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I AM

I have learned to love......myself first

By naatPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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I AM
Photo by Conor Luddy on Unsplash

In 2019, I wrote, produced, co-directed, shot some pictures and displayed my first photo-art album at two art exhibitions; one that I organized and another that I got to be a part of with other black artists. The photo album entitled "I AM" explored mental health journey stories. The idea of this project was to create awareness on mental health and also to share my mental health journey through photography. I can not show the processes of some of the images without giving you a background information on the why of the project. One of the things that I was so sure of this project was that in every process whether it being writing this project, or directing or capturing or editing I wanted to include a piece of myself in it. I let myself just be whatever it needed to be to make this happen.

In the process of taking the pictures, I had conversations with the subjects on mental health. I wanted the subjects to help me capture a part of their emotions and state of being that spoke about mental health or illness. We played very soothing music(video above without music as I do not have rights to the song), we also shared very vulnerable moments. 

A lot of the pictures that I took were taken in the process of trying to understand a word being said about mental illness during photoshoot and conversations with the subjects. I always asked myself how I could capture that word with the help of my amazing friends(subjects). In this post I will be sharing two short photo series processes from the "I AM" album.

For the first series I wanted to display mood swings in one picture. I am a newbie to photography and so I improvised a lot when it came to creating photoshoot settings. I used a white wall, closed all the windows and doors in the room to prevent any external light sources and projected one light source onto my subjects. I also used a canon DSLR T3i to take the images(borrowed the camera from my school's library), photoshop for editing and the support from my friends to make this happen.

Below is a video of how the setting looked like.

When I was experiencing depression once upon a time in my life, I would have several mood swings and they happened without permission. Most of these mood swings were caused by triggers. And so with the end product of the image I wanted that depiction without having to say so much. I shot two different images with my canon DSLR T3i and in black and white mode. One that portrayed one as happy and another picture of not so happy.

First Image shot in black and white.

Second Image shot in black and white

With the help of photoshop and just sitting in the dark room in a common room on my campus, playing music by Billie Eillish(to allow myself to be vulnerable and present). I was able to combine the images below into the "BI-EFFECT" photo series. I would love to say that I know the setting that I used to make this possible. I was randomly trying different settings and this happened.

Or this

For the second series - THE BLEAK. One song that best describes the mood for this photograph is Lovely by Billie Ellish. The song was in no way an inspiration but the words of that song best describes what the image depicts. There was a time in my life where thinking was something that I never entertained because just one thought or doubt can spiral into a never ending cycle of allowing negative thoughts and energy into your space. This series "THE BLEAK" was inspired by this experience. I took the first image below.

Edited this into

And then with photoshop and a feature I do not recall but similar to the first one, I was able to combine these images into these.

These images were shot in my school's library and my friend was so tired when she let me take a picture of her. We had scheduled to meet at that time and place and I am thankful and appreciative that she let me shoot her in a state of tiredness. It really helped make the end result of the image powerful.

art
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About the Creator

naat

Testing and exploring a lot of waters and love for words.

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