Idea 1

The idea of this shoot was to use a mirror as a portal to dream. I decided to take photos of a mirror placed on a bed and use Photoshop to layer other images ("the dreams") over the top. I am not really happy with how it turned out as I don't think it insinuates the idea of dreaming well enough. We had a group crit session on the Monday and after that I have a few ideas of how to covey it better.

I decided to place a mirror on the bed a make the room fairly dark using fairy lights and other coloured lighting but looking at the images after the shoot I have decided that most of them are to dark and you don't notice the mirror. For this particular shoot I don't think the one with the purple lighting works as again the attention isn't on the mirror but I am going to keep it in mind for a shoot later on down the line. My favourite image is the last one as there is there isn't as much going on in the background so this is the image I decided to take forward and edit.

I decided to use these two images in the mirror as I wanted to show something positive, I discovered that the majority of images are negative but I know how people always want to dream of something positive. To me these images are very calming especially the one that is out of focus.

I am really not keen on this image as the bottom right hand corner is so dark it really shows up the blurred grey duvet and I think it looks quite fake I tried re-editing it many times but it never really got any better so for the next image I will choose an image that isn't to dark at the bottom. I also thought that it just looked like I had put a canvas on my bed rather than it being a mirror so I decided to add the black detailing that some mirrors have, I think this improved the image but not a great deal

I think the second one turned out better as the sunset is more blurred you get more of a sense of dreaming and not focusing properly. I also think it is more successful because the colours are more muted. The whole image being out of focus shows how they are in a daze trying to sleep.

Even though I the second image I am still really not happy with how the images have turning out so I decided to not create anymore and try and find something that conveys my ideas better.

Like I said at the begging I showed these images in a group critique and my thoughts were confirmed that they don't really give off the sense of dreaming. We talked about how it doesn't look like its a mirror as it has been completely cover, there is no real reflection. One of the girls suggested creating a double exposure then we moved onto talking about using a cracked mirror and having some of pieces being a portrait of the person dreaming and the other pieces being the dream. This is what I am going to try next.