Unity Project - TAFE #2

So I can FINALLY share these with you! Yayy! So first of All my first set of Photographs that I took were with Mat Foley (In my previous post I mentioned the crowns etc) My Mum was more than happy to help me with this (She used to be a florist so I wasn't complaining/going to turn down her help) we made around 4 different crowns. We made these crowns using plants and such from our garden (There were leaves EVERYWHERE)

(We even managed to get some on our puppy :P)

we snipped branches off of trees, and stripped some bougainvillaea down, for those of you who are unsure of what that it, it is the following plant

When we lived in Spain we would see this plant EVERYWHERE, it was almost across every single wall or fence, And when I finally got around to asking somebody why there was so much of this plant around, they told me that it was to keep burglars out, because they couldn't climb the walls because of the gigantic thorns in this plant, and the thorns are gigantic, and they hurt QUITE A LOT if you stab yourself with them (Which we did several times while trying to make these crowns) Unfortunately I did not manage to get photographs of each one, as we ran over time, and some of them got destroyed down at the location, BUT I did however have time to take a photograph of myself wearing one (I felt you couldn't get the proper feel of it by just an image of the crown itself)

The location where I chose to take my Unity photographs, is a rather large park behind my house, It's mostly bush/grass and trees but right in the middle are two giant ponds Before the floods hit it was extremely common for people to come down and swim, but nowadays you don't even see very many owners allowing their dogs to go for a quick dip in there, and Yes I had my heart set on a water shot and asked very nicely and was incredibly grateful when Mat hopped in without a single complaint, when quite frankly he could have said no and I would not have pushed it. The water is filthy you cannot see anything below you, and it smelt terrible, I'm more than convinced it was a safety hazard for us to be in there! (And us both having over active imaginations was most definitely not helping the situation at all) It's safe to say He wanted to get out of there as soon as possible and I was not making that easy by being over anal about my photographs. We did take a few photographs using the crowns but I just personally felt that they did not work as well as the others (They were still amazing) but Mat managed to pull the whole concept off without wearing anything on his head at all, So I decided to drop them and to go with the photographs not featuring the crowns. I'm going to take this opportunity to once again Thank Mr Foley for giving up his afternoon and being so incredibly co-operative, it would have been absolutely impossible without him. So here is one of my final images from Mat's set. I will upload the rest once I have presented them to my class for the final part of my assignment.

(^^ Please click on the image to see it at it's best-well it's best for this blog anyway)

The second set of Photographs that I took included the incredibly Beautiful Taylah Rush, While brainstorming and searching the net for some insipiration, I came across This image from Tomas Rucker

And instantly fell in love with it, At first glance I thought that the statue/carving was a tree, and this instantly made me think of the park again where I had recently discovered a mature tree that had been completely uprooted and was lying with its roots exposed up in the air, upon further investigation I found that the base of the tree was completely hollow, with the tendrils of the roots coming out in all directions, and I Instantly wanted to photograph somebody inside the roots. I brainstormed some more (As I was ...well not so much uncomfortable with the idea of somebody being naked as I have taken nudes for somebody before, but It was extremely difficult considering we had to use the natural landscape and there are only so many places you can take a naked person without causing an uproar, and on top of this, how many people are actually willing to get fully nude for you in a public place?) So i brainstormed some more and decided that I could wrap a vine of Ivy around the tree and around my model, so that It was joined to the tree and appeared more unified than If i just wrapped it around her. I experimented with this idea with several different vines and found it just would not cooperate with me and would constantly move, So my Mother (getting her florist head on again) suggested that I buy some ribbon and glue the vine to the ribbon....so I went out and bought some ribbon.

I then went outside and stripped down our ivy vine and proceeded to then try and hot glue gun them onto the ribbon, After burning my fingers for what seemed like the 100th time (For those of you who have never experienced that kind of pain you are incredibly LUCKY! It is the most painful thing I have EVER experienced in my life!) I gave up and proceeded to staple, yes staple, the leaves onto the ribbon.

So once again we set off to the park, and set up, (I would like to mention what a great sport Taylah was, she agreed to let us TAPE those fillet things over her breasts, so that she could look as 'naked' as possible, and It looked highly uncomfortable) Now when I had been at this park, at the same time a week before, the sun was not anywhere near this tree trunk...but it sure as hell was on that day, the sun was ridiculous! With some effort we managed to tye the ribbons to the roots and got Taylah placed inside, But again me being me, made her move around probably five to six different times before I was happy (I would like to point out that this was not an easy task, there were sharp sticks/branches poking out everywhere and Taylah got scratched on more than one occasion, but she did not complain once)

We were sweating, squinting, and I was becoming extremely infuriated with the blinding sun situation, but we eventually got it right, and thanks to Courtney Fegan for offering to help and holding up a giant blue lid for us to shade Taylah, things finally started to work. Again I would like to take this opportunity to thank Taylah Rush for everything that she did that day, she also gave up her afternoon and she made things incredibly easy for me, She was incredibly co-operative and she too agreed to hop into that disgustingly filthy pond for me so that I could get the Photographs that I had in mind. These photographs would not have been possible without her and I am incredibly grateful to the both of them for doing this for me, I am forever in your debt guys, because these photographs turned out so much better than anything I could have hoped for.

(^^ Please click on the image to see it at it's best-well it's best for this blog anyway) Also just as an extra summit-summit, I decided to include the following image, Which is a before and after Shot of Taylah's photograph (I am not the greatest at Photoshop, actually up until 10 weeks ago I had never touched the thing, it was far too complex for me and I did all of my editing on Paintshop pro X, This may not look like much to you Photoshop pro's but I am actually pretty proud of my efforts, I'm sure I'll look back in a years time and be highly embarrassed by my efforts, and this actually took me quite some time to get it as neat as it is, my first attempt was somewhat horrendous compared to this, the lines were incredibly obvious and as a whole it just looked rather messy)

Well I'll leave you with that image, and If you actually read all of this, I'm sorry for boring you to death, but I hope that you enjoyed my photographs, and I will be sure to upload the finished set once I have presented them to my class. I hope you all had a fantastic weekend! x