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Printing

Of the ten shots above that made it into my final submission, I chose to print the five below. They were sent to Black Art Giclee to be printed on the Studio Smooth Cotton 300gsm paper.

While I'm not convinced they are my strongest five images from the ten, I feel like they are the only five that can tell the story without the other images.

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Post-production

This was the most challenging shot to create (intellectually, not physically)

Initial processing was done in RawTherapee, the shot was flipped vertically and rotated slightly after the basic optimisations were done before it was converted to black and white.

It was then taken into photoshop (screenshot from Affinity) to replace the background. I used content aware fill to create a full layer from the white backdrop and it wasn't great. I duplicated the layer and used a gaussian blur and made a dodge/burn layer to brighten the top and darken the bottom of the background.

It still wasn't right. I then used a directional/motion blur instead of gaussian, and it was a big improvement. There was now a subtle direction of travel.

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Post-production

This shot was given a very slight rotation to level the base of the fence, beyond that and my normal optimisations an B&W conversion, all thaw was done in photoshop was some burning on the background and a dodge applied to the sliver of light outside the cage.

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Post-production

This shot was also flipped to keep the direction of travel consistent. It was also cropped in and had some sharpening applied to my face.

A bit of vibrance and saturation was added in photoshop in an attempt to more closely match the look of the shirt in the other shots.

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Contact Sheets

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Thoughts on Fourth shoot

Planned for this day was a panicked relocation of the sliding down hill shot from Ruchill park to the necropolis, as I can't count to 10. It was a shot planned for the previous shoot but we had run out of time, and a shot in one of the necropolis grave cages or behind a rusty fence with a black backdrop. A studio shoot in the afternoon that could be edited to show me falling was also planned. Skydiving was unfortunately not an option due to my cheapness and cowardice. All shots taken with a college Canon 6DMkII

The sliding shots didn't quite go to plan, as was the case with the jumping shots, the flash even at 1:1 didn't do much to stop movement and give a clear face shot, and it required clear communication and great timing between myself who had the remote release app to trigger the camera and Gerri who had to pull me. Shot at f/1.8 with an 85mm and my six stop ND filter.

The second shot of the day, also didn't quite go to plan. Due to work going on at the necropolis around the grave cages, we had to relocate to Ramshorn Graveyard to find a nice rusty cage. Shot at f/1.8 with an 85mm and Gerri's portable backdrop.

The white box is painful, I do not recommend lying back on it. Shot at f/8 with a 24-105mm lens at 28mm. After the first few attempts, I decided that it would be best to move the camera to the side a bit so that my hair is completely in front of the backdrop as it would be easier to cut around my boots than hair in post.

My boots are also a problem. In every other shot, I had on my shoes not my boots. Oops.

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Post Production

I used a wee bit of trickery when shooting this, the tree does not grow straight up, it has a bit of an angle to it, around 5 to 10 degrees. By tilting the camera to show the tree at a more normal vertical alignment, the hill looks steeper than it is, I still had to do some more image rotation in post to get it just right though.

This is another shot with a horizontal flip in post to keep the direction of movement consistent.

I did experiment with desaturation (Layer 2) and the result is shown above, but I found that I much preferred the more dramatic contrast between full colour as shot and black and white.

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Post-Production

Post-production of these 2 images was again a fairly simple task, with the only goal being to match the look of the climbing shot.

Annoyingly because of the time difference between shooting both shots, the copy and paste of optimisation settings from one to the other required an additional stop of exposure compensation.

The purpose of these shots is to depict the two lowest points in the depression cycle, contemplating suicide and actually going through with it.

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Post-production

With this image, I am attempting to depict the insane high I experienced in my hypomania episode.

While optimising the raw image, I cropped in to remove the ground (In shot to help me position myself), I then noticed that the sky has a lot of texture when under exposed and a lovely glow when over exposed. To take advantage of this, I exported out two versions of this image to take into photoshop and used the brighter one as a pin light. This with the addition of even more vibrance and saturation than I had added in the raw processing created the unique look of this image.

Last 2 screenshots were done in Affinity Photo, but editing was done in photoshop at college.

