Fears and Secrets Evaluation

Gibbs evaluation

Fears and Secrets

Introduction

I have created the list below showing possible ideas and paths that I can go down for my project. The reason I have done this is to inspire me and help me to decide on what to focus my project on.

The fears used in the list are the stereotypical generic fears of people. I have listed these rather than just my own fears because it gives me a wider range of various fears.

Fears

• Darkness - Woods - Night
• Nightmares - Monsters
• Birds
• Sea - Drowning - Isolation
• Bugs - Flies - Spiders
• Dying/Death
• Heights - Drops - Tall buildings
• People
• Clowns
• Pain
• Aloneness
• Places - School/College/Work - Hospitals

I have then produced a list below of the possible secrets and the paths that I could go down to produce a final project on.

Secrets

• Cheating
• Lying
• Relationships
• Family Troubles
• Embarrassing past
• Anxiety
• Depression
• Mental illness

After producing the two lists I discovered that I had more ideas on the fears list. Therefore I have refined my idea down to producing a project on fears, I believe I can produce a creative and imaginative piece of work.

I have decided to refine my idea from fears, down to the fear of nightmares. I have decided this because I can create some well staged set shots, resembling the nightmares and unconscious fears of people. I have an idea at the moment to shoot in a dark location, the reason for this it because it'll allow me to use a flash gun to create various different artificial lighting effects.

The list below is a list of possible ideas and paths to further refine my project down to.

Nightmares

• Animals
• Night
• Horror
• Fantasy
• Alone
• Falling
• Death
• Dying
• Clowns
• Scary/Scared
• Darkness
• Woods
• Monsters

Joshua Hoffine

Joshua Hoffine born in Empoia Kansas in 1973. After graduating Kansas City high school in 971, Hoffine began making photographs. He studied with the commercial photographer Nick Vedos and later worked as a photo-assistant at Hallmark Cards before becoming a freelance photographer.

Joshua Hoffine began making ‘Horror Photographs’ in 2003. Hoffine worked on his Horror photography for years in private; working as a wedding photographer and producing CD covers to support his young family. His Horror photography took off on the internet in 2008 when he released his photographs exploring childhood fears. Since releasing his work online his work has been published in numerous magazines, anthologies, and news outlets around the world. He has cultivated a massive cult following for his meticulously staged photographic works. Other horror photographers have emerged after Hoffine's success, inspired by the work that he's created.

Joshua Hoffine photographs the young childhood fears, such as the fear of a monster hiding under the bed, the fear of clowns and the fear of monsters under the stairs, hiding. Hoffine also captures the unconscious fears that lay within an adults mind, such as the image on the left, which is the unconscious fear of being murdered. Hoffine stages his work to capture these fears. Hoffine stages his photo shoots like a movie set, using costumes, sets, elaborate props, fog machines and special effects make-up; this is to create the most lifelike and realistic shots. For the actors involved in his shoots he uses his family members, friends and even his own daughters.

Hoffine states that he is ‘interested in the psychology of fear’, how fears of people slowly become less and less on a person’s mind and becomes an unconscious fear, still there just hidden. His work is to explore these unconscious fears, these fears that have been suppressed and forgotten about.

I used Joshua Hoffine’s website (http://www.joshuahoffine.com/) to find the information needed for my research.


Danielle Tunstall

Danielle Tunstall is a much unknown artist, who shoots within the same theme as Joshua Hoffine capturing horror photographs.Unlike Joshua Hoffine, Danielle doesn't use staged settings for shoots, she mainly uses photo manipulation software such as Photoshop to change the look of people and create horror like images; such as the image on the right which is a part of Danielles Zombie Land work.

Danielle states on her blog, 'I don't do my work to shock or gore for gores sake, I'm simply making visual comments on life and the human species. The evening news is far more upsetting than anything I could ever produce - and that is fact. My work is purely fiction based on reality' she compares the work she produces to the reality of life, saying that the evening news is far more upsetting than anything she could ever produce.

Danielle shoots mainly within the studio to create her work, she says she uses a studio because she likes the plain background as the background doesn't distract the audience from the subject within the shot.

