Wall shoot

So after my presentation the other day I decided to go out and shoot again. This time I avoided the use of projections and instead took inspiration from the work of Richard Avedon, simply waiting for the precise moment in which to shoot.
I positioned my model in front of the camera (I chose to go for the hasselblad and square format here as an experiment) and instructed him only to just stand there for about 15 minutes. By leaving him in the dark about what I was doing, I hoped to create a feeling of unease and tension within the subject. When I felt that the moment was right, and that the look was right I took a photograph.



Above is the contact sheet of the 12 images from the shoot.
For the technical sides to the shoot I wanted to shoot square just to play around with how that looked, and this time I wanted to get more of my subject in the shot and look at his body language, so I positioned myself further away and incorporated most of him into the frame. The use of black and white again was an experiment, done simply because a lot of my research artists have worked this way, and have done so to good effect. The location was a weak decision, and I chose it only because I did not want to work in the studio and with a blank background.



As for the shoot itself, I have mixed feelings about what I got from it. The images themselves I feel are quite weak, and just look like average portraits with no real agenda behind them. I can take from the photographs that square format probably isn't the way forward for my idea, and that I much prefer getting in closer and concentrating more so on the face because body language just doesn't give enough away.



On the other hand, the idea behind the shoot seemed to work to some effect. By not letting the subject know what I was doing and by keeping quiet, only pressing the shutter at what appeared to be random intervals he seemed to get quite anxious and unnerved. You can see evidence of this as in some frames he is looking around, biting his lip and appearing unsure of the situation. The problem was that I did not have a cable release, and so every time I wanted to take a frame I had to go back to the camera and press the shutter, which as a result made him look back at me, and almost ruin the atmosphere which had been created.

And so there are certainly some things I can take from this shoot, and I can see that it is not all together difficult to make your model feel uncomfortable, which is the look I want to achieve. I need to experiment more with this idea, and look at other ways and other locations in which to actually shoot it.