For this photoshoot, I first began by taking pictures of crowded places in Jersey and England. I decided to do this as I wanted to highlight the strength of their friendship by showing how they managed to become friends despite there being billions of other people in the world who they could’ve been friends with. I then decided to further this photoshoot and make my message more clear by taking inspiration from the artist Hayley Warnham. I felt this artist’s work linked well to my images as she adds bold colours to photographs taken by her father which is symbolic of the happy, positive emotions she felt whilst looking at these vintage images of her family.

Overall, I like how these images came out as they are not blurry and have crisp edges which is what I was trying to achieve. Additionally, I think I was able to capture quite large crowds in all my images which enables me to highlight this sense of the low probability of them becoming friends yet them overcoming this.

I then took these images of crowds and began to recreate the work of Hayley Warnham. I began by opening up one of my crowd images on photoshop and then another image I had taken separately of my two friends together. I then used the quick selection tool to outline my friends only then pressed layer via copy. Next, I dragged this layer onto the crowd image and adjusted the size to make them proportional to the rest of the people seen in the image. Afterwards, I went onto google and copied one of her images into Photoshop. I used this as a reference for the colours I was going to use in my image to make my work replicate hers more closely by using the pipette tool to select the exact same colour she used. I added colour to my cut out by using the quick selection tool again on them but this time pressing fill to which it then allowed me to select a colour to fill the area outlined. Finally, I wanted to emphasise the bold colours of my friends more and so I decided to make the background image black and white.

Final images:

Overall, I think my photoshoot inspired by Hayley Warnham was successful in exploring the of the theme of friendship. By contrasting the vibrant cut outs of my friends together with the black and white backgrounds, I managed to create a visual narrative about the transformative power of friendship and the way my friends bring each other colour and joy to their lives. The colours symbolise how my friends elevate one another’s lives and without each other, their lives would be mundane and boring (as conveyed through the use of a black and white background). By photographing crowds, which can often symbolise anonymity or a lack of individuality and making it into a backdrop for my two friends highlights their strong bond and the special impact they have on each other as they cause each other to not just fade into the background of life. I like the juxtaposition of vibrant, colourful figures against the greyscale background as it helps make the cut outs stand out and ensure they’re the focal point of the image. The bright colours create a sense of energy, joy and life whereas the neutral tones in the background helps put more emphasis on the cut outs, symbolising the importance of friendship as a source of emotional colour.

In conclusion, I think my photoshoot has been successful in creating an engaging narrative about how my friends infuse joy into each other’s lives. I also think I managed to replicate the work of Hayley Warnham quite closely as I used the exact same colours seen in her cut outs using the pipette tool and I created a clear contrast between the background and my friends by making the background black and white (similar to how her backgrounds are often a sepia, muted tone).