Communicating a Concept & Concept Recipe

Week one (11/15) of my first semester of PH 100: FUNDAMENTALS OF PHOTOGRAPHY with Andrea Land

This is a creative assignment. Use your imagination. How can you communicate thoughts, feelings, or ideas through a single image? Choose one of the topic choices, listed below, and try to communicate this through a new image. We will not be showing examples for this assignment. Be creative.

Topic Choice: * "Love is blind."

This is probably not the best I could do but I hope it works. It has been a rough week. (see recipe discussion for more info).

"Love is Blind" or like I read years ago "Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more it chooses to see less."

Describe your thought process as to how you decided on your concept. How did you choose your subject, and what was your intention behind the image?

This has been the week from Hades. Honestly, I really struggled with this assignment this week. I was at a loss on where to start and my mind has been so unfocused with all life has thrown at me. By Thursday I still didn’t have a clear direction for what to do. With much needed guidance, I was able to narrow the topics down on Friday. The best advice given to me, “Stop thinking start feeling.” That advice was the moment I got a clear vision of the photo, subject, mood, lighting and all. I made the phone call for and had finally felt good about what I was going to do.

The day of the shoot came and things went haywire. My concept, “Love is Blind” was chosen because I felt it was what I most related to. I heard a quote many years ago "Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more it chooses to see less." I have often felt that they were on to something. I knew then that my parents where the best subject for the photo because of the forty-three plus years love affair with each other. Dad had many obstacles to overcome in those years and Mom stated with him through them all. I have often heard her say “I knew he had it in him, he just needed to see it himself.” Dad was recently diagnosed with stage four, small cell lung cancer and there is Mom being his cheerleader. This was the story I was hoping to tell and by now you are probably confused because the photo I posted is not of an older couple. Dad has had a set back and was not feeling well enough to help with my assignment.

Today as I was with Dad & Mom while he was getting chemo treatment, I decided on the image that I posted. I was trying for a self portrait but that was not working the way I had planned and in my frustration I thought of not even finishing. That is when my husband stepped in and told me to shoot him.

I wanted this image to be moody, so, I choose a hard lighting situation. I also didn’t want the blindfold to actually blind him, but for him to be able to see through it. Much like the above quote, we choose to see less because we see more. The heart was added just to help the concept; I thought he looked like Zorro without it. I also added a soft layer of red over the black and white image for s bit of play on the color element.

I hope that I will be able to get the shot of my parents. I really think it will be a grate image to look back on later.

UPDATE: My dad passed away before being able to complete the photo I intended.