Induction Project

"Be the change"

- Using the guidelines of "The Inside Out Project" Produce an individual portrait that represents something you believe in.

Guidelines from the inside out website:

www.insideoutproject.net/en

• Open to anyone:

Any important subject, any statement, can be strengthened by the INSIDE OUT. The project gives anyone a voice through his or her image. We do not tolerate statements invoking hatred, violence, racism, or extremism of any kind.

• On the portrait:

Portraits are of yourself or of anyone you think has a story that needs to be shared. Look straight into the camera and let your statement inspire your expression. Only one person per portrait. The portrait must be of just your face, with no additional body parts, disguises or pets.

• No brand, no product, no copyright: You cannot use the project for any commercial purpose. You cannot promote your product or your brand through INSIDE OUT.

• No publicity for any organization: You cannot use the project to promote your organization’s actions. Even if it’s an NGO, it is the personal stories and statements that Inside Out wants to highlight, not the actions of a specific organization/party.

• Free portraits: To help us fund INSIDE OUT, we ask for donations of $20 USD per poster. We recognize this amount is out of reach for many people and we will not turn anyone away for lack of funds. If you cannot or choose not to donate, we will gladly reduce the poster price based on our own funds and global geographical equality.

• Exhibiting posters: INSIDE OUT encourages you to put your poster in the most publicly visible location possible.

Some examples from: http://www.insideoutproject.net/en/group-actions/armenia-yerevan

SOLDIERS SMILING FOR JUSTICE

YEREVAN, ARMENIA

60 Portraits - September, 2012

STATEMENT

Armenian society is terrified by terrible losses of soldiers we have every day. There are different reasons for this, but main problem is suicide and non-formal relations inside Army. So we were thinking to make project that would make society shift. So people here understand that soldiers are really human, not just meat. In reality they smile more than being depressed or stressed.---- This project is very important for us. And right now there are a lot of very bad actions happening while I am writing this email. Lot of Armenians and Azerbajanians die on first line. Or soldiers kills each others or suicide.

- These images make a big public statement, soldiers are usually shown by the media as serious stern battle worn people and the fact that they do laugh, live, love, smile and are human is lost behind their jobs. People appreciate that when they go home from work they are themselves.Why not show this for soldiers?

This is one of my favourite inside out projects as it does reflect a belief of my own that I have about soldiers of all nationalities.

My own Idea:

This idea was inspired by a talk on our first day back to university by one of my tutors about a photographic project showing peoples stories of mental health issues and depression.

I wanted to apply a belief of mine about this to my photography.

" Depression is a real illness, just because you cannot see it. Does not mean it is not there"

For this project I shot my images using my Nikon D3000 with a standard kit lens,against a white background using on camera Flash quite close to the subject so I would get a bouncing light effect that made my images have a very high contrast. I shot each model smiling and sad and then decided to get a little creative in photoshop using the crop and free transform tools to match half of a serious face with half of a happy face to show that the depression makes a person two halves. The smile that they show to the world and their emotions inside.
My ISO was set at 100.

Whilst shooting my images I found it interesting watching the models decide for themselves what I happy and stern/sad face should look like.

Original Images

Halves

These images I made to physically show how a person can be split by mental health issues.

Mixed experiment 1

for this image I lowered the brightness and further increased the contrast to show a darker side to the expression.

My final product.

This is a mix of three different people I think the images work well as they show a message that you cannot see depression but it is there and you cannot tell who has or has not got it.

More of my images and experiments.

Contact of original images.

I am quite pleased with the way my images have turned out for this project however I would like a chance to shoot some more images all with the same framing with the persons head and shoulders in the same position in the frame closer in on the face as I feel it would work better as a series if they all matched.