Brian Jones

11.10.10

Morning Light - Diabolic

Everyday I wake up at the dawn of Morning Light Same shit different toilet, I got a water fight

So don't ask me why I'm pissed off in every song I write Cuz Diabolics been dealing with this shit all his life

For my project, I chose to take a more literal route to the pictures that I took. I shot in film for the main reason that it forced me to really think about my shots before I took them. It was more of a challenge to myself to get myself to be careful and methodical with all my shots on the role of film. The first shot, I tried to emulate the idea of waking up in the morning. For this I had a long exposure and moved within the frame in order to create two ghostly images, one of me sleeping, and one of me getting up. The grittiness in the picture was an accident due to complications with the film during development (it got some tears in it). The second picture was somewhat literal but I tried to portray the idea of someone literally on the toilet while they sit there with a notebook, and have many pages ripped out because it is the “same shit”. Picture 3 is very literal. I justify the literalness by trying to represent a notebook that diabolic would be writing his lyrics in, and the lyrics on the page are the exact lyrics from that part of the verse. The next picture is my attempt to merge the last two lines of the verse together by shooting a clock to represent the passing of time and all the “shit” he has been dealing with “all his life”. Finally, the last picture I wanted to bring everything around in a circle and back to the beginning to sort of represent that this cycle doesn’t end and it just repeats itself nonstop.

My inspiration for my images came from this photo I saw in the Museum of Contemporary art in Chicago. I can’t remember who it was by, but it was a photographer who tried to set up all of his shots just like a film, with hyper controlled lighting settings, and people as actors. I really just tried to emulate the hyper controlled light sources in order to give me a high contrast, almost surreal set of images. The last image came out best in trying to demonstrate this style. I’ve come to realize from photography is that even a mediocre shot can look immensely better just if you have interesting lighting on the subject/surroundings because it can create high contrast, and a lot of interesting shadows which I feel bring out a very interesting side to the photo. Shadows highlight the main subject often times by creating a higher contrast between light and dark.