Some of the work Danielle produces is used for commercial work, being sold to be used as anything, but have been sold for book covers. Danielle's work has featured within photography magazines such as 'Digital SLR Photography'. 






Films

I have looked at two films, ‘Drag me to Hell’ directed by Sam Raimi and ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ directed by Drew Goddard. The reason for me looking at these two films is to inspire me and give me ideas for my project. I chose these two films in particular because they are two films that are of the unrealistic fantasy horror genre.

Drew Goddard’s ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ is a story about five friends who take a trip to a remote cabin which is then to be the terrifying setting of brutal murders by some childhood monsters.  The main monsters in this film is the living dead (zombies), they’re portrayed as slow moving but deadly creatures. This film is inspiration for my project as it contains unrealistic monsters made with movie techniques of stages settings, special effects make up, costumes and elaborated props; the same techniques used by Joshua Hoffine to capture his 'horror photographs'.


'Drag me to Hell' by Sam Raimi  is a similar genre of film to 'Cabin in the Woods', being a fantasy horror. The film contains unrealistic moments which are meant to resemble 'hell'. I chose to look at this film for inspiration as it contains horror fantasy which I plan to produce a project around; the film can also be seen as a nightmare due to the hell that's involved within the film.

Shoot 1 – Experimental – Fear of the dark

This is an experimental shoot to get an idea of how the photographs I am planning on shooting will turn out. The shoot is inspired by Joshua Hoffine, and his work of exploring fears; the idea is to create a nightmare like effect.

I plan to create this nightmare effect by shooting at night in a forest; I am going to use a teenage girl as the model for my shoot, she is going to be made to look like a young girl through her clothes, hairstyle and props used. The idea behind this is to capture the teenage girl’s fear from when she was younger, which was fear of the dark.

The equipment I am going to use for this shoot is a Nikon digital camera D3100, with the lens 18-55mm and also a wireless flash gun supported by a tripod.

This is the contact sheet produced from the shoot.

I feel like the shot below is the best shot that I captured in this shoot.

For this shoot I positioned the model facing the camera, I placed the flashgun on a tripod behind the model facing towards her, which when set off creates the light shine outline on the model and reflecting off the white shirt and the teddy bear that the model is holding.

To capture this shot I shot on:
ISO: 400
Aperture: f22
Shutter speed: 1/30

I feel like this created the effect that I was going for. However if i were to shoot this again I would shoot on a lower aperture to have more light within the shot.

Shoot two – Experimental shoot – Zombie face

This second experimental shoot is inspired by Danielle Tunstall’s horror shot on the left. I plan to experiment with using Photoshop to manipulate a photograph and make it look as if the model in the shot has their skin cracking and looking like their face is about to fall apart; giving the image a horror creature like look, such as what could be imagined in a nightmare.

For this shoot I am going to capture a portrait of a teenage girl. The reason I am going to do this is to then overlay the photograph with a texture, creating the effect that the face is cracked and falling apart.

I am going to shoot the portrait using a Holga lens on a digital camera. The reason for this is because the Holga lens is plastic, it captures a very soft shot with a vignette effect.

The two images below are the two images that I am going to use to experiment the technique of overlaying and combining together. 

The image below is the result of the two images combined. I found a tutorial on YouTube which I followed to learn the techniques needed to overlay the two images and create this effect. I feel like this manipulation gives a good horror like effect, giving the look that the girl’s face has cracked and is about to fall apart. However I also feel like I could have used a better texture in order to create an effect that the skin is falling off rather than cracking, the image I’d use as a texture to overlay would be flaking paint.

Shoot one

For my first shoot I plan to develop the idea of my first experimental shoot. I intend to explore nightmares and fears; this first shoot is to explore the fear of the dark. This shoot is going to be very similar as my experimental shoot; shot at night, in the woods using a digital camera (Nikon D3100) and a flash gun.

I am going to capture the fear of dark by using a teenage girl as a model; who’s going to have the appearance of a young girl, created by the way she dresses and how her hair and makeup is done. I will also include two props in this shoot; one being a small teddy bear that I used for my test shoot, representing the child, and the other being a torch, representing that she’s scared of the dark. The reason for this is because I am trying to capture her unconscious fear of the dark that she had as a young child.

