Process: Picture Story – Curating Self

Process: Primary Test shots + challenges faced

Experimenting with creative ways to interact with cup noodles + trying out different shot angles and framing.

experiment results from left to right
1 Wide shot taken in my bedroom. Intended to position myself in the frame using rule of thirds but my room was too small. Pose felt uncomfortable and unnatural ☹
2 I wanted to try one of those hilarious tourist shots with landmarks e.g. holding the eiffel tower in your palm. I thought about how I could create the illusion of stuffing my face in mega-sized cup noodles. I had to place the cup noodles super close to the camera while I stood super far away.
3 Aerial shot of myself squatting with cup noodles. Wanted to show first person perspective.
4 The lighting is better in this shot, there is more contrast in shadows and highlights of the yarn compared to the previous shot. Aerial shot also shows perceived circles and lines of the object.
5 Medium frontal shot of myself flopping on the table. Intent was to express the feeling of exhaustion / falling asleep halfway from late nights of work.
6  Close up of cup noodles in a wide frame. I wanted to highlight the yarn noodles as the main focus by contrasting its yellow colour with the white background.

 

C h a l l e n g e s  f a c e d
  • Limited wall space to work with, which makes it hard to carry out wide shots
  • Using the timer function on my phone camera made the photos blurry
  • Need to experiment further with plain backgrounds that don’t have to be white. May give off different moods.
  • Need to experiment further with close up shots of self.
Process: SEcondary test shots + finding solutions

variations of poses + mid-shots of legs

I connected a bluetooth ‘remote control‘ to my phone camera which enabled me to click on the shutter using the remote from a distance. To use the small space of my room to my advantage, I thought about appearing in my photographs as partial figures.

the evolution of a crocodile to a wolf

Another way of appearing as partial figures – I thought about using my hands, but I wanted to do something really different to what I did with my legs. So I thought about shadow puppets. I turned off the lights in my room and borrowed my aunt’s phone for a makeshift torch light. It was quite hard to make a wolf out of my hands (they always ended up looking like a crocodile or a duck), so I went to search up some hand puppet tutorials and it worked!

 

https://i.pinimg.com/736x/00/38/e0/0038e07550d3b40ed63c127e2ee0df3c–hand-shadow-puppets-hand-shadows.jpg

 

variations of capturing noodle motion

I experimented with capturing my object in its still state and while it’s in motion. I was quite happy with the results and had a tough time choosing one that best enhanced my story.

Row:1 Looks like it’s levitating, quite cool but not sure if it lacks a human touch.
Row:2 Gives off a lonely mood.
Row:3 So crazy, I like it! Maybe the blurry motion of the noodles will add something different from the other selection of photos.

Trying out different poses and shot angles. Also tried adding plain props to make the frame feel less empty. Jiayi came over to my place to assist me with the aerial shots. It was so embarrassing when I made her crouch directly above me to take the photos.

Some slight variations of shot angles of my pantry / magazine rack. My test shots for the other parts of my room were included in the final selection of photos.

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