My chosen model wore plain, everyday
clothes – nothing that stood out – to ensure that this was not the focus of the
audience’s attention. I then suggested emotions to show through her facial
expressions which corresponded to the lighting conditions chosen for that
particular shot.
I chose an urban, concrete set for my
backgrounds because it was plain enough not to draw too much attention away
from the emotions of the image, but was interesting enough in terms of texture
and subtle features to be manipulated for many different moods of shots. I
wanted to keep to the same aesthetic of the background – the urban look – to
compare how I could change the mood with just the lighting, not with the
background as well. This was a refinement of my concept from previous shoots
where I had used many different locations.
Obviously the time at which I chose to
shoot was dictated largely by what lighting conditions I wanted for a
particular image, depending on whether I wanted the basic lighting bright or
dim. In the end, I spread my shooting over the course of an afternoon, making
use of the high sun for the happier emotions and the setting sun over the
progress of the evening as I moved through the sadder emotions.
As I developed my concept, I came up with a
loose storyline that would link my images together as a series. To begin with,
the environment is shot as open and bright, reflecting the happy expression
shown by my model. As the sequence progresses, the camera closes further and
further into the figure as she becomes increasingly fearful – an emotion echoed
by the darkening lighting. I feel that I was very successful in capturing the
emotion in my images and reflecting this in the lighting that I chose to
complement each image with.
