With this project, initially I did struggle for almost three weeks with what I could actually do in reference to the theme that was set. I could think of potential things in regards to 'Editorial' as I could imagine what I thought of as an article which helped me visualise and come up with picture ideas. However this theme 'extraordinary' within the project through me a bit as it was hard to conjure up an idea that would fit, or what I thought would fit as well as the teachers agreeing, the theme. My friend offered to help me brain-storm for ideas and I thought it would be a good idea to get a fresh opinion on it. I had thought of using her in my pictures, as I had used her before. (worked with her for a previous project).
One of my thoughts, one of the only ideas I had, was photographing people with Bipolar disorder, as I have two friends who are. One including my friend who helped me brain - storm. She liked the idea as it helped bring awareness and with the images we thought of taking shows the difference between Bipolar and Schizophrenic which a lot of people generally get wrong as they think they are the same but Bipolar Disorder is about changing emotions quickly and not being able to control it in the same way as most people and also hormones. Schizophrenic people have personality disorder, they have two or more completely different personalities and can alter between these. I thought of doing this because of people judging others for what they see but not them actually knowing the underlying problem. For example if you saw someone that seemed to be 'acting out' and 'over reacting' there may be a deeper meaning as to why. They could have kept it in for ages and then one simple thing has caused them to react to something we may not see as anything major. It helps show that just because it isn't a physical deformity we can see we shouldn't judge someone for something we know nothing about and which we can't see. It's these mental disabilities that people need to be aware of and to not judge someone they don't know. As I mentioned before I could see this as an article however the 'extraordinary' aspect I wasn't sure people would agree with but my argument to that would be people have to live with these conditions without strangers knowing their condition and so when they do act out they are getting judged for something they can't quite help and it is this, something most of us don't have to deal with for the rest of our lives, which I find quite extraordinary.
Some of the ideas we had to work with were representing both sides to her, one being the 'ordinary' side that everyone saw and the other potential side which is always there but which she suppresses and controls. For the shots we thought of doing her split emotions by having one side of seemingly 'normal', what people see and the other crazy and a representation of how she may actually feel but which she hides and keeps under wraps. Both of these would be shown on her at one time so we were trying to think of how to do this and we thought of having to types of makeup on each split down half of her face and the same for hairs and clothes. The other option we chose we could do was to have each side represented fully and photograph them separately.
Another thought we had was again to do with my friend. She has a couple medical disorders and due to this got told she will only live till she was 20. She is now 21 going on 22 shortly. However she always feels that death is still lurching and is always there, hovering over her. We came up with a few ways of portraying this. One was to have a clock, preferably a pocket watch, she could have with her that represents the time that she has and that it is a precious thing that she has got. We also thought of including 'death, the grim reaper' to help tell the story for people to understand. I thought of also the idea of balancing life and death, this would be represented by having something showing 'life' in one hand and the other showing 'death' in her other hand and she would be seen holding both and balancing them both. One other idea she had was to use a tunnel and this could represent the light at the end of the tunnel, which could be shot also with 'death' pulling her back towards the light and she is fighting going away from he light, fighting for her life. I chose this as well because it's something not a lot of us have to deal with and thought she was pretty extraordinary for keep going on through what she has. I have known her since about the age of three and she is a fighter, she has a secure job, a nice car and soon a house. She is still living her life, like she should, being positive, therefore I thought she is extraordinary.
“An interesting subject being uninteresting is uninteresting. An
uninteresting subject being interesting is interesting. An interesting subject
being interesting is very interesting.” Charlie Kirk
