Inspired Experiments: Jan Von Holleben

Today in lesson we created our own Jan Von Holleben inspired experiments. Jan Von holleben is a german photographer who is well known for created artwork making childhood dreams come true. I go more in-depth into Holleben's work in my analysis further down my blog. Link to blogpost: Jan Von Holleben Analysis. The lesson before we created mind maps and started to plan our ideas as a group of what we would include in our artwork. Seeing as it was a students birthday in the class (Shaniece), we decided to go with the theme of birthdays. When thinking of ideas for birthdays we all really liked they idea of a big birthday cake which we could burst out of whilst Shaniece was holding a balloon and floating into the air. We then started to think of what materials we would use and felt that the birthday cake wouldn't look that good because we didn't  have loads of fabric and paper. Once ruling out the birthday cake idea we then branched of from the balloon idea and started brainstorming for how we could add to it and improve it. We then thought to have a montage of different ways to float and fly and we would each have a role/character in the artwork. 

    This is two photographs (top) of us preparing all the props and materials we needed for the characters we were going to be in the artwork. After are mind maps and seeing what materials we had and could bring in we decided to have four characters; Someone holding a balloon, someone with rocket boots, someone with angel wings and someone in a bubble. Materials we used were, Blue fabric for the sky, cotton wool for clouds, see-through plastic bags for the bubble, paper for rocket boots, balloons and string for Shaniece's character and paper for angle wings. 

These photographs above are of me laying out the fabric to show sky and also placing down cotton wool for the clouds. When laying out the fabric we felt that it would look to crowded to fit all four of us on so we decided to take a montage of photographs of us in two groups with two or three characters on the fabric. This photograph below was a photograph taken buy the other group who asked us to pose like this. I like how shaniece is placed with the balloons but don't like how the bubble I am in isn't circular enough so later on we then created another photograph for this composition.

These photographs below are of the second shoot we did using the balloons, rocket shoes and the angel. I felt this was are best shoot because of the big amount of bright contrasting colours that were used. In the first shoot me and shaniece were both wearing dark dull colours and it looked much more dark and not as fun and as colourful like Holleben's work.     

This is the second photo shoot with the bubble. I chose to not be in the bubble and let Dee-Kay be the character because I wanted to see how circular the bubble was because when I was underneath the plastic I couldn't see the shape of the bubble. I do feel this photograph is better other than the first shot because of how the balloon was changed for the angle wings and the clouds look much better. Overall my personal opinion was that I didn't really like the bubble character and we could've of improved it by maybe using a different material or changing the bubble for a different flying method. Also I like the photo on the left that I took because Shaniece is smiling and it shows that we had fun whilst doing these experiments and it gives of a fun, exciting, childlike and happy feel to our inspired experiments just like Holleben's work because of how the child models look really engaged and happy.