Lauras Crit.

Laura

As I first approached the works Falling by Boofhead and Pushing Limits by Laura I had to admire the similarities between the two works. While looking at Laura’s work my initial response was that this is a lighthearted humorous image. My initial reaction was mainly caused by the expression of the person falling and my position as the viewer. I also got the feeling that the image was suppose to be seen as older because of the grayscale tones of the image. The technical skills are another of the many things that draws me into the image. At first I was questioning how the image was taken that’s how believable it was. Overall the image was engaging and humorous at the first encounter.

The image it’s self is composed of three main elements the camera, the person, and the building in the background. The camera is in the lower half of the image and placed in such a fashion that it appears as if the camera is falling onto the viewer. The camera is an SLR with a neck strap with clearly indicating letters about the brand of the Camera, Cannon. In the LCD screen of the camera we can see an image of a cityscape, which appears to be taken from a ledge. The person can be seen in the top half of the image falling towards the viewer. The person is female and has her hands projecting closer towards the viewer, as though to brace for impact or protect the face. One of the hands is overlapped by the camera strap, which implies that the camera has fallen first. She also is wearing a jacket, jeans, and shoes. This implies that she is outside. Her expression is happy, which suggests humor to the image as apposed to fear. In the background we see the foreshortening view of a building made of brick. The building rises to just above the halfway point of the image. On the building there are windows that reaches half way up the building from this point of view. There is also a sign that stands out. Overall there is soft lighting on all of the objects. The image is black and white in a vertical orientation.

Now that I have had time to review the image the things that I pull out that would possibly improve the image is removing the tension point between the camera strap and the edge of the frame, remove the text from the camera strap, make the background out of focus to be less distracting, make the image in the camera more relevant. The things that I found where strong are the humor, Photoshop skills, process of creation, more understandable then the original, and placement of each element.

The process was as follows: she used the school as a location because it had more of a narrative about ACAD students and their experiences within the school environment. Also she enjoyed the 3D appearance of the building from the angle of the viewer. It was relevant to the people would walked by on that path everyday. Another location was the studio. She used the studio in order to achieve the same lighting. She shot everything individually. It was important that the elements all played in the overall narrative. The image in the camera was picked because it gave the most cause for someone to fall over. She combined all the images together, which took a long time with lots of process. It was intentional for the elements to all be in focus because she wanted the viewer to look at all the elements in the image and not just one.

Laura decided to work with Boofheads Falling because she liked the concept but she thought she could execute it better then the artist had. She wanted to play on the idea of the student experience as apposed to the dumb tourist as Boofhead did. Her work also functions as a self-portrait. She found her image at a site where anyone can submit images so she wanted to work with non-professional work.