For my final project, I tried to very intentionally keep my props and setting to what I have in and directly around my home, which was not too hard of a task due to being under a stay-at-home order. More specifically, I went and found things I have been using mostly every day or very consistently, that I might consider part of my everyday life; quite mundane and seemingly normal things. Then, I wanted to attempt to romanticize these things, within the current context, almost using a slight documental theme, because I have felt, and have heard from some friends and other people, that one way that helps get you through the day is romanticizing the little things, whether it’s your coffee in the morning or sitting in the evening sun, working on a final paper.

Once I figured out my idea, I decided to do self-portraits, since I have more experience with portraiture and the only person around with free time to be photographed is, consequently, myself. I opted to do many shots outside, due to better and brighter lighting, since I don’t have lighting equipment at home. As I was preparing for my shoot, I realized I wanted to express this romanticization through a sort of dreamy look and remembered the pictorial and portrait artist Imogen Cunningham. Looking through her work, I inspected the formats and layouts of her portraits, but especially focused on her piece Dream, which has an incredibly soft and glowy look. In order to attempt this, I not only did research on getting this look in post-production, but also during the shoot, and ended up trying both-- putting a piece of saran-wrap over the lens with the tiniest bit of vaseline, as well as using gaussian blur with aiding effects in Photoshop.

In addition to a pictorial influence, I wanted to express this theme of romanticization, stylistically, through the overall composition of my images. I looked a bit at Allan Sekula’s work for inspiration in his full-colored, vibrant photos, and decided I definitely wanted to do my project in color rather than in black-and-white because for me, the color is what brought an additional warmth to this idea of fantasy (hence the title)-- specifically that of positive and good fantasy-- that was right for the specific idea here. I am definitely still learning how to use Photoshop, but I did my best to give the photos a natural yet full-appearing color scheme to each. Though we did not look at her in this class, a big influence on the style of the very posed quality within a mostly natural-appearing environment was Annie Leibovitz, as well as her pictorial-esque composition in many of her photos, making them look like a painting. I attempted to mix this with an editorial look, using the objects as the focus, with a slightly documental aspect from presenting objects I use in my daily life, in a very dreamy and romanticized setting.