Incident Room..

Our second project of the year is called incident room. Its a lot about lighting and capturing a narrative in one photograph (an incident.) We worked in teams of 4, but we all came up in our own idea. I was working with Annabelle, Laura Bartram and Rachel Tolson! I was excited because lighting is one thing i'm really not so great at and need to sharpen up on so this was the perfect opportunity.
In the past years the students had a room set in the studio to decorate themselves so they had complete creative freedom to do anything they wanted. We however had to go out and find a room appropriate for our theme, which meant, i thought we couldn't be AS creative, for example, we ended up using a hotel room, we had to keep it like that, we couldn't destroy it or even really mess it up a bit so it was a challenge.

"Images of previous students work in the Room set project"

Inspiration

I loved the work of Erwin Olaf mostly, he used elements of beauty and emotion in his image and uses additional lighting to add the the mood of the photograph. Especially in his images showing grief, you can see the staged presence of it but it still looks very natural. I think they have a really editorial look about them which really inspires me. Here is my favourite image of his. 

Its elegant, but really striking. The colour tone is really fluent and i think its just a really interesting image that can be opened to interpretation. What is going on in the image? whats the narrative? Is there even a narrative? The styling is really beautiful, the brown room dull room, contrasting with the models white dress and her make up. 

Another inspiration of mine is Gregory Crewdson, He creates full sets with his room images, so that everything in them is perfect. I watched this documentary about him and i found it so interesting the lengths he goes to to do what he does. 

It really shows in his photographs, they are perfect everywhere you look, there is something going on in every corner and around every door way of the images. They have so much depth in them and aren't visually obvious, they have discretion and simplicity in them. 

Gregory Crewdson

The photoshoot.

We had originally looked at the hotel called the roseberry hotel, which is located down the road from my house in Jesmond. Its a very beautiful hotel, and very over styled. I was really excited about shooting there because of the character of it, but it turns out the hotel is shut until 2014, so we were all very angry and disappointed but the show had to go on so we had to find another location. 

After an entire day of walking hotel to hotel and ringing everywhere we knew, we finally were allowed to shoot in The Jurys Inn which was very kind of them to let us do it in such short notice. It was ideal because it was so close to the college. 

My idea developed from one thing to another, i wanted to make it quite subtle, so you could see what had happened but the story before that was open to interpretation.  

I had 3 lights, one with a soft box, the other with a honey comb and one with a regular reflector dish. If i could redo it i wouldnt use a soft box, i would use the additional lighting in the room, and instead of a soft box a honey comb, because it just adds more depth and intensity to the photograph. I am not 100% happy with the images, and i would love to do this set again, I would be much more creative and give my self more time to plan and prepare for it. My models did an amazing job however, I was lucky to work with the fantastic model that is Vivien Rose Gstr. She was great, she fit the part of the 'prom queen' idea, and i would love to work with her again! I also used Rachel's brother, Jonny Tolson as my male model who was a great sport and really did a good job. I am happy with the outcome but i know i could of done a lot more and made it much more creative. 

But anyhow, these are my final two images from the shoot. after editing. Hope you like them!