The second brief of 2021 was one called “Recycle”, the idea was for us to use old and discarded objects within our home, anything that was old or had obvious signs of being well-used, and we were to paint them with light, section by section, and then put it into photoshop to bring out certain areas we like to create an image that is, to put it simply, made up of each highlight from our painting with light images. We were using old items to make one final result out of everything we had photographed.

For the most part, I absolutely hated this brief. Painting with light has never been something I’ve done much research on nor was it something I’d done much of, while in NQ, we briefly did some painting with light, but nothing to this extent, and even then, I thought I knew how to do it when really I didn’t as I was always getting light trails involved in my images. Thanks to this brief, I have a strong understanding on how painting with light works and the variety of it out there, but for this brief, we were to paint an object and light it up with a flash light, LED panel or any alternative light source of our choice.

Problem 1:

The very first problem I encountered with this brief was understanding what is being asked of me. While my lecturers were explaining it in detail and even showing examples of other results of a composite, I failed to truly understand what was being asked of me, I understood that we were painting with light, but I wasn’t entirely understanding why we were to put it into photoshop to bring out the highlights of the images we have. I spoke to Mark about it after one of the Thursday classes and I left the zoom call thinking I knew what to do, and in all fairness, I did have the right idea, I just hadn’t set things up properly. 

I thought we were to photograph each object separately, like we did for Illusion, so I had photographed my objects item by item and planned on putting them into my set up image. It wasn’t until the Tuesday feedback class that Mark went over the images with me and explained it better to me, I then understood what I was to do but I was having a very difficult time putting it together.

Problem 2:

After I had my understanding of the brief, the next problem I encountered was my set up and lighting up certain objects, in particular, I had a porcelain doll wearing white clothing and a dark brown set of clogs, I had difficulty lighting up both objects well as one item was far too dark and required a lot of light painting to light it up to a point you can see the detail in them, and the other was too so bright that with a lot of difficulty, no matter what I was doing, I was creating shadows on it or it was becoming far too exposed and the white in the doll had become so highlighted that it was completely out of place and took away from the doll itself.

I also had the problem of trying to align my images, but when I did this the first time, I realised I had stupidly used different photos from my shoot, photos where I had the same items but they weren’t exactly in the same place enough for the images to align correctly. Either I had nudged the tripod or the camera fell a little and moved out of position or simply me setting things up wrong, the images were different. This led to my first reshoot, I fixed things up and tried to align everything, but as the shoot went on, I began to alter the camera, zooming in or  moving my set up a little, so again, I had the same problem, just not quite as bad. 

Problem 3:

A problem many of my classmates experienced was the scratch disc issue. From what I remember, no one had informed us that this project will use up a lot of space on our computers and on our hard drives or whatever storage device we were using to save our work. I found out the hard way about this: after a Monday class, I had spent the entire day last week working on my project only to discover I couldn’t save it because the scratch disc was full. I’m on a college laptop too so I couldn’t just clear out the build in storage because I’m not an admin, so I had to arrange with my lecturers to get an extension as this problem occurred days before the deadline.

I reshot my images again that night as I realised that again, my images weren’t in line or the same, so I reshot my images and I tried again, but with the scratch disc issue, I couldn’t save my work but I was still trying to understand what exactly I was to do. I was working on very low opacity and flow, so I had to go over things numerous times to get a result, which was infuriating me as it was taking so long to get one tiny result. I admit, I got frustrated and angry, and with the deadline only days away, I was stressing out and panicking. 

My solution:

I took a step back and I thought calmly about things. I had emailed my lecturer about getting an extension, and after showing I really was having technical issues, I was granted that extension. I decided, without letting my lecturers know, that I was completely scrapping the idea I had and doing a brand new shoot. An issue I had was that I had too many items, for me personally, to work with, so I was getting confused and lost 7 seven layers in, so I remembered Mark’s words on pretty much every project I’ve ever done since NQ: “Keep it simple”. Mark is an inspiration to me when it comes to my photography, so I always value his opinions on my work and any advice he has to give, but that advice has been one that has stuck with me since the beginning of NQ photography in 2019. Thanks to that, I was able to take a step back, think about what I wanted to do, and do my reshoot with a strong understanding on what I want out of this shoot.

What I wanted was to capture items that had strong significance to me, items that belonged to my gran, grandad and items relevant to me in my childhood. The items I chose involved a German music box belonging to my gran, a broken dolphin that once belonged to a wind chime and my gran, a broken and old necklace belonging to me, a silver heart that belonged to me also, a small Sonic the hedgehog toy, and a silver locket that was given to me when my grandad passed away a long time ago.

My set up has never changed: I placed my items inside an old suitcase, the suitcase had a faded pink lining that, when light shone on it, gave off a very nice design of light patterns. With the suitcase, I added a blanket that is older than myself, the blanket acted the “floor” of my sett, while the suitcase’s lining was the background itself.

