Time to research...

For me to follow through with my 'time' experiment, I knew that I would need inspiration from other photographers to get my ideas into a photograph successfully.

Tim Walker's photographs stood out to me as perfect inspiration for my photos and linked clearly with the ideas inside my head.
He has worked as an assistant for Richard Avedon, as well as shooting his first fashion story for Vogue at the age of 25. His photographs have entranced readers of Vogue, month by month, for over a decade now. Extravagant staging and romantic motifs characterize his unmistakable style. Coming from a fairytale approach he mixes stories with reality to create his amazing, one of a kind photographs.
Below are some of Tim Walker's' photographs:

I like the way he can take a character from a story and place them in a real life scene and yet still have that essence of the charcater shining through the objects around them. He almost has that essence of beauty shining through every photo, as well as his own quirky style from a fashion point of view.

I found another photographer which caught my eye, John rees. Although he is not a recognised photographer, I really like the way he can capture inner beauty behind the face paint and disguises of the model's faces. Its a quirky, almost gothic take on fashion/beauty shots.
Here are some examples:

When inspiration struck!

"Simple, everyday subject matter can be visually transformed into spectacular imagery by the imaginative use of photographic techniques."

I liked this saying and how it says anything can be beautiful you just have to find the process to beauty somewhere in the viewpoint of the camera.
This paragraph sparked off the subject of 'time' within my head from the inspiration of the bubblemap. Time is something you cannot change, but thats not what I want to focus on, I want to imagine what it would be like if time stopped? From this I had an idea as to look at time from a fashion point of view and what would happen in the photographers fashion shoot if time suddenly stopped? as well as capturing the essence of Gregory Crewdson, Edward hopper and yokomizo and how they can capture that split moment of tension within their photographs/paintings. What would the photograph taken look like at that split moment in time when the clock stopped, just before the actual photo was about to be taken? that split second before the model can make his/her famous pout? The moment when tension and emotion is building within the model and photographer on whether this will be his/her famous photograph or not!

This is what I am setting out to capture.

Possible photographers/artists that may be useful?

At this point in the exam, I don't really know what I want to do. However, while filing through a few photographers within the exam paper, I came across Gregory Crewdsons work.

At first glance they appear very dark and mysterious until you actually begin to look further into them.

Gregory Crewdson seeks out the tensions between the familiar and the strange within his elaborately scened compositions.

Even though he is classed as a photographer, to me he is much more than that, he doesn't just pull out a camera from his bag and begins shooting at anything that looks interesting or that could create an interest from the public, he is an artist. He has a completely different take on photographs, he produces the scenery on set, a scened photograph. He creates the emotions of which people feel towards his photographs as well as the tension and questions that appear inside our heads when looking at them. He is an artist.

It often takes him around five weeks to create one photograph. While on location he seeks for inspiration of what could inspire him to create a masterpiece.

Below are some of his creations:

I love the way he can bring an emotion or that sense of tension within someone when they look at his work, the way he can create a question in your mind, long before you would have even thought of it, take the photo above, the questions that may appear within my mind are; where is she? is she dead? alive? is she lying on the floor, in water or is she floating in mid air? whats happened to her? these are just some of the questions in which challenge you to want to know more, the thing that makes you study the picture for more answers, but will you find them?

That feeling of whether this scene is real or unreal, the sense of finding the truth is thilling to me.

I found that Gregory Crewdson's work links well to the work of Edward hopper and how he also creates tension and that sense of mystery within his paintings.

When a human is in solitude, it tends to be a woman, either dressed, semi-dressed or nude, often reading a book, looking out of a window or in the workplace. This is because Edward Hopper wanted to portray this sense of lonliness and he thought that women were better to show emotion within a painting rather than a man. I love the way he took time to place each person/human being in keeping with the composition of the environment around them. The way he has used light and shadow effectively within the surroundings to create mood and tension, making you want to know more about the painting and the story behind it, it is genius and works well in keeping in tone with the figures within it.

Here are a few examples:

Like the photographs of Gregory Crewdson, Edward hopper also plants question within your mind which makes us search for futher clues within the paintings as to what's happened or how the story in the painting has come to this captured scene. This painting questions whether the couple have had a fight, with the woman's shoulder to the man, keeping him out, as well as the viewpoint of the painting; looking at the scene through the window as though someone is looking in on them, which gives the fish bowl sense of feeling.

This painting reminds me of a photograph of Yokomizo who uses photography and video to examine the relationship between herself and the other. Looking beyond the similarities of a usual photo to leave what remains unseen to its audience, she captures the unlikely encounter of photographer and subject in a way full of awareness and once again that sense of tension. Her series 'stranger' centers around a momentary confrontation between herself and the person within their window, in which both did not know each other, just by a note sent through the letter box of the subject saying - 'Be at your window - and what time e.g. 8:30pm'.

stimulating ideas?

I decided to do a mind map of what the theme actually included, I thought of definitions, words that could link to the topic and other subject matter of which could be included within the theme. This helped me see all content of the theme together and for me to see what options are there to be explored.
I then decided to do a 'visual brainstorm' of, what to me, mystery and imagination is and what it would look like as a response to the mind map above.
Here are some of the photographs which I took while exploring this theme:

From this I set myself a few tasks in order to get my imagination flowing and be able to move on with the actual exam project. My first experiment was to 'make a board game into a reality', I thought that this was quite a good theme to set myself as it would provoke mystery in the production and manipulation of the photograph and it will also help my imagination.

Here is my finished photograph:

I chose the boardgame 'Cluedo' for my photograph as its one of my favourite games and I thought that it would work brilliantly with the theme, 'mystery and imagination'. I chose the character 'Mrs Peacock' for my photo as this is the character in which I would always play with. I showed the character of 'Mrs Peacock' through both the peacock feather patterned dress and the blue lighting.
I thought that the blue lighting was appropriate for the scene as mrs peacocks famous colour is blue. I have also left the shadow of the person within the photo to provoke that sense of mystery as well as the fact of that you can't actually see the persons face which connects well with imagination as the audience have to try and conjure a face within your mind as to what the face of Mrs Peacock looks like. I chose to have a bookcase within the scene as well as a dagger to suggest the aim and accusations of the game, for example, 'Mrs peacock in the library with the dagger?'

Here is another experiment that I wanted to try out which was to 'show god through the environment, an object or place'.

These are the photos that came from the experiment:

I chose this photograph as a representation of god as I thought that it had the potential of having a 'higher power' and as I was taking it I felt really vulnerable and almost as though someone was 'watching' me which gave me that sense of mystery and of the being of life.

Eventhough this is a really simple picture I thought that it represented the 'being' of god as it shows natural beauty of the land. It also has a really airy feel about it as though its really light and that its a place of peace and tranquility. A place that you could go to and just take in its beauty and the wonder of how it came to be.