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Who are you? 

Self Portrait 

I decided to photograph my cat myself alongside my cat, Cookie. Anyone who knows me well knows my cat too, we come as a pair. I don’t have many sentimental or valuable items, my family recently moved to Spain and my wee cat is my only immediate family I have near by. I look after him alone, and its just him and I in my flat. He’s my best friend and he makes my life super happy and a lot more meaningful than it was before I was his owner. There is a lot of emotion in the image, and it shows the true relationship I share with my cat. Although it took me a while to get him this chill to capture the image as he’s 50% chill 50% hyper maniac.

Camera on timer, propped up on my bedside unit on a cola can. My iso & shutter speed were at 1000 as it was quite dark in my bedroom, and I had my aperture on f/4 in order to create a shallow dof, focusing on myself and Cookie. When optimizing the image I used Lightroom and Photoshop/

Location

I moved around a lot as a child, I went to 4 primary schools and 2 secondary schools. When people ask me where I’m from I don’t really know what to respond with, but I feel at home in Glasgow, especially at home in Glasgow Queen Street. Since the age of 14 I’ve traveled via Queen Street station, initially with my mum as a kid, then to work and to see friends as I got older. The lower level platform as photographed is especially nostalgic to me as this is where my train from home used to terminate.

I used a slow shutter speed to capture the movement of the train passing by, to show the busy chaos that is Queen Street Station. The people standing waiting patiently and the blank expression on the woman’s face in the center as the train is zooming past is very effective and interesting to look at, i feel like your drawn in to the image to look closer to see whats happening. Its one of my favorite Iv’e taken to date. When optomising i transitioned to black and white, added grain and a black faded border.

Object

I struggled to find a significant item, I didn't think I had anything that really explained who I was or that defined me. I realised after a classmate made the suggestion to photograph my hair clips, that I wear them almost every single day, and that I wear my name necklace (that says Eilidh) every day - I only removed it to photograph it, so that must mean theyr’e significant to me. My clips are a staple, they’re so simple yet an essential to my day to day look. They can take any basic look from 0-100. I wear about 8 at a time, 4 on each side, Its a look. As for my necklace, it was a gift from my friend on my 20th birthday, I’d never been given jewelry as a gift so it was very special to me and meant a lot, hence why I wear it every day, its also a staple to my look.  

I done the shoot at night, using the street lights from outside my window. They shine in on to my chair, so I placed the objects on to a cushion and shot from there. My iso was high due to the darkness of the room. When taking the photograph, i tried to frame the objects with the shadows that were curving around to the right of the image. I placed the chain from top to bottom of the frame, and scattered the clips vertically following the chain. When optomising the image i used Lightroom to transition from colour to black and white, i also added some noise and a black faded border. The shadows in the image are really nice, It has a kind of 60s feel to it I think. 

I edited all images the exact same so that they all fit with the same theme, i tried to give my images a kind of rustic vintage look. 

7D 70MM 

CLEAN WHITE FIRST ATTEMPT

Today we were given the brief Clean White, we were asked to capture one image of the models silhouette with a clean white background, and one image with lighting on the subject with a clean white background within the studio.

Our lecturer demonstrated how to achieve this in the morning class, and then we were to try it ourselves in the afternoon class.  We were shown to face two lights (with spill kills) at the white background, and to prop up two black polly boards at each side of the model to block out unwanted light. Above is my first attempt, after shooting and bringing the image up on the desktop I noticed it was quite grey, I realised my aperture was too high which created the greyness in the background. 

Nikki S Lee, originally known as Lee Sung-Hee was born in Kye Chang, South Korea in 1970. She lives in Seoul, South Korea and attained her photography degree in 1994 at the University of Korea, she then went on to enrol in her masters at the University of NYC.

Nikki changed her name before attending the university of New York in order to sound more american. She pinched the name from fashion model Niki Taylor, as the two commonly dressed up in disguises on the daily. Nikki S Lee has a compulsion for new identities. 

She is described as a Documentary, street and performance photographer. Her most successful series, the series which also kick started her career was ‘Projects’, which was created from 1997-2001. 

‘Projects’ was composed for her masters, it started in 1997 when she dressed up in a wig and heels attempting to transform herself into a drag queen, she threw herself into the drag queen community at a performance at MOTHER  in Manhattan, this was the first project. 

In the same year, she was joined by the Punk Project, Young Japanese fashionistas Project, Lesbian Project, Tourist Project, and one year later she was joined by the Hispanic project, the Yuppie project and the swingers project. 

Nikki’s work was recognised by a New York gallery and she was offered her own show, which she was initially gong to refuse as she hadn't yet finished her studies but she ate accepted after getting to know the gallery owner personally.

Each project Nikki came up with was researched to the max, she spent 3 month observing the people she was gong to attempt to approach, even practicing their mannerisms and speech, and even took it as far as t change her physical appearance. 

She shockingly dyed her hair, obtained dreads, lost and gained weight, aged her face and changed her skin colour.  

once she became a part of the group he was honest about being an artist and they knew her intentions. When he was in a gay relationship for her Lesbian project she insisted that the girl knew and was participating in the work, “we were preforming” - Nikki. 

Nikki got other members of the group to shot her “everyone is on the act” - Nikki. She used a small snapshot camera that was say to operate as these were familiar to the people in the project. 

The fact the photos are taken on a snapshot camera and are essentially amateur makes it more real for the audience. Real, gritty ages with even date stamps at the bottom. “I want my pictures to be real and easy to believe, which is why I use a documentary snapshot rather than theatrical, structured photography” - Nikki.