Position Paper

After going back and forth on ideas, I believe I now have a solid direction for my project. In this series of photographs, I will be taking a male model down town in Toledo and having him pose, stand and whatever else throughout the city. Then after I collect my shots, we move into digital manipulation. I will be going into either Photoshop or Illustrator to be changing only his figure into a vector image, while leaving the background of the city realistic. I may even reverse the process to have both sides of the picture looked at in different ways. I will call this series, "His World". It’s not the real world, but how he lives and coincides with his environment. I will possibly turn this series into a coffee table book for that way they will all be together for a better understanding of the whole series. I want to have many images because one thing about digital photography for me is the ability to create multiple images with little to no hassle. There is no concern on wasting film because space is almost infinite. You also don’t have to take the time to print out each individual picture. Don’t get me wrong, the process of traditional photography will never be replaced, it is just more convenient for large mass media. This is one point that Fox Talbot comments on. It’s the fact that you can produce copies of an area or objects quicker than you can with drawing. He took photographs of down town Paris, all in detail and with little time. So with inspiration from James Bond’s Casino Royale and the beauty of the city, I have my direction for this project.

New Approach

After the class discussion and seeing new ideas I began to rethink my approach for this first project. After seeing the animation from the TV show Mad Men, it made me think of the opening credit scene of Casino Royale and it inspired me.

(A little shot of the opening credits)
I know the beginning idea was to super impose objects like the Sony video, however after seeing these new works of art, I want to add more to it.
While shooting downtown, I was just messing around and took a shot of my boyfriend with the city behind. Then after I played around with making just him look like those guys and keeping the city realistic. I think I am going to keep my original idea, but add on the element of a characteristic person with in the background.

Here is the beginning stages and a starting off point for more of what I want to do with these photographs.

Ideas for my Project

I was inspired by the Sony video advertisement with the colored bouncy balls that filled the natural city environment with the playful atmosphere of a field of unnatural bouncy balls engulfing the frame. I am taking this idea and turning it into stills rather than video. I will take images of places and add in unnatural elements that are normally not found in the scene. I want to have fun with these pictures and create a colorful environment. The scenes will be uninhabited by people or animals, just barren landscapes and inside buildings like this image below.

I will experiment with these and see how they turn out...