Scorched Earth Trials

The most well known fact about climate change is the heat and it will get hotter the worse it gets. I wanted to portray this with the impacts it will have on us as well as the environment.
With both i decided to show the extreme affects. People think the heat will be good don't think about the sweat and dealing with it in every day life.

I've worked with creating sweat before and knew that glycerin gives the best effect. You can also make droplets easier with it as it is a bit thicker.
 For the heat shoot I felt prepared and knew what products I would be using.


For the Scorched Earth one I had an idea in mind but didn't know if it would work exactly as I wanted so decided to test with a few materials.

My inspiration for this idea came from dried up earth itself. I really liked how you could see the texture and variation in colours. It also has such a matte effect to it.

I first thought about using bandages and ripping them up and dying them as they would give that effect of a cracked earth however it just didn't work and ended up looking like seaweed.

I then thought about using fullers earth as it gives that effect of matte cracked earth and was inspired by Alex Box and a look I believe to be the same product or similar.

I knew i wanted the colour to show through the crusty layer that would form on top but was unsure how to get this to work. My initial thought was to use a water based product underneath so it wouldn't move too much when the fullers earth was added on top.

The effected worked well but I didn't know how it would work on the neck without trying it.

It did work out fine. It took longer to dry and after moving my head round for a bit it started to flake off a lot so I would have to keep this in mind when i do the shoot as towards the end it won't look as good. I also had trouble blending it nicely up the neck so will have to play around and practice more so I can achieve my desired effect.

Oil Spill Shoot

The shoot went well. I booked the studio late incase there was a lot of mess. I thought ahead and brought tarpaulin so the oil would be easily contained. We made sure the had the lighting right before adding the oil.

One thing I didn't think about was the oil having a high shine and the lights showing in it. When we were taking pictures from above the light showed in the oil on the floor.  It took a while for us to re adjust the lights and think about angles.

Below is a few images from the shoot.

Considering GMO'S

One shoot I really want to do is Genetically modified food. I've just be going back and fourth with how to portray this on the body.

My initial idea was with needles running down the spine however. I was unsure how well this related to GM foods and could this been portrayed in art based way.

Second thought was pills on the face. After people to emma she thought this might look more like a beauty supplement advert and after speaking to her I now agree.

The next route we were thinking was the colour of fruits and could I manipulate them within a shoot? This was going to be my final plan. However after my presentation that teachers pointed out how with all my other images the impact or cause I had put onto the body and this one might look out of place in a book.

After reading articles against GM food I have a few more ideas I need to play around with.

One is how GMO isn't always marked on packaging but at some point we will of probably eaten a GMO.
Second thought was how are they doing this? I thought pesticide spray and Gene Transfer would be interesting to look at.
Third was what are the effects? The effects are as risky as tumours and new genes could result in bloody rashes or evem something the consumer is allergic too.

These facts I will be exploring more before making my final decisions to shoot.

Oil Spill Testing

I wanted to start with the oil spill shoot but needed to test what would be the best way to make fake oil. I managed to find one recipe online but involved ingredients I were unsure would work. So I contacted Green Peace and they gave me one they use when protesting.

Different Mixtures to try:
- Readymix paint and oil
- Readymix Paint on its own
- Molasses
-Oilpaint and Oil
-Readymix Paint and Oil Paint with oil

The readymix paint and oil didn't mix well together so caused patchiness.

Ready mix paint on its own was good, however it did dry and wasn't as shiny as the first picture.

Molasses was so thick! It was hard to blend out and wasn't the thin consistency of oil I was hoping for.

 This was oil paint and oil. This was closer to what I wanted but I didn't want the skin to show as much so thought about adding the ready mix paint underneath

Perfect!!! mixture of ready mix paint with the oil paint and oil over the top.

Moodboards

Speaking to Emma I had so many ideas and it was getting over whelming. After I decided to make moodboards for certain looks that I knew I wanted to do straight away So that I had a base to begin.


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Changing Thoughts

Speaking to my tutors we decided my book didn't really have a theme and a flow throughout the images what I wanted to create wouldn't make sense from one picture to the next.

We spoke about Climate change as I briefly touched on this in my dissertation. As well as Strength and Power, I was told to go away and research both. I initially thought I would prefer Strength and Power better, however Climate change just gave me so many ideas I knew this was now the route I wanted to go down.

Discussing climate change again with Emma we spoke about the thought process and the flow of my book.
- Starting with what the world use to be like going into destruction and and pollution following with the effects it has caused.
- Starting with the gritty reality of what has happened the effects it's caused, what it's been caused by and how will we live with this.

The End is Nigh

My final year is here. For my last project I want to create a coffee table based on unconventional materials. The book will take inspiration from the book series shot by Rankin for Andrew Gallimore, Alex Box and other makeup artists.

I have conducted interviews with professionals already in the industry. They believe this book is something they would like and is something that is completely different to what is already on the market.