Eating Disorders

Friday 1st March 2013

Plans for the shoot...

In today's shoot I will be looking at the issue of eating disorders and trigger point of people not wanting to eat anymore down to poor self image and appearance.  For this shoot I am going to be using a model who looks normal and healthy, so I can capture the moment in an individuals mind on when they think they should stop eating and why.

I am planning on making red cupcakes for this shoot! I am then going to write on my models chest 'F*CK FOOD', as if saying I don't want or need it anymore.  I have chosen to use a cruse word here as I think the control side of eating disorders that make one want to carry on with not eating is very angry and has a lot of pain.  I then want my model to be holding the cupcake and to smash it up in his hands while black icing pour out of it - I want this to signify the need and want to get rid of the food and stop eating, with the black icing representing the poison that people with eating disorders see food as.

I am going to use either the brown or grey background for this shoot.

What I hope to achieve...

I am hoping to get a good set of photos from this shoot that can really capture the ugly side of eating disorders.  I am not necessarily thinking of photographing my models face so I really want the emotion to some out in the cupcake being smashed up and the words.

What I actually achieved...

This was actually a really fun shoot to do - smashing up cupcakes and making a mess! Though I experienced a lot of development during this shoot as I what I had originally planned to do didn't work out.

Only shooting my models torso and hands with the cupcake didn't work out as well as I had planned and I felt that during the shoot it was become difficult to get across the issue as eventually the cupcake wasn't recognisable and it didn't really start to make sense.  At this point I decided to try and use to tape up my models mouth and smash a cupcake over it to make it look at if he can't eat anymore - this worked much better, though I did also get some of the original photos to work too.  Here are some of the best ones:

Here is one of the original ideas of how I thought my work would end up looking.  I think this works as you can still tell that it is a cupcake and therefore there is no confusion as to what is going on in the photo or the message that is being highlighted.

Here is one of the photos that I developed my shoot into.  Because the cupcakes at this point were so smashed up, this helped it to ensure that it still made sense.

I really like this shot in particular.  It is different to what I had expected the rest of the shoots to look, but I like it and I think it works well.  I like the way the cupcake it up front toward the camera and then in the background you can just make out the writing - I also like here only the mouth has been photographed out of the face yet this is enough to be able to get the point and the emotion across.

I put the background out of focus here and made the cupcake the focus.  I think this works as you can still make out the writing, even with the blur  over the top, and the cupcake is in focus at the front.  I think this allows both elements of the photo to compliment each other more as the cupcake looked so small against the strong writing, here it sort of balances it out more.

Here is a selective colour shot.











What I am going to do next...

This shoot has inspired me to look at the other side of eating disorders - over eating.  I want to photograph this shoot in  a similar way to this only rather than showing the trigger pint of the issue, I want to shows the point at which it has become too much and the food has taken over the persons life.

Thank you so much to my model Paul - amazing as always! :)