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Post-production

This shot is to signify a beginning, normality in a way. It will be the first shot in the sequence of 10 and is the introduction of the character. Symbolically, daffodils represent many different things, beginnings, rebirth or hope being the most common in modern use.

Optimisation was fairly simple, almost matching the in camera JPEG but with better contrast.

It was suggested that I remove the dead flower heads from the shot, but I decided not to do so as this is supposed to show life as it is without depression or bipolar disorder. Life isn't perfect, even without mental health issues, and the dead heads are a good way of showing that within this image. They can also be interoperated as a bit of foreshadowing.

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Thoughts on second and third shoot

Second shoot was a complete failure. As soon as we got close to the shooting location to reshoot the beginning shot, the clouds decided to go away and the sun came out, completely reversing the weather prediction. The extremely hard and bright light was unusable.

The third shoot on the other hand was a major success. I came away from it believing I had gotten half of my project done in one day. All shots were on a college Canon 6DMkII at f/1.8 and 85mm. My three and six stop ND filters got a fair amount of use, doubling up on the long exposure shots.

We started with me jumping like a loon, this wasn't my best idea as it was very tiring, and we'd just got started. The flash had far less impact in stopping movement with this shot than it did previously with the hopscotch shots. I believe this is because we were in a far more open and bright area.

With the shots at the Firhill basin, I was on a different dock than planned, as fishermen had claimed my spot. On the plus side, that meant the camera was on dry land instead of at the end of another dock, greatly reducing the possible risks stated in the risk assessment. I'm sure Hugh would be glad that the camera was at far less risk of falling in.

We finally did reshoots of the beginning and I was finally happy with a few shots.

Then I proved to myself once again, I'm too old and unfit for what I was putting myself through. I may edit this post to include the video Gerri took, no doubt it's hilarious.

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Contact Sheets Shoot 2 part 2

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Contact Sheets Shoot 2 Part 1

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Post-Production 3

This shot did not go to plan. I intended to monkey bar along the crossbar for a similarly dynamic shot with stopped motion as the hopscotch shot. Turns out I'm too old and unfit for that now, I could barely hang on and swing. In hindsight, this actually works better than the original plan, as the slight movement of this shot fits nicely between the static climbing shot and the more active hopscotch shot in the final sequence.

Raw processing was done in RawTherapee. I rotated the shot slightly to have a horizontal horizon and a squinty crossbar and cropped in a bit, as this better shows an upward struggle than the image does as shot.

After moving into Photoshop to make the black and white gradient, I discovered some of my raw adjustments that worked for the subject did not work for the background, after masking out the subject I dialled back the vibrance adjustment on the still coloured side of the background and adjusted the brightness down and raised the contrast by a large amount.

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Post-production 2

Post was again done in RawTherapee. I chose to flip the image horizontally to keep the direction of movement consistent throughout all 10 images. Being the first of the B&W conversions, it sets the look for all the others to match. I finally settled on a dark look for the shirt, as it gives a striking contrast to the blue and keeps to the darker theme I want for the depression images.

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Post-production one.

Post-production went well and quickly for this image. I used RawTherapee 5.9, starting with my default adjustment profile only vibrance and contrast needed much tweaking to get the overly colourful look I want from this image.

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Thoughts on first shoot.

I very quickly learned I have lost a lot of fitness in the past few years. I started with the hopscotch shots, very tiring, don't recommend.

The shoot itself went very well, and I was able to get a good shot for showing mania with the flash plus long exposure technique. All shots were captured at f/1.8, mostly with an 85m with the exception of the goalposts shot that was done with my 28mm lens.

The second shot was intended to be similar, with me "monkey barring" along the length of the crossbar of the goal. I could barely hold myself up, never mind anything more energetic. Turns out I'm 36 not 26, disappointing.

Still managed to get a decent shot, that probably works better as in the final 1 to 10 sequence, it sits between the shot above with lots of movement and another with very little movement.

The next shot was the slow climb out of depression and in the final sequence is before the above shots. Thankfully, this one went exactly to plan, although I will need to flip it horizontally in post.

I made many attempts to get a good shot for the initial image in the sequence, even trying other angles than side on. I wasn't happy with any of them, but I still want the daffodils, so will be reshooting. Attempts are shown in the contact sheets