Photo Essay:
Ideas: A day in the life of barber shop staff - capture realism, unprovoked photography, event driven. Other idea - Old fashioned Barber's who still provide a straight razor shave. This simple little Photo Essay was designed to show a working class profession used by all walks of life. All the different people after a certain look which suits them. So many questions that explain so much of their life and culture, through a simple haircut. I wanted the photo essay to really capture a self-improvement within people. Playing with reflections and mirrors proved to be a fun way of incorporating D.O.F into the photography.
The shots were taken mostly on Tv setting using a variety of F number ranges and aperture widths. Notice the shot of the razor, how close the two extremes of depth of field are. Positioning myself correctly for that shot proved difficult in the space I had. Also, experimenting with D.O.F in the mirrored shots proved interesting, as the mirror seemed to extend the D.O.F into the reflection, allowing me to obtain greater focal depths.
I decided not to do a large amount of colour correction or vignetting because I wasn't trying to achieve an artistic style, only realism. The shot of the shop banner was upturned to create a bizarre upside down title, in which the sky appears to be the floor. This wasn't a clever idea, simply a play on optical illusion and perspective.
I was going to play around with the idea that I would be seen within my photography as a method of implementing realism. Inspired by Lee Friedlander's work. However, this seemed unnecessary on set. As I was photographing the environment, seeing myself in the picture seemed silly, hence the photographs themselves, it seemed pretentious to be seen in my own work without it providing any real meaning.
