This weeks challenge was a self portrait showing my state of mind in decay. I was immediately limited to a photographic challenge as most of my cinema gear is in storage, and so I choose to portray myself suffering from anxiety.
Anxiety is something I have been dealing with recently, and I'm not entirely certain why. I wouldn't claim any kind of disorder, or problem in my life from it, but it certainly is there. I wanted to show how I look when having the feeling, but more, I wanted to show how I percieve the world around me as well. The simple answer is, I don't - I am trapped in my own head, with negative thoughts swirling around in there. So I chose to tightly frame my face, so the viewer is trapped in the frame with me, the world, my environment is a footnote.
I wanted to shadow my eye, so, I used my hand not only to visually convey worry and stress but also to cast that shadow - which required me shifting around to get the lighting just right. I also wanted the shadows to have hard, unflattering edges, again to portray how I feel about the world during an episode - it is a hard place with no sympathy. I liked the rapid drop in exposure towards my ear too, which almost makes it feel like the light is a spotlight on me, which I feel works for anxiety particularly well.
Finally, in post process, I sucked plenty of colour out of the image, boosted the blues and greens, again to emphasise the coldness of the world and giving my skin a slight sickly tinge - though this was overdone, I feel now. I also boosted the sharpness, to bring out a feeling of intensity and gritty reality.
All in all, I think this went really well as an assignment. I think the final photograph meets the brief and is a good representation of myself suffering from anxiety.