The idea behind them is that, when taking a self portrait, I don't want to be a person who just looks at the camera and pouts and looks pretty - I want people to see me; who I really am (forgive the cheesiness, please).
Now, who really am I? My thought process went as follows: *Look in the mirror* That's me - my reflection. I carried on with my day. As I was taking off my makeup and brushing my teeth that night, I looked in the mirror again and saw someone different. Now, how could it be that my reflection is me if it constantly changes? I know that I change a lot, but there's got to be something more cement about me... Right? I think that the cemented things are on the inside. You can dye your hair, you can insert silicon into your chest, you can cake makeup on your face until you're barely recognisable, but you can't cover up what you are inside. So, from there, I decided to photograph souls... Fire, and shadows, are what I imagine a soul would be like... A fire, moving, hot, powerful and bright... Seemingly alive, but not confined to a body.
As for the actual photographs, I love the orange - and, although I know many people think it's tacky to have everything in monochrome except one thing in colour, but I think that these photos are possibly an exception as they are not just made up of one photograph, but two layered on top of each other using photoshop... So all is hopefully forgiven on that front?
As you can see, I have used two of the same self-portraits in the background of these first photos, but I couldn't decide which one I like better... In the one above, I like the shape that the fire makes, and the dramatic bright yellows; it reminds me of fireworks, yet is subtle in the way that it doesn't consume my face like the other picture below does. Also, I like the contrast that the photo above has that is caused by the sudden and dramatic bursts of fire, whereas the other photo with the same face isn't nearly as contrasting - the entire photo is pretty much tinged in oranges and yellows. I also used the rule of thirds as my face is off-centre and the majority of the flame is on the third.
I have to say that, even though the photograph of a face is the same one used in the photograph above, I dislike the second photo's expression - there's something about the shadows and textures that make my mouth seem a little bit weird... Though, that being said, I think that the photo would probably die without the shadows and textures. I like this photo a lot pretty much purely because of the concept behind it - it's taken of the heart of the fire. You can even see the blue heart of it just above my eyebrow. I think it's relevant to the topic, because it's all about what's inside of us (for me, anyway) and this photo is taken of what's inside the fire; and just looking at it makes me feel a bit special, because it's not something that you see every day and, without my camera, I would never have been able to get as close to the flames as I had to to take this photo (thank God for zoom). Compositionally, maybe not my finest work, but, like I said, it's more about the concept for me. I think this photo would probably work better if my face was a little bit more dominant, meaning it was darker; creating more of a contrast, or if the background was less busy. I think, after writing all of this, I like the other photo more... There's something about simplicity that I just love.
Next up we have a slightly different one... The first, actually, that I'd done. It was just a trial, really, to see if it would work, and I guess it did because I decided to try my hand at photoshopping more of them. This one I like a lot because you can't really tell that it's a fire at first. I also like the way that, on my cheek, is a completely burned out piece of wood so that it looks like my cheek has a different texture to the rest of my face.. Like it's cracked, or something. With this photo, I altered the opacity of the face, attempting to make it the precise colour of ash which would, in turn, link in with the fire and ember-y quality of the texture on my cheek.
I'm thinking that I might actually use this sort of idea for my final project of 'I, me, mine' but, also, touching on my other ideas of souls - that they're kind of shadowy, disembodied versions of ourselves - I thought that I could take photos on a slow shutter speed of myself and slowly move the camera around so that I come out a bit smudgy looking and ghosty-like... Maybe I could mix the two ideas together? I don't know if that would work, but it's worth a shot. I could also do things with smoke, which is a less literal mixture of the 'fire idea' and the 'ghost idea'. Let's see how this turns out.
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