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.