Anna Lenton Reflective Journal

Sebastian liked some of my ideas in my test shoots but mentioned that some of the positions are too much like beauty or fashion poses and don’t tell the story as well as the other images where the poses represent the characters in the stories better.  Sebastian was unsure about one of my looks for the Inky Boys which included liquid dripping from the model’s eye because he felt like it had been done before. I have decided however to keep this in my work because I think that it represents the story well and the dripping ink is a key part of the story. He told me to look at a couple of different photographers that he thought could influence my work. Sebastian suggested finding alternative ways of representing blindness, loss of speak and loss of hearing such as showing the blind person with white sticks. He mentioned someone called John Hull who is blind and says that when he is carrying something he feels doubly blind as he also is not able to use his sticks or hands to try and fe...

During my tutorial with Sebastiane I showed him what I have created of my website so far to see what he thought of the layout and also of my final images. I don’t think the current layout tells the stories in the best visual way and am slightly concerned that some of the final images need to reflect the stories more than they currently do however I don’t have time to do more shoots. He suggested that a slide show with captions to help tell the different stories might work better than the current layout and I also agreed that this would look a lot better because at the moment the website looks more like a portfolio website which is not the aesthetic I want to achieve. I feel like it needs to have more elements of an online exhibition mixed with storytelling elements. When I raised my concerns about some of the images not fully fitting the story Sebastiane suggested using art to fix this, by printing the images, adding to them with different materials and then scanning them back in...

This was the first time Sharon has seen all of my images and so I was a bit nervous of what her reaction would be as I now have very little time to reshoot if there are any huge problems. However Sharon was very pleased to see me and was excited to see my work which made me feel more positive about showing her. Sharon suggested cutting down the number of images I use from each photoshoot and take a more quality over quantity approach so that only the very best images are shown. I think this is the right thing to do because at the moment the weaker images detract from the stronger ones and also there are a lot of images with similar model poses. I think I just threw loads of images onto the site thinking more content would make it look better when actually this is not the case and more careful image selection would improve the quality of the site. Sharon said that if I am concern about not having enough diversity in my images I could use more editing techniques to make the differe...

The Story of Cruel Frederick When I was planning for the look that requires my model to have no top on I made sure that my model was comfortable with this in advance of the shoot. When we were doing the shoot I made sure that the studio was set up as a closed studio so that nobody could see into the studio. I also put a sign outside and gave my model material to hold in front of herself so that her chest was covered throughout the whole shoot. I have done photoshoots before where the model has been topless and so I know how important it is to make them feel comfortable and I think I am good and making sure of this. There have been times in the past where I have been on photoshoots or been involved in theatre shows where people have needed help with changes that require them to be topless and they have asked me to help them rather than other people. I think this is because they see me as someone who acts professionally but also someone who is caring and so someone they can trust....

I spoke to John about my plans for my website and that I was choosing to use Wix to help me create it. John was surprised that I was not going to use Muse to create my website completely from scratch as he said I have been to a lot of his lessons on Muse. This is true however I find using computer Programmes such as Muse very challenging as over my three years at university the IT elements of projects have always been the most challenging for me as I struggle to remember how to do things even after taking notes during the lessons. I started creating my website on Muse but the layout of the programme does not suit my learning style it is very technical and what tools should be used for different elements is not clear to me. This also makes me worry that I am going to make a lot of mistakes which will take a long time to fix. Where as Wix is a lot clearer for me to understand. The layout is more visual and what tools such be used is labelled clearly with helpful instructions on how t...

Having prosthetic pieces made. As part of my looks for cruel Frederick I wanted to create something to represent the animals that Frederick harms and kills. So I decided to represent the flies who’s wings he tears off by having wounds on the back of my model as if they had wings that had been ripped off. I researched the colour of fly’s and insect blood and found that some had clear blood that had a green or yellow tint and some had blue blood. Sometimes when flies are killed red is seen because the pigment in their eyes is red and this is sometimes mistaken for blood. Therefore I tried the look with clear with green, blue and also red because human blood is red and so I was undecided whether to have the blood the colour the fly’s blood would be or the colour of humans as it is the human acting like the fly in my design.   The shoot for the fly that had it’s wings torn off overall went well but I thought about the possibility of making it more realistic by using prosthe...

Rachel thought that some of my test shoot images were strong such as the ones for Little Suck a thumb and some of the Inky Boys ones. I mentioned that I may re-shoot the Inky Boys look for the loss of hearing with a lighter coloured haired model as the model I used was brunette and so the dark make-up around the ear does not show up as well as it does on the other two looks for the Inky Boys shoots and she agreed that the look would have more impact if I did this. Rachel said that some of the make-up looks do not show off the full extent of my practical skills and that I should make the make-up for the Shockheaded Peter and Cruel Frederick more refined or more considered. Rachel asked me to go back to her next week with more refined ideas for my make-up looks. The week after I showed her my reshoot of Struwwelpeter and she was a lot happier with the overall image especially the lighting and photography.

In this story I want to focus on the action of the thumb being cut off and make it look like the model is still trying to suck their thumb even though it is not there anymore and blood is pouring from the wound. I am going to use film industry standard make-up and fake blood to try and make the images look quite gruesome. The Shoot At the beginning of shooting the model looked very comfortable and the poses were looking how I imagined they would. However when I decided to add more fake blood the model looked a little uncomfortable. I asked her if she was alright and she explained that she has a slight fear of blood. This surprised me because I am friends with the model and I knew that she enjoyed watching horror films that usually contain a lot of fake blood and also before the shoot I has told her what I was planning on doing and she had not mentioned her slight fear to me. She said that she had not mentioned it because she thought that she would be fine as the blood was fake ...