Title：Floral funeral
Photographer：Chinatsu Seki
The series of photos I am posting here are photos I have been wanting to take for some time now for a concept project.
The theme is “Life and death”.
Compared to blooming flowers, young girls’ skins are white and motionless; it is with this contrast in mind that I did this photo shoot. I also took the photos with heightened consideration for light and color.
The theme was “life and death”, and in order to make a young girl’s skin resemble that of a dying person, I used lighting. To show the originally pale skin even whiter it was a process of trial and error with the way the subject is exposed to light.
Because the atmosphere I wanted was cold, dark and gloomy, I controlled the white balance to give the photo a blueish hue.
I mostly used the tripod for this shoot.
Since I hardly used a tripod before this, it was tough at the start. Using a tripod allows you to properly shoot photos with no blurring even in dark places.
This shoot really drove home to me the usefulness and convenience of a tripod, so I would like to continue to use a tripod going forward.
What I learned on my shoots was the importance of getting a picture in your mind of the final product you are aiming for and clearly determining the theme and atmosphere of the photo.
Up till now, for conceptual projects, I usually took single photos as opposed to a series of photos.
I usually did not come up beforehand with an image, theme or atmosphere for my projects. The same applies to the first time I did this shoot. And the result was a final work for which no-one knows what the message is.
When I tried redoing the shoot, this time seriously trying to form an image of the final product in my mind, the completed piece gave the impression to people looking at it that is was trying to convey something. This hit home for me the importance of forming an image of the finalized piece beforehand.
【Photographer】
Chinatsu Seki
Shibata Agricultural Highschool, Miyagi Prefecture 2nd Year Photography Club.
Shashin Koshien 2012 Tournament
2013 National Culture Festival for Upper Secondary Schools ( Nagasaki Tournament) Photography Department Exhibition
2014 National Culture Festival for Upper Secondary Schools (Ibaragi Tournament) Photography Department planned exhibition
【Equipment】
Canon EOS 60D
Canon EF-S18-135mm F3.5-5.6 IS
SIGMA 30mm F1.4
Manfrotto 055XPROBJP tripod
Manfrotto ML360HP-1 LED
* it will be a regular feature by the Shibata Agricultural High School Photography Club who have been communicating through twitter since January 2014. Manfrotto equipment will be used in the making of the works.
Shibata Agricultural High School Photo Club:
The Photography Club has already exhibited its works in the National Culture Festival Shashin, Koshien Tournament on several occasions.
The photo exhibition was done at the Sendai Imperial Palace DC, Oogawara Sakura Matsuri site by “Shibata Agricultural HS Mobile Photography Exhibition”. Activities included an earthquake disaster recovery calendar creation project as well as as other social assistance activities.
Twitter: @sbnpc