self portrait

Media studies Seungmin Jung Self-portrait Sometimes a self-portrait can show something different of the artist or it can explain more about the artist. Doing this project, I had to think of a thing that could represent me and further more, show myself better. This was a really hard progress for me because this was an unusual question to ask for myself. Different from other subjects, there was no such answer or an equation to solve this question. I had to be creative and thoughtful so that I could think of a thing that could represent me the best. During this process, I thought of an ocean, which would show my personality and my mood most clearly and most creatively. When people think of ocean, they think of darkness, deep, wide, large and free. However for me, ocean was a bridge to go to sky. Whenever I see a wide ocean, there was blue ocean on the ocean, there was blue sky. They didn’t look so different from each other; they look similar to each other. They both were blue, wide, endless and beautiful. Since I was young, I had always imagined and made up a story of a way to go to sky. I had a lot of predictions and fantasies about sky and ocean. Therefore this picture represents my childhood; the way in which I thought of things and how I dreamed about things. Moving focus to myself in the picture, I am opening my arms as if like a bird. Thinking of the repetition of bird, which is freedom, I wanted to show on my portrait that I feel free like a bird. Also looking at the big smile that I have on my self, it truly shows that I am happy. With a background that reminds and represents my childhood full of memories and with myself acting like a bird, I could show the audience my personality and mood. After taking the picture, I had to go over Photoshop cs6 in order to make my picture in to black and white. Using the tools, I could choose which color to be black and which color to be white. Looking at my picture, from the bottom, it goes dark to bright like a sort of a gradation. I chose to put the sand part dark, and ocean and sky part brighter than the send. Therefore I could emphasis the ocean and sky more than the sand. After this process, I moved on and inverted my image so that I would be able to take photograph of my image. I chose my self portrait to be the size of four to six because I thought it would be big enough to show the details and the background. The next step was to go in the dark room to take the photo of my self-portrait. After five or six of practice shots, I could adjust my time and the light. After I got the piece of picture that I was satisfied with, I washed it and rinsed it with some chemistry things. Finally after rinsing the chemical things off from my picture, I could take it outside the darkroom to have a closer view of my picture. I was happy and satisfied with the picture because it was dark enough so that it created a chic feeling and it was bright enough so that I could see all parts of my photo. Doing this project, I could reflect on myself and bring back the memories from my childhood. It was a distinct kind of a project from the others that I had got so far. Therefore it was a little bit challenging on choosing the photo, however I had lots of fun during this project.