This shoot is inspired by Joshua Hoffine’s ‘Horror Photography’, exploring unconscious fears and creating scenes.

Contact sheet:

In this shoot I experimented with different poses and methods of capturing the best shot to portray a child’s fear of the dark.

These are some of the shots that I captured in the first shoot. I shot in RAW format rather than JPEG so that I could then edit as much as what I needed to.

The idea was to create a sense of loneliness and vulnerability and to portray the childhood fear of being afraid of the dark.

 

From this shoot I have decided that the shot below is the best shot that I captured from this shoot, I have decided to use the shot below for one of my final images for this project ‘Fears and Secrets’ where I've explored the fears of ‘Nightmares’. I have decided to use this shot below because I believe it captured the fear of the dark, loneliness and vulnerability which is what I aimed to capture.

The photograph was captured the same way in which I captured the photograph in my first experimental shoot. However I adjusted the aperture to allow the photograph more light.

The image is as how it was shot without any editing, the image is a RAW image. The settings used to capture this image were:

Aperture: f4.5

Shutter speed: 1/200

ISO: 400

Another shot that I believe captured the aim of this shoot is the one below, the shot is of the model walking away into darkness of the woods. To capture this shot the flashgun was positioned next to where i was taking the shot from; the reason for this is to light up the model and the area around her, however to also create darkness infront of her where she is walking into. 

This photograph has been edited on Camera Raw to desaturate the image creating a darker and colder feel to it.

The settings used to shoot this were:

Aperture: f22

Shutter Speed: 1/200

ISO: 400

Shoot two

In my second shoot I am planning to also capture a nightmare like image. I am going to shoot in the woods, the same as my first shoot shooting at night. The reason for being shot a night is because it offers better scope for creating artificial light effects using my flash gun.

I will create a nightmare effect in this shoot by using Halloween props, lighting effects and manipulating shots in the Photoshop. The Halloween masks used are to resemble the monsters that appear in childhood nightmares.

This shoot is inspired by Joshua Hoffine and Danielle Tunstall 'Horror Photography'.

For this shoot I am going to use models wearing dark clothing and test out using multiple Halloween masks.

Contact sheet:

When shooting I experimented with different types of shots; long shots, mid shots and close ups.

From this shoot I believe that the shot below was the best shot that I captured on this shoot. The shot is a close up of one of the models wearing a Halloween mask. I then edited the shot on Camera Raw to add a slight vignette and also to desaturate the image.

The original shot used the settings:

Aperture: f7.1

Shutter Speed: 1/200

ISO: 400

Shoot three

My third shoot is also inspired by Joshua Hoffine’s ‘Horror Photography’ and Danielle Tunstall’s ‘Portrait’ photographs. I plan to create a horror effect using a close up shot of a teenage girl and using Photoshop to manipulate and transform the image to create a zombie look to her, such as skin cracking and falling off. This shoot is an improvement of my second experimental shoot that I have already done to learn techniques on Photoshop of creating this effect. However I am going to use multiple textures to overlay on top of the portrait.

Portrait shots captured to then overlay with layers:

I have chosen this portrait shot to manipulate and overlay layers creating the horror effect because I feel the lighting I used from an angle creating a dark shadow over one half of the models face giving the image a mysterious and creepy feel.

I am going to overlay the portrait with multiple images creating textures; I am going to use images with cracks on walls giving the effect that she is falling apart; and also images of rusted metal to show she’s also falling apart and rusting.

As well as this I am going to experiment with other textures to try and create the best effect.

The three images below show the three results I got with three different attempts with three different textures trying to create the best effect that I'm looking for.

fd

Shoot three - Second half

From the three different manipulations I have chosen to use the second manipulation that I completed for one of my final images produced for this project. For this manipulation I used paint flaking off the wall for a texture, I believe this manipulation created the effect that I was trying to create. An image inspired by Danielle Tunstall.

Final Images

These are the four final images that I have produced for this project.