Final piece - First Impressions

My First Impressions series draws on inspiration from Gillian Wearing's series 'Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say' where she got people to write down exactly what they were thinking.

I asked my subjects to write on a piece of A4 card what they think other people's first impressions of them are. I chose to photograph my subjects in monochrome  for dramatic impact, and with a door that reflected their 'space' in order to create a series. 

The process elicited some interesting responses, some of which (such as 'quirky' and 'gorjus') were perhaps more unexpected that others (such as 'ginger' and 'short'). The first image in particular is thought provoking as the subject recognised that people would see him as a farmer, but he also expected them to be scornful and dismissive of his role in society. Similarly, the subject of the third image believed that people would see the hard-edged 'biker' purely based on his attire and motorbike, rather than seeing the gentle personality I know exists beneath the leather.

NOT ANOTHER !*!? FARMER

HOW DO YOU SPELL GORGUS?

BIKER

GINGER

"Quirky"

GOOD COOK

SHORT

Text portraits

Taking inspiration from Ralph Ueltzhoeffer text portraits I decided to create some of my own, but with a slight twist. Ueltzhoeffer's portraits mostly have a dark background and I've used a white one. By doing this it has allowed me to experiment and develop my pieces and come out with my own take on Ueltzhoeffer's creations. Using masks and playing with the opacity of layers has led to my final pieces below.

My pieces

.

The process

I started with an isolated image that I had converted to black and white.

I then used the magnetic lasso tool to draw around my model and create a mask.

Next, I added my text. I drew a text box the size of my image and filled it with the lyrics from my models favourite song. 

After moving the mask layer above the text layer to place it at the front I began to adjust the opacity of the mask layer. By reducing the opacity of this layer allowed the lyrics behind it to show through at a lighter rate.

Finally, I adjusted the opacity of the text layer just to reduce the boldness of the text.

Contact Sheets