For the first half of my final photography project, we were asked to have a running theme and purpose through all of our photographs. I really wanted to try my hand at tackling a heavier subject and using photography as a means of expressing my own thoughts and emotions. Though it really is a heavy topic, I decided to communicate the way that the death impacts more than the individual: it truly impacts friendships and the way that groups operate. These four photographs are meant to tell a narrative of a group's last day together. While they have photographs capturing their happiness and memories of the past, they are inherently aware of the knowledge of the future.
As college students, we often think we're invincible. But when we're forced to face the reality of life and death, it's unbelievably shocking and painful. In a sense, these photographs are meant to tell the story of those who are left in the aftermath - to acknowledge that the pain and emotion is real, and that we have every right to feel it.
Technically, I was able to accomplish the transparent shots by taking a photograph of the background and then a photograph of the subjects. Then in Photoshop, I created three layers: 1) the background 2) the subjects with a low opacity, thus creating the transparent effect 3) the subjects normally. I then "painted out" Kevin in the 3rd layer so only his 2nd transparent layer and the 1st background layer were visible. It was really interesting to try out