Gillian Wearing

The subject of each of these images is a person holding a whiteboard that says what's on their mind. I took these images primarily inside, but in different rooms with different lighting. I took these images using my digital camera and I edited them using Photos. I chose to create this images because I liked Gillian Wearing's series called; 'Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say'. In this series she asked strangers what they want their sign to say and took a picture of them. The idea is that the subject isn't posing.

In all of these images I used selective focus and formal balance because they're portraits. In "the sky" picture there is silhouette lighting and framing. I also used rule of thirds. For each of these images I used Photos to adjust the exposure, contrast and saturation. I also cropped a few of them to make the focal point obvious.

When taking these images it was hard for people to grasp that I wasn't looking for "the right answer" I was honestly curious about what's happening in their head. People are so used to posing and dressing up for pictures that they stop being themselves. Because of this many people thought WAY to hard about what to say and it probably honestly isn't what's actually on their mind. People aren't used to being 100 honest and get rattled when asked. This project relates to my life because the pictures are of people in my life. I think that these images could be stronger if I had taken more of them outside, lighting inside just isn't great. Also more variety of people would have been better because Gillian Wearing asked total strangers and I asked my friends. Maybe in the future I could continue this project and get more variety.