The Idea

At first, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to go with video or not as I'm doing photography in the other module. While I wouldn't rule out doing some video in a project, I don't think I want to go for a festival or competition that is video only as I'm still very inexperienced with video and find the limitations of my own ability sometimes hamper my ideas and the scale. So while some of the ideas intrigued me, I decided to go with something more photography based.

An idea I had over summer involved the themes of self-perception and involved portraits so I kept coming back to two competitions. The LPA "Let's Face It" one is perfect for the idea that I had and so I think I shall be going for this one. Below is a screen shot of the competition information.


(Click to enlarge) The only concern I'd have with this brief is depending on where my idea takes me and how big the project becomes, whether 6 images only would really represent what I was trying to achieve. However, until I get into the project, this is something I don't know.

The actual idea I have in more detail:- I got thinking over the summer when someone used that classic line "I don't care what people think of me.". I think everyone has used that line in some way or another, but none of us truly mean it. If we did, we wouldn't present ourselves in certain ways depending on the situation (take the contrasts between how you'd dress and act in the pub than if you were going to an interview) and we definitely wouldn't do things like untagging ourselves from photos on social networking websites or take time picking 'the right profile picture'.

I want to look at the way people think the world views them and the way they want to be viewed. In some cases, I imagine the two will be the same if not similar, but it's interesting to look at identity and the self-perception of ourselves. I think to do this I'll be combining text and image in some ways, but I also had initial ideas to do a documentary style video exploring this theme. The next job is to look at the initial inspirations for this idea and start researching to try and define exactly how I want to go about exploring the themes.