I chose the fable of ‘The Wolf in Sheep’ clothing as in the world around us – we are all exposed to people who aren’t exactly what they seem.
The fable of ‘The Wolf In Sheep’ clothing is relatively simple – a wolf tries to blend in with the sheep around him by dressing up as a sheep. Once successfully infiltrated the herd, he lures a naive sheep out and consumes it.
I thought in modern context, we are all easily lured by people, especially so in the online world – be it the friends of facebook or the potential dates of tinder. I’ve encountered situations where my friends were impersonated by strangers claiming to be “another account”, and friends going on disaster dates where the person isn’t who he said he was online.
RESEARCH
I looked into visual references where people interpreted the fable literally – plenty of drawings definitely, but nothing done digitally or with photography.
Some considerations include playing with costume, shadow, masks or mirror reflections but I felt those did not convey the idea of digital world enough. So I decided to get my mind off it by watching some people play games.
And then, inspiration came to me.
The video game Rainbow Six has a character called Vigil, where his character is derived from nobody knowing how he really looks like. So I thought – hey that’s pretty perfect for my concept. So I explored it further.
PRODUCTION AND POST PRODUCTION
I set up a tripod in my room and my self timer and shot myself holding a flower and a knife in the same position. Knowing that there is going to be an added obstacle of not having the luxury of colors, I used the contrast between wardrobe to juxtapose the innocent and the sinister.
Featuring my camera on a tripod, my sunflower and the window, which is my natural source of lighting and Vitamin D.
I thought about semiotics as well – what is a sheep, what is a wolf, what is innocent and what is sinister. I read that the biggest fear of girls in online dating is that they’ll meet a serial killer so I included that thought into my semiotics.
Innocence/Sheep – White, clean, glasses, flowers, wool, fluffiness
Sinister/Wolf – Dark/Blacks, weapons, blood, tattoos, claws, blood
I tried to include a lot of elements into the image, through the power of post-production or the power of wardrobe and daiso. Then, I tossed in all in photoshop and used the power of technology to create my final image… and viola!
REFLECTION
I think there were many things I wanted to explore – such as replacing my head with that of a sheep, framing the final image with a “tinder” page. Or adding a facebook page to the final image – but I think it dampened the simplicity of it. Perhaps it would do better to be more courageous and venture into the difficult to improve an image, but I guess I think I did a pretty good job for a portrait in a week!