Sunday, August 22, 2010

FORMATIVE BRIEF #4: THE JABBERWOCKY

The Jabberwocky
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.


Context:
You have been given text of Jabberwocky by Lewis Carol. Read it and think about the visual effects of the words. Most of the words are made up and nonsensical, but the point is that they still have meaning.


This brief is really intersting. They have many ideas & concepts that can be responded to produce visual effect. I've tended to create 3 ideas for this one then I can choose which is the best for submission but after consider about all 3, I decided to do the most idea I like, the fighting part.
I had a studio shoot with a male model and I asked him to pose for all 3 ideas. But in the end, for the idea i've decided to go with, it came out really good as what I've planned either lighting and posing for idea.
And here is the idea:
The Jabberwocky poem is about a boy who fought Jabberwocky, a terrible monster. And in the end, he slew Jabberwocky. But what if, the monster is only created by their own fears? Or the monster is something that people try to scare others by a horror story? Or, everyone has a monster hide inside themselves, and they need to fight with that monster all the time, to control their behaviors, their thoughts, their dignities. So based on the idea: "everyone has a monster inside them and they need to fight with that monster to control it" or "the boy fight with a monster but he doesn't realize that he only try to kill his shadow", I created an image of a man throwing a spear into his shadow.

Here is the image:
Model: Clint Domine
Spear from Googles 

Sunday, August 15, 2010

FORMATIVE BRIEF #3: MUSIC

The song I pick is: "I Kissed A Girl" of Katy Perry

This is the photo of the song:


And lyric:
This was never the way I planned, not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand, lost my discretion
It's not what I'm used to, just wanna try you on
I'm curious for you caught my attention

I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it, I hope my boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong, it felt so right, don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it, I liked it

No, I don't even know your name, it doesn't matter
You're my experimental game, just human nature
It's not what good girls do, not how they should behave
My head gets so confused, hard to obey

I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it, I hope my boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong, it felt so right, don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it, I liked it

Us girls we are so magical, soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist, so touchable, too good to deny it
It ain't no big deal, it's innocent

I kissed a girl and I liked it, the taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it, I hope my boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong, it felt so right, don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it, I liked it



The photo from the song doesn't show anything about "kissing a girl" but only the title. So I decided to create a photo that can show intimate girl on girl to make people really want to kiss a girl when look at the photo.
It was an on-location shoot. The shoot turned out good when I got a few photos that show girl-about-to-kiss-a-girl but in the end I decided to choose this photo to present:
I love the model's expressions in this photo and also love the surrounding. I think they look very hot like that, trying to make out in the back seats of a car. It doesn't have much color on them so I chose to shoot in B&W mode on my camera.


A few more shot in the series that I've done so far (click to enlarge)

Sunday, August 8, 2010

FORMATIVE BRIEF #2: PLACEMENT & DISPLACEMENT

Context from the brief:
"The theme of placement "feeling at ease" and displacement "unease" has been a constant of contemporary, and usually developed with a particular vocabulary about light and space"

• Placement:
 Human's friend


• Displacement:
Man-made beauty 

 Credits:
Model: Melissa
MUA: Kylie
Hair: Priya

Sunday, August 1, 2010

FORMATIVE BRIEF #1: MEMORY

Context from the brief:
"From the beginning, photography has been prized as a carrier of memories - most people would say that if their house is on fire the one thing they'd save would be the photo albums. Even if they are images that are badly lit or not composed properly, the fact that they represent important narratives of your own personal journeys makes them significant."

The task for this assignment is producing a photograph that reflects the memory of my family photograph which has a special memory.

As an international student, I don't have my family albums here and I don't have many of them hosted online as well. And because my parents are quite behind technology in Vietnam and they don't even own a computer so it's really difficult to me to collect the photo I want from my family albums.
But the photo that make me have a feeling to want to choose, that is, photos of me and my younger brother. His name is Long (in Chinese it means 'dragon', we Vietnamese borrow many words from Chinese) and he is 2 years younger than me. But when I was about 10 and he was about 8, we had the same height and we were really close as best friends. So everytime my parents wanted to take photos for me or him, most of the time, we stayed in the same photo, shoulder to shoulder or sometime, back to back. And we really enjoyed to have photos taken together.

Because I can't collect my photo with my brother, I tried to search for a few referenceson Google.
And here they are:

http://www.paulmanoian.com/photography/index.php/2009/07/northville-michigan-child-photographer-brothers-photography-portrait-session/


http://www.fotosearch.com/UPC007/jyr01042/


Then I decided to reflect these kind of image into the photo that I will present in class. That could be a photo of sisters, lovers, BFFs .... staying together in one photo. My idea is about making a photo that is reflected from the memory of my family photo but it doesn't need a photo about family. It can be any kind of photos that I'd like to create in the style I'd enjoy to do.

And then I came up with a studio shoot with 2 female models and of course, they were wearing underwear. And I like them to be intimate in the photo, I want to to look very sexy still close together as a family portrait without fancy poses.



Then finally I decide to present this one with a bit of image enhancement: