Task 1 – Me in three images

1. My origins. I chose to use the batik shirt as it is considered the traditional fabric of Indonesia, and a red and white background to show my country’s colors – the Indonesian flag.

2. My personality. Continuously going with the flow, aware of the direction they are heading to but not knowing where they might end up; that is how I describe myself, and so I like to relate myself to the clouds.

3. My passion. Going chronologically from the left to right, this picture shows a documentation of how my medium for drawing evolves from the traditional paper and pen to the challenging mouse and lastly the tablet.

 

Task 2 – Cherished object

I chose this object – my first and only pair of Converse shoes – as it holds a significant history to me. I wear this pair of Converse literally almost everytime I go out ever since my best friends gave them to me about two years ago for my birthday. Hence I chose the first and second picture to show the contrast of the messy grass and clean carpet. This shows that I use these no matter where I go, whether it be outdoors or indoors.

The third picture shows how much I wear this pair of Converse, to the point that the shoelaces are already loose and that I need to retie them as they tend to come undone when I walk too much with the shoes.

 

Task 3 – My world

Being miles from home, this place is one of the places in the country where I feel like home because this is where my friends would mostly spend their free time in – whether it be for studying, playing with one of the facilities provided there, or just chatting with each other. However in the pictures I have taken, rather than showing the significance of this place to me, I tried playing with photography techniques instead.

1. Framing. Using the colourful seats encircling the middle object as the frame of the picture, the picture lets the audience become more focused on the central piece, even if the color pale incredibly in comparison to the vibrant frame.

2. Angle. The picture looks like two different pictures edited to be placed right beside each other, when in fact it has not been edited at all. In this picture, the angle at which the shot is taken is deliberately chosen so that the corner of the wall matches the partition on the floor to make it look unreal.

3. Perspective. This picture shows a simple play on perspective – from a close object that acts as the foreground, to the more blurred out people in the middle, and lastly the unclear shot of the background. The rule of thirds also plays a part in this picture where the main, clearest object is placed at the one-third line.

4. Contrast. Using the black seats as the divider, the picture tries to show a contrast between the two spaces – the one on the right and the one on the left. On the right, the space looks almost empty and pristine, whereas on the left side is the opposite; it shows clutter and mess, that someone had been occupying that space.

 

Final presentation

I arranged the pictures in such a way that it would look clear which task each picture belongs to. In this case, the three landscape pictures in the middle act as the divider. They are also considered as one task, which can be easily seen from the similar main object of each picture. The three pictures above the ‘divider’ are considered another task, and the rest of the four below are another. I also tried to arrange them to make both the positive and negative spaces not look too dull or boring.

 

Reflections

During the long process of this project, I tried to find the different ways in which I could introduce myself; and so I tried to explore my self in many different aspects. This actually made me find more and more things about myself in which I could show to the world! The objects that makes me me, and the things significant to me…

I had also learnt that there are more to photography than just taking pictures of objects around me and take their literal meanings. Symbolism is an important aspect in photography, and the perspective and angles in which we take the pictures also affect the meanings hidden behind these pictures; I think that is what a lot of my pictures lack. A lot of the pictures I had taken were very straightforward, and there wasn’t much to interpret from them.

Hopefully I will be able to incorporate the things I’ve learnt here in the next project!