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Passion Final Piece I added a quote by Michael Jordan that has been inspiring throughout my basketball games in high school, 'Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.' This does not only apply to basketball, but it is my life motto and what I want to live by and what drives me to achieve my goals in life.

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Personal Final Piece I added 3 words around the border to represent the force of social media consuming me. The three words are what I define social media is and what it can provide to me. The words are 'addictive', 'value as an individual', 'immediacy'.

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Political Final Piece I decided to add words and phrase to explain more of my idea and play with the negative space. I added the phrase that I written down as labelling in my mind map. Through research, this is what I found that people are categorising as. Black Crime = Gang Violence Arab Crime = Terrorism White Crime = Mental Illness

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However to match all of my group member, my background should be white and it also go with our theme of minimal and white. The position of the images are consider, 'Consumed' is place in the center, as all four white border visible, which is like consuming the image. 'Shooting Star' has the image place high above, as I dream high and shooting star are find high up in the sky. 'Racial Profiling' has the image places below, as it is an issue that is looked upon.

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Experimentation 3 Also tried filling the background with the duplicate of the image, but instead a opacity of 60%. However to match all of my group member, my background should be white and it also go with our theme of minimal and white.

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Experimentation 2 Tried overlap the words from the inspiration

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Some of my magazine inspiration, it gave me an idea to overlap words on the photograph

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Experimentation 1 Tried filling the whole page with the photo

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Personal

Continued with the black backdrop, I capture myself using my mobile phone when it lightens up. The contrast of the white light and black background successfully address that social media is slowly taking over my life. The fact that I am looking down and is drawn by my phone and the long exposure creates an effect that looks like the phone is sucking my soul away, eating up my time. The black background also highlights the isolation of myself using a phone in the dark, without any social interaction. The bright screen light definitely caught the attention of the viewers and they can identify it as a phone. I also opened the Facebook app, as people can recognise the blue colour. Some photos distort my face, which highlights that it is destroying my life. 

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Passion

To suit the style of all photographs, I continued using a dark backdrop, therefore I attached glow sticks on the basketball to imitate a shooting star and to visibly see the ball in a dark environment. A shooting star represents aspiration and good luck, which relates to my passion and hope of becoming a successful basketball player. I took some portraits of me holding a basketball as if I am holding on to my passion and dreams. I also took photos of the rim and action shot of the ball entering the rim. The lighting is really dark and you can vaguely see it. Luckily, campus security wanted to check on us using the court and he shines his torch on the backboard just so it happens, we were able to take a picture of a lighten up backboard, and the lighting was just about right to see the basketball. 

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Political

With this photo shoot, I asked a Muslim friend of mine to be my model for my idea, he happily agreed. As I don’t have a dslr camera, Ruve met up with me so she can help me take my photos. I continue with the banner idea and ask my friend to hold it up. I wanted the lighting to be dark, so I switch the lights off and used torched to focus on the banner, I used a head torch that included a red light to shine on the paper. I chose red over white light, as red represents danger, blood, death and matches my idea of a terrorist attack more. I purposely shine a white light behind my friend’s head so you can see his silhouette and outline, so viewers can easily see the figure. 

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Brainstorming ideas for each concept, including what is included in each photo, what action, is it a portrait or not, what is the lighting etc.

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WHY now?

According to the dictionary, the definition of ‘now’ is: “at the present time or moment; without further delay; immediately; at once; at this time or juncture in some period under consideration”

How have we, as a group, decided to define ‘now’?

Our group decided to look at the transient nature of the moment that is now (for now is not more than this very moment in history). ‘Now’ is a moment that constitutes what we experience in the present minute. It is a moment in flux. It cannot truly be held, it can never be relived, and it cannot fully be remembered. We explored this notion through the medium of long exposure photography, and minimal print. The use of long exposure explores in a visual way the ever-changing perspective and look of ‘now’, visually exploring the concept of movement. What is right ‘now’ is ephemeral and unique - each moment of ‘now’ is exclusive to each individual, thus there cannot really be a true concept of ‘now’. What one experiences now in Australia may, understandably, be quite contradictory with what someone in Africa is experiencing right now.

In order to explore this transient and unique perspective of ‘now’, we decided that we would like to create an interactive, magazine-inspired catalogue/booklet. In doing this, we each examined three notions of what we perceive to be our individual ‘now’, through the three categories of Political, Personal, and Passion. We chose to individually look at what we perceive to be as ‘now’ so as to pertain to the idea of an individual perspective, which again in itself is transient. Through this we intended to show that ‘now’ is multifaceted,   and cannot be defined simply by one understanding or mindset.

We decided that to enhance the work, we would add in a recorded sound for each of our pages. For the most part, these sounds were recorded by us, and reflect directly the time the photographs were taken (at least for most of them, bar some). Essentially then, these sounds reflect the ‘now’ of the past;  the ‘now’ of past as we experienced it as the ‘now’ of the present.  

So what do the three P’s allude to?

Political: We chose to look at a political entity that we each individually believe to be a current predicament in the world, selecting a dilemma that we resonated with on a personal level. The political world is often seen as being corrupt, yet it is what holds the rest of the world together (and in fact, is what also tears it apart).

Personal: We then chose to examine our own current individual lives, representing through a photograph something that is important to us ‘right now’, for whatever reason that may be. This again highlighted how distinct each of our lives are - even though we share a good few common factors, our lives and our perspective of the world are so diverse.

Passion: Again, to explore further the notion that ‘now’ is unique to everybody, we explored current life on earth through examining our personal passions - what drives us currently into the future, which soon will become our ‘now’, and what motivates us. Again this enhances the concept of individualism.

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Revisiting the previous post and discussing with groupmates and my teacher, we decide to take all the photos in the same style to make it unison. Instead of using my face paint idea, we all agreed on long exposure shot and it perfectly captures the ‘NOW’, the fact that it is blurry and in action, demonstrates the now itself is currently happening, it is not solid.

Who am I?

Who I am.

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Inspiration for Racial Profiling - Terrorist Attack - holding a banner with phrases saying ‘I’m not a terrorist or written on the forehead as a label, play with the idea of labelling - muslim wearing a hijab

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Inspiration for basketball face paint

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Inspiration Personal - Social Media - pixel face - social media icon face