Introduction

To recap, I had decided that my project would reflect the idea of wellbeing through an exploration of dreams. My research led me to the Dream Theory of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who describes dreams as a process the mind undertakes in order to heal itself.

This end is achieved through experiences, indistinguishable from reality, described visually in a language of ancient archetypes—the most basic building blocks of human consciousness.

At this stage I attempting to bring my research together in my mind and identify a starting direction that I could pursue in order to make my first image. Or a theme that I could grasp hold of that would sustain a series of images.

The following pages of my notebook show a progression as I developed my thinking. In terms of collaboration, I made sure I spoke to as many people as possible who might know something about the areas I was interested in. So you might say I collaborated with two trained psychologists (family members), an art historian, and a war historian who might be able to help me with locations for shooting.

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Developmental changes

Having pursued the idea of a composite and with the references described in the notes above I had begun to make a start with my first image. I started to place placeholders for trees in a large Photoshop artboard and I had an idea to construct an image compiled from many images of crows that I shot in Brompton cemetery.

However, as I worked on the beginning of the image (and shot several hundred photographs to to build the composite with) I was struck with the realisation that even though the process itself was creating a whole image out of fragments, and this worked as an analogy for my thoughts about the fragmented nature of dreams, the finished product would appear to be a whole image. The essential part of the idea would be lost—visually—to a potential viewer.

I needed to readdress the idea, so I started to look at breaking the image into segments, perhaps using bubbles or strings of some sort.

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Magic Plastic

I went to the lengths of purchasing some Magic Plastic, (the glow-in-the-dark variety to counteract reflections should I shoot in very low light).

I thought I could create a collection of bubbles and photograph them to build a base structure for my image. I liked the idea of using Magic Plastic because slightly deflated, the material has an unusual organic quality and might not be as recognisable or reflective as soap bubbles. I could also manipulate the bubble group like a sculpture. No doubt I'll experiment with this in the future, but I decided to abandon this approach because it seemed over-elaborate.

I wasn't convinced that the idea would work visually. I felt that it was an apposite analogy but perhaps I was trying too hard to produce a visual metaphor when it would be more effective to simplify the idea, and leave more in the hands of the viewer to interpret.

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Strings

Having thrown out the bubbles idea I settled on strings as a way of segmenting an image. I was leaning towards a simpler overlay, rather than a separate image in each segment. I needed a method of shooting this so I could introduce it digitally.

Chromakey

I thought this idea might work if I photographed against a green screen. My research revealed that for still photographs blue screen is better (green is easier to key out on video, but blue is more accurate for stills). As luck would have it I have two blue-painted rooms.

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The First Image

By this stage I had gone out and found a stand of pine to photograph, (referencing Botticelli). I'll show the results in another post but it meant that I could turn my attention to building a rig for strings. The next step beyond that would be to incorporate the strings in to my image of the pines.

The sketch above shows the pines I photographed and a concept for how the strings might look when woven into the image.

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Conclusion

The developmental process outlined in this post took me right the way through to a working method that I could carry across my series of images.

My goal now was to photograph a set of landscapes that I could build my series of six from. At the same time I needed to get materials, build a string sculpture, shoot it against blue, chromakey the background out and have high resolution assets ready for my experimental compositions.

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