In general, most of the assignments and projects that I have completed at SCCA were pretty smooth sailing. I am not to say that all things went perfectly, waters have been rough at times, but I have rarely had to nail in wooden planks against rushing waters to keep a project afloat. However, the most daunting setback I have had was for my final last quarter for the Lighting Techniques 1 class.
The final was to produce 2 images in a similar vein, one being a still life and the other being a portrait. They had to be cohesive to one another as if you could see them in the same promotional campaign. My idea for the duplet was something pertaining to a back to school campaign. My portrait was going to be of my younger cousin in hip new kids clothing, kind of like a gap kids splash page on their website. For the still life, I was going to photograph falling cereal in an aesthetically appealing way into a bowl of milk.
I did my still life shoot first which went through with little to no complications, yet the following day, as I was shopping for kids clothes for my cousin to try on, I received a call from his older brother telling me that “plans” had arisen causing them to not be able to come any more. Upon this news, I realized that my plans for the shoot were foiled almost entirely, the shoot day was that night and I didn’t know any other children nor did I feel comfortable asking any random kids to come with me and take their picture.
I decided to do only option I could go for, which is just use a different person as my model and have them act like a child. Of course the vibe of the final was now going to be completely different, but the shifting tone actually led to something that I really liked and am proud of. The use of Jake acting like a small kid going to school rather than a real child gave a large overarching humor to the whole image which would have been absent if the original proposal had gone through.
