black and white to increase the moody atmosphere and to create a deeper and more dramatic atmosphere which draws the viewer into the image. Next, I adjusted the highlights and shadows and added a vignette, to eliminate anything that would distract the viewer from the overall atmosphere. I also slightly increased the grain of the image to replicate the style of image that a film camera would produce, which is contextually what Gillian Wearing used when shooting this concept in the early 1990s. Finally, I focused on individual areas of the photograph to make them all stand out. I increased the blacks of the face mask and the jumper to create an almost empty atmosphere to the emotions of the model. Additionally, this also allowed the sign to stand out – which is the highlight and focal point of the photograph – and this is why I also increased the whites of the paper and the blacks of the writing, to make the sign the prime focus of the image. This is to take inspiration from Gillian Wearing’s concept, where the focal point of all of her images is the sign and the writing upon it and it also links to my theme of ‘The World Around Us’ because the image reflects the relatable current affairs of 2020-21>.