Filmstrip & Detail 07, 20x16", Digital photographs, Kerry McDonnell, 2009
I was very productive over Thanksgiving break! These are just 2 of the 4 I took over vacation and I must say I'm incredibly pleased. I was also able to photograph my sister (finally) which I think was very successful in relation to my concept. I have no issue relating the filmstrips to each other and I think the viewer could rightfully assume that all of these images are about 1 person and that those images not containing a figure still relate to said person or character.
After my meeting with Tom I felt refreshed and inspired to try new things. For instance, one of my filmstrips was taken outdoors. At first I was nervous about this because of shadow and the light being too strong and completely silhouetting everything including the moth, which would not have been ideal. Luckily I just winged it and it came out really well. Tom suggested that I "let the monster be the monster." Considering this, I allowed the moth to exist in other areas of the frame and background as well as took several images in the series without-or parts of- the moth in the frame to create suspense and anxiety. This didn't go exactly as planned as I originally wanted to tie string to the moth so that I could hold it a different distances from the lens. Unfortunately they're incredibly too delicate to even wrap fishing string around. What I ended up doing was blurring the image (taking pictures as I unfocused), placed the moth in the frame, and then took pictures as I refocused. I repeated this same process when moving the moth from another space in the frame to the front of the image. It created an interesting effect and the blurriness or soft focus contributed to the idea of loss of memory-those little instances in between that are too hazy to draw any detail or meaning from.
I plan on submitting the filmstrips in my portfolio in a similar format as these two for all 10 images along with the original strip on a disc with the resized detail images. They're sized at 16x20 which is a strange size for something like this. A few of the detail images only have one, larger film strip at the bottom or 4 detail images the top. My newest strips are much longer (around 200" when placed side-by-side). These strips have more detail images featured to make up for the length. The images I chose are just to cover the span. I tried to tell the story in around 4-9 detail images for each strip because the actual strip itself on a 16x20 print is far too small to see any detail.
I'm really happy with what I've done thus far and I can't wait to see these printed out!
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