Inner Character Digital Photographs.

To start myself off and trigger ideas, I decided to stage a shoot inspired by Davidson's photographs of the dwarf, one which appealed to me the most was where this face was masked and he was standing alone. I tried to convey this interest in the scenery and appearance of where the was standing in this first photograph. I used a digital camera for these so that I could quickly capture various shots and then decide whether to use film or not once I know whether to take this theme/idea further. Black and white was chosen to give the photographs an older look to them.

The setting was rather abandoned and the trees looked messy which worked well for looking like somewhere he shouldn't be. The masked face hid the identity and the cigarette created a powerful look, quite menacing when combined with the face. The framing as a long shot was inspired by the way Davidson took his photograph but I chose to do mine landscape to capture the scenery more.

 I had to use a range of shots because it would be too time consuming to keep changing location like Davidson did and this was only my starter. I liked this photograph because we see his stare looking straight at us, it is more portraiture than documentary, I liked the contrast created from the clothing compared to the background which had lighter blacks.

 A side on shot, wasn't too keen on this because the framing was slightly out of place, the right arm could have been completely in the photograph, the trees worked well and created a spooky look though.

This photograph gives a slightly look to his appearance but still keeps it hidden, his thoughtful expression links with the starting point and shows his inner emotions. The shadow and detail on the hand was created on photoshop by burning the skin lines to darken them, so was the depth of the shadowing on the mask and hat, I like the tones of grey and black in this because of how dark and light they go, it almost looks slightly solarised.

Here I started experimenting with these photos by hand, because of the black and white harsh contrast in the photograph I thought that I could link this with the mysterious subject matter by eerily dripping black ink down the photograph to represent something strange and spooky appearing into the picture.

This was slightly over bearing and took away the attention being drawn to the face and the cigarette by making the mask less noticable.

I tried to use the ink on the smoke here to give an abstract illusion of black smoke which worked quite well, by letting it drip it made it look like it was flowing free.

I tried the dripping effect again here but kept it more limited so that it was so thick and over bearing, it worked much better because of the liquid only thinly dripping down the face and leaving it visible and clear to what it it still, they also matched the stripes on his clothing giving a zoomed in effect.

Here I created the smoke with just dots rather than drips which contrasted the stripes, it gave it a child like effect which was creepy when involved with a serious subject matter. 

I then decided to scan the photographs onto graph paper and newspaper to see how they would look then. This one above reminded me of a radar system because of the lines over the photograph which gave me the idea that this photograph could be represented more deeply by the man being a criminal and being tracked.

Here the newsprint gave an idea again that he is somebody mysterious who is being looked for and being seen by the public as unidentified.

Here the lines were more close up and reminded me of a cage meaning he could be trapped, I think the lines on the graph paper show through enough to be noticed and work well because they aren't too overbearing.

Here I combined the two experiments I have already done by printing the results I had from dripping ink of the photographs onto the same types of paper. This looked rather random because of the graph lines and ink dripping being so different, I think that the effects work best by themselves because they are sharp and simple like the photographs themselves.

I felt the same about this photograph, especially because I didn't originally like the result of the ink on it.

This photograph ended up cropped after being printed on because of the printer ink smudging and ruining the effect, I didn't try to correct this because I felt that the effects combined didn't work well anyway.

Surprisingly my last try was my favourite, the dots over took the lines leaving them in the background which was good but also meant that they weren't really needed at all with this effect.

With the newspaper the effect worked better, it looked like information in the paper trying to be destroyed, the slight peach tone of the background balanced the different between normal paper and newsprint well.

Here the green paper sat just of the face unintentionally but worked well, it looked as if he was being scanned for and spotted.

My favourite effect out of these was the photographs of newsprint because of the simple and sophisticated link they had with the idea of identity being concealed and unknown, with my further photographs in the project I will return to this for other subject matter where relevant.