Development of my Statment of intent

Statement of Intent One

My current favorite idea is the one which involves posh 1800 dress code and woman walking down different styles of stairs to meet the man who awaits them at the bottom. I would have more than one final image of a different male and female in each both in different positioning on the stairs so that they where all a little different but just as powerful in each. Each would have a slightly different realistic 1800 dress or suit on so that the image was more extraordinary and eye catching to look at, especially as i plan to add a gloss of rustic old fashioned brown or black and white tints to the images, making them suit the era they are from. I like this idea as it has a strong message of contrasting the old traditions with the new times and areas we now live in. Below the first mood board is another which dives deeper into the idea of clothes and style i am trying to achieve. I feel it is my strongest idea and will be extremely good to photograph.

Statement of intent Two

As i am interested in the supernatural and surrealism, I would like to explore photographers who are the same and incorporate stairways in there images too. One example is an artist named Mc Escher who painted stair ways going in a number of different directions and people both climbing both up and down on them so they look like they are suited to go up and down. This confuses you at first as you cant really tell whats going on. However when you look a little closer you see that the images there are smaller key elements such as banisters and backgrounds which suggest they are almost double sided staircases.If you look below you can see the drawing made by this artist and see how it gives a sense of mystery to the image. This is because you don't know where each person will go to as people are going up the stairs but its unclear as to where they are being lead too. As this is a drawing it looks a significantly more believable and capturing, which i want to try and create with Photoshop.I can imagine when i create this image it will look highly unrealistic, so i will have to consider how to manipulate the image to make it look as believable and effective as possible. It is important i consider backgrounds as that's what will make the image effective. Its hard to imagine what the image below would look like in real life and the actual place where its set, but its vital i consider that it looks like so i can replicate it to the best of my ability. To the right of this image is a lego made version that shows more clearly what the image is showing and there movements against the ascending and descending staircases.

Statement of Intent Three

The question I have chosen for my final exam piece is stairways. I am particularly interested in this because this title allows me to explore so many directions and create so many powerful images just with a set of stairs. When you think of staircases you imagine what we see all around us, which are commonly man made metal ones. What we do not think of are the ones that we are blind too like escalators or the steps we take in our lives, which are seen more mentally than physically. The first thing that came to my mind was the mystery and the unknown that comes with staircases, as no one knows where they lead to in some situations. They are seen in everyday life to a higher floor, but in surreal photography, you have no idea what to expect. This is why I chose this exam topic, as I would like to dive deeper into the idea of surrealism and the fact staircases lead to something, but there’s always that element of uncertainty that comes along with it.

With surrealism, it gives you the chance to really consider the best manipulation techniques in order to make the image more believable and more effective on the audience’s perception of the image. Sorolta Ban for example certainly makes her images look stronger by using the gradient dark background that clashes with the around to make it appear that there is such distance with no other form of humanity around them. The detail that some of her photos go into such as cracks on the floor or crows in the sky make the image more sinister making a bigger impact on the audience. I have been inspired by her work and wish practice some of her techniques within my own pieces. For my idea, I have decided that I would have a dramatic staircase in the centre and people at the bottom looking up at the sky and contemplating whether they should go up. Then at the top of the stairs are dark clouds which hold a mysterious and unknown effect to the image, as it’s not clear what’s up there. The idea of having gaps with shining light coming from them would confuse the idea that it leads to a bad place as the light shows purity and hope through the darkness. Smaller elements like maybe shadows of peoples in the sky can really make the image more effective and powerful, which is my overall aim within my images for my final piece.

Statement of Intent Four

The question I have chosen for my final exam piece is stairways. I am particularly interested in this because this title allows me to explore so many directions and create so many powerful images just with a set of stairs. With Photoshop you can manipulate images of stairways like Sorolta Ban does for example, to ensure that your audience feels and reacts the exact way you want to. Whether this be them being put into an extraordinary or peculiar environment, or that they are made of something completely different to usual stairways. You can always make the image outstanding. As these images need to look as natural and realistic as possible its important that i do as little studio work as possible and all my shoots outside in similar daylight. This is because when it comes to editing my images may appear to look highly unrealistic and a lot darker due to the artificial lighting. In my final piece i will mainly concentrate on the photographer Joel Robison and how he uses different objects as a stairway.

This is because i feel that you can have so more exploration and experimentation with what could actually be used as a step up or down to a particular destination. As Joel's images are more fairy tale based i will use less obvious 'steps'. For example i wish to create a series of four, where one will be of a trail of dandelions, and one will be from a daisy chain. The last two images i will created from umbrellas into the sky and stepping stones going across water. these images have changed as i researched into it a lot. I came up with previous images such as meteorites, balloons, branches up into trees and also a staircase that lead underground. To add some of the creative and attention grabbing techniques of my other photographers, i will look into stands and gradients that Sorolta uses and the slight photo filters that Laurent Chehere uses in their images. All there photographers create such moving and exciting images, so with the combination of all their techniques i will result in my images coming out at an impressive level. Below are my first rough initial designs of my original ideas. I put them into categories in the end which are yes and maybe which i will label below.

Yes

Waterfall Umbrella