“Instagram Takeover”

During one of our first lectures, we were tasked with taking photos to fit the 9 key words we were given.

The first word was beauty. Similar to my other blog on “What is beauty?”, I have taken inspiration from nature and took a picture of flowers in bloom. I added a slight filter to add contrast between the sharp orange and varying yellow hues. My other idea was to take a portrait picture of a person smiling, symbolically showing that emotions such as happiness are beautiful. I think that if the image had a depth of field, it would bring much more focus to the flowers in the foreground and overall improve the image.

Another was mono. Obviously the first idea for an image relating to mono was a black and white filter, however I thought that would be very generic, and so I looked for something already mono. Near “Ships and Giggles” in Preston city centre, is a wall with graffiti “NERO”. I tried to get the graffiti in the frame with the natural light from the top down, to give the graffiti an almost ethereal look. One part I really like about the image is that you can clearly see the lines from the sunlight, which adds a slightly disorienting feel to the image.

Thirdly,  we had to take a picture of something relating to a shadow. At first I was trying to think of how I could convey a shadow metaphorically, but after looking online at images i could replicate myself, i realised I could make a shadow that resembles something else. At first I was thinking of taking a picture of two people, each polar opposites of each other. They would have mirrored each other, yet been different, similar to a person and their shadow. I instead decided to use a nondescript item you wouldn’t expect to create a shadow that represents something other than the normal stereotypes associated with shadows. By making a heart out of shadow, it goes against the normal stereotype of shadows being dark or evil, and shows a positive representation. While my image only shows a card loop, if I had more preparation time I would have replaced the loop with a wedding ring, and placed the ring on a book with symbolic writing on it, for example Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. To me, the loop represents unity or marriage, however since i created the image my view is different than that of the audience.

Finally, I was struggling to find an image that related to the word mistake, when I saw a piece of graffiti on a bin. I find this to be symbolic of both, as most people associate graffiti with mistakes, and for it to be on the bin. Bins are associated with mistakes, as people throw away or discard used items. One idea I could have done would be to add a darker filter over the bin, and straighten the camera and crop out some of the backdrop. 

To see any of my other images alongside the ones shown here, have a look at my Instagram account – louiscollins240700