Sinlge Image

Single Image with an engaging narrative..






For my single image i was inspired by the photographer Cig Harvey.

Cig Harvey captures narrative images which are inspired by her own emotions, feelings and life experiences.
Her narrative photographs are set up images which she plans before taking to really ensure the image clearly represents the narrative. One image in particular which interested me was an image which Cig Harvey created to represent a difficult time a close friend of hers was going through.


The painting of a whale and the canvas being held above her head in this self portrait image was a way of representing the hard time a close friend of hers was going through and the way she carried that friend and the weight which often feels greater than yourself, through this time.

This whole concept of basing a narrative photograph around your current feelings, emotions and life experiences is what led me to the idea for my single narrative image.

It didn't take any time at all to think of what main experiences or emotions i was dealing with at this current time. A very prominent experience i had just gone through at the time of this project was a very close friend of mine loosing her grandfather. Seeing her go through such an experience led me to constantly think of my own granddad, as all i could think about was how unimaginable it is for me to think of having to go through loosing my grandfather. 
So because my grandfather was what i was mainly thinking about i chose to take a photograph of him to represent this experience and what it had then led me to think about. Rather than create a set up image however, i wanted to capture a natural photograph of my Grandad, or even, capture an image of something i associated with him.

(jpeg version, much lower quality)

Something which happened naturally and when i came to think of it is something which my Grandad does and has done every single time i see him is this, hand me any change he has in his pockets. I feel this image says a lot about my Grandad and successfully fulfills my idea of wanting to capture an image of my Grandad that said something more about him rather than just a normal portrait. 

After the group critique..

It was extremely interesting to see what the group guessed about my single image and hear what they felt the image represented at first glance. A lot of the group guessed and said things which i hadn't even thought my image could represent? 

hearing other peoples opinions of the image made me realise i could have possible tried to portray my narrative in a different way in the image. The critique made me realise this was the case with a lot of my peers work too. It was a valuable lesson in teaching me not to think too far into portraying narrative through an image, as really, all images have a narrative, intentionally or none intentionally.