Shoot 2 - Work Record

When taking pictures for shoot 2, I wanted to focus on smoking as this is a big youth sub-culture, I wanted to shoot it in a documentary style series, with rich colours and over-exposure. My pictures span from inside, smoking and preparing cigarettes and smoking outside. Smoking is an interesting topic to do shoot as, why does it appeal most to youth maybe because it is no longer regarded good by society, it is damaging to your health, anti-social and addictive, therefore it is alluring to young people who are careless and free. 

I feel that in this shoot I have incorporated the style of Gosha Rubchinskiy, when I studied the photographer he shot a lot of smoking in his photography, therefore I have taken influence from his work and used the same youth culture to use in my own photography.

This image is of my girlfriend, licking the paper of a cigarette to make it stick so it is possible to smoke. When editing this image I decided not to change the over-exposed look of the image as originally I shot the whole series on smoking with flash, I really love the vibrance and un-natural lighting of the images, therefore I decided not to change or edit any of my shots. The colours in this image are very poignant and bright, the colour blue is a common coloured theme that run throughout. The most over-exposed part of the image is her skin, however this is effective because the subjects skin is already naturally pale. The frame and clarity of the shot is great because it contains the most important parts of smoking for example the preparation, therefore there is not unused or wasted space, in the backdrop you can clearly see the cushions of a sofa, this shows how in focus the subject is against the background.

In this image my subject is lighting the cigarette. The clarity of the image is the thing that one is most drawn to when first seen, as the hands, flame, lighter and cigarette are all perfectly clear and in focus, they really work well against the backdrop of the patterned carpet. You can see the texture of the rings and cigarette also. The colours are all really bright and vibrant, all the rings etc. I purposefully got the subject to light the cigarette against the backdrop of the carpet just above the ground, so there would be a shadow, as there is a perfect silhouette of the hands just above the carpet. The rule of thirds applies to this image as the main subject being the hands, are off centre therefore one looks at the whole of the image instead of jut the hands. By shooting smoking, I'm not trying to condemn or glamorise the drug, I'm trying to show what smoking gives to identity and how it forms such a massive part of youth sub-culture.

Progression: When shooting Youth Culture in future, I would like to further my ideas on relevant sub-cultures and shoot with different environments, techniques, props in representing different themes. Overall I am happy with Shoot 2 as I feel I have effectively shot the topic of smoking. I feel like I have progressed since shoot 1 as I have developed ideas on youth culture and focused on different elements and different people.