Once I had placed my items, I began my shoot and I focused on keeping my image count low, it helped me to stop myself from going overboard as I have the tendency to leave a shoot, college related or personal, with over one hundred photos as I get carried away and then have to go through them all, one by one. So I restricted myself with my images, to avoid this but also so I wasn’t having more photos for photoshop to struggle with when saving my work. This restriction helped me to have a boundary for myself and once my shoot was done, I waited until Monday’s class, this week, to speak with Iain about how to avoid blurring in my photos when I put them together. He was a big help and made me realise, after so long of stressing about it.......that I can change the opacity and flow to what I want it to be. With one simple relapse, I made myself stress out so much, I had forgotten that I could change the opacity and flow to what suits me, and that night, I put together my image and it was a thousand times easier and I could see results happening and I was able to really think and make choices on where I felt was a good highlight or shadow to add into my final image. 

I spent all of Monday night working on it, I planned on doing it until I began to get tired or fed up with a computer screen, but I was so determined to get this project over with that I powered through. I know it’s not good to overwork yourself, but my project was, despite my extension, three days later by that point and I hated not meeting my deadline. The week long extension gave me the time I needed to think and redo my entire shoot and keep it simple for myself, it gave me the time I needed to really plan out better what I want from the shoot and how to get it. So in that regard, I’m thankful for the extension as I really needed it so I could get a hard drive to save my work and so I could re-plan my shoot and be happy with it.

I was sure that I would need to redo or change my shoot when I was showing it to Mark today, I was being so harsh on myself thanks to stressing on the project since the day we were given the brief that I was convinced it looked terrible and wasn’t right. Hearing Mark confirm that I did a great job and made some good decisions made me realise “Hey, I actually did a good job here, I can see that, I can be proud of this”, I have diagnosed crippling anxiety and Aspergers syndrome, so my anxious thinking tends to really blow things out of proportion and I end up panicking and stressing far too easily, so hearing advice from lecturers about my work really helps me and I value every criticism I get as it’s always constructive and not intended to upset me. I let that zoom call feeling ecstatic because I finally finished my Recycle project and I made something I’m absolutely proud of. It took a lot of pain and suffering, but I pulled through, submitted my project and was finally able to forget about it and move onto Lost and Found.

But, while I had many drawbacks with this project, the Recycle brief really helped me to get a good understanding and relationship with photoshop and how it works. In NQ, we used photoshop for the basic use of editing our photos and learning about layer masks, which completely baffled and upset me because I didn’t understand them despite how much Heather explained it to me. HND has helped me a lot with photoshop and understanding, and with me really diving into research and watching tutorials on how it all works as I go, I picked up what tool does what. I still have no idea what most of the tools do, but I’m familiar with most of them enough now to the point I was able to use the tools on my own without a guide or anyone explaining to me on what to do, I was comfortable enough to change brush sizes, colours, to zoom in and out or to use the tools when I needed them. I had become more comfortable with photoshop when we did the Illusion brief, but Recycle has helped me to really understand and become more comfortable with the software to the point I made my own creations, non-college related, and was able to really see what I was able to create and that, with more learning, I can really make some creative masterpieces in the future.

This project also helped me to really think and plan out what one action will do to my shoot or the objects involved, for example, it helped me to think about the effects my flashlight would have on an object when I’m painting with light long before I do the action. I’m thankful for this brief in the way of helping me learn, but I will not miss it!

Things I would do differently

If given the opportunity, I would do many things differently, in particular, I would speak to my lecturers more for help and ask my questions about being confused, what exactly is being asked of me and how I’m to do it. Instead, I spent weeks stressing, worrying and losing sleep because I couldn’t understand how to do the project or what was asked of me, had I asked more questions when the opportunity was there, I could have saved myself the stress, but now I know it for future reference. 

Another thing I would do differently is my planning, I did plenty of research on this brief for inspiration and tips, but I feel my planning wasn’t great, I had an idea and I tried to shoot it, but then I was thinking of other ways to shoot it and put it into action instead of sketching it up and really giving it some thought. So I would do that differently.

Another thing I’d like to do differently is to have attended more Tuesday advice classes, I was terrified to attend because of my anxiety and I was scared to speak one-on-one with Mark, through zoom, about my ideas and images. When I eventually did attend, I saw that there was nothing to worry about and it really does help me, so much so that now, unless I plan to shoot my location shots, I attend the Tuesday classes for feedback on my work and so I can find out where I went wrong or how to improve my image.

This brief showed me many things, but regarding myself, it showed me how much I stop myself from achieving my full potential, by letting fear and anxieties grip me, I stop myself from doing things I know will look or turn out great, I stop myself from interacting in class sessions or getting some helpful feedback from lecturers and I stop myself from getting the help I need to calm my worrying mind and be gentler on myself.

I learned a lot from this brief and while I am thrilled to have made something I’m so proud of...........I really hope we don’t get another project like it any time soon!