A neighbour's child

Back to Conceptual photography for a moment. I don't know how you are going to feel about this photograph and I was very slow to make it public, however I had it hanging in the Sirius Exhibition for a few weeks and I haven't been excommunicated so here goes.

When i was doing my last Photography course I had to come up with a Body of Work. I have spoken about this in previous posts. I dug deep into my own personal experiences for these images and most of them are very personal to me but can be interpreted by the individual in several different ways.

The Title of the body of work is "The veil that hides the future from us is woven by the Angel of Mercy". I got this saying from my father in law, R.I.P. The title of the image is "A Neighbours Child".

This image was inspired by a very sad and disturbing event. While out walking my dog along the shore on a wet October morning a few years ago I came upon the body of a young man who had hung himself.  It was along the stretch of shore in the photograph not from this tree.

I remember thinking that this wasn't my sadness, I wasn't the one getting the terrible news that day. Probably my mind helping me to deal with the situation. 

That is what this image is about. The veil over the lens is acting as a net curtain and I'm looking through a window into someone else's life. 

The rope juxtaposed with the swing are a haunting reminder of the events of that day. It makes me wonder if suicide by hanging has anything to do with getting back to a happy childhood place, worry and care free.

Camera settings Lens used Tamron 10 - 24mm@13mm, Exposure 1/200, f9, ISO 100

This will probably be my last post for a few days as i'm off on hols for a week and i don't think i will have internet access. I would love to hear other people's interpretations of this image if anyone feels like commenting below. Stay safe and well until we meet again.

Excuses

Excuses
We've had a bit of  hectic week here hence the reason for neglecting my blog. We were searching for a missing dog for 3 days. My brother John was looking after him for his ex-wife and kids and he escaped. Thank God there was a happy ending. Thanks to Social media, he was spotted and eventually found.

As I have no new material to show you I'm going to post some of my photos from the body of work I produced for my last College course. I showed you the first 1 in a previous post. The body of work is called "The veil that hides the future from us is woven by the angel of mercy".

This image is called 'Mourning and weeping"

Technically this isn't a great photo as the eyes aren't pin sharp but that's the beauty about conceptual or contemporary photography. Anything goes as long as it has a message  or meaning. The dullness in the eyes adds to the sorrowful look i was going for.

Camera settings, exposure 1/125sec, f5.6, ISO 100 Off camera flash was used

This image was changed to black and white using layers in photoshop and a mask used to uncover the red colour of the lips. Youtube is a great source for tutorials on this and anything else for that matter.

Next image, called "The Valley of Tears"

I used this image in my first post. When i started working on this body of work I wasn't sure where it was going. I was amazed at how much of my Catholic upbringing came out in the images. "Mourning and Weeping in the Valley of Tears" were words from a prayer 'The Hail Holy Queen' that my mother recited every evening to finish off the Rosary. It's engrained in my memory.

Camera settings, 1/15sec, f25, ISO 125

The last one I'm going to show you today is called "Shattered Dreams"

 

Camera Settings, 1/8000, f20, ISO 100

It's up to the beholder to take what they want from these images, it was a very personal journey for me but when you are looking at them keep the theme in mind. "The veil that hides the future from us is woven by the angel of mercy".

The veil that hides the future

I collected 2 photographs from the Sirius art Centre in Cobh yesterday. I had them on display in an Open House exhibition for the past few weeks. I have to say i was a bit nervous about having them on display. They were part of a body of work that i completed for my Fetac course this year and they were what i suppose would be considered 'Fine Art Photography or Conceptual or Contemporary Photography'. I was nervous of putting myself out there on public display as in, the work was quite personal. However the beauty about this type of photography is that anyone who looks at it takes their own meaning from it.

For this type of work you have to come up with an idea or work to a theme.  I dug deep and used some personal experiences for mine.

I used a saying that my father in law,God rest him, used all the time. He used to say "An Angel of mercy hides the future from us" which is very true. I looked up the saying on Google and found that it was an old proverb, the full saying is " The veil that hides the future from us is woven by the angel of mercy".

I took this and let my imagination run wild and came up with 9 images around the theme, using the veil as a symbol to hide the knowledge of what the future holds.

I'll show you the main one now and I'll introduce the rest over time in the blog.

In this image there's a young girl on her communion day standing with her brother. I highlighted her to make her stand out. In the 'crystal ball' beneath her is an image of the same girl on her wedding day.
On her communion day she had stepped into cow dung and distroyed her shoes, you can see  the dung on the toes. She has a really worried look on her face as she was scolded for being so silly.
The medicine bottles are there to symbolise her career as a nurse. The shadow of the whisky bottle is just that. She was far from an alcoholic but it just shows what can be insinuated in a photograph.

I called this image 'The veil that hides the future'. If she had known on her communion day that one day she would leave her mammy and daddy and become a nurse and go off to the war, see all kinds of horrendous things, then come home and marry a man and have 5 children, I think the look on her face would be more of horror than worry. That's where the veil comes in, it hides a huge amount of knowledge from us.

The hope is that anyone looking at this image would take their own meaning from it, maybe a younger person would look at it and wonder what would be in their crystal ball.

How I did it
I set up this image on a shelf in my sitting room. I pinned the Communion photograph to the back wall of the shelf. I used an old glass fishing float as the crystal ball and placed it underneath the photograph. I superimposed the wedding photograph of the same girl onto the ball using post processing software, then i arranged the medicine bottles to the left and I placed the whisky bottle in such a way that the off camera flash threw the shadow of the bottle onto the image.

Settings used
Camera on tripod, Lens Canon 70-300mm @90mm. exposure 1/100sec, f7.1, ISO100, Off camera flash.