Our next project was to take our interpretation of ‘epic’ and to replicate it over a series of photographs. We got told that big things do not necessarily mean big things through either scale or content. After looking back on my research for replicates of the ‘big’ or the ‘epic’, I have learned that the word is just a persons interpretation however it still makes us go wow. So I went away and drafted loads of interpretations of the word and looked how other photographers and artists have conveyed the meaning. How can it my photos capture the emotion and heart of epicness with not being a photo of a explosion in space or a image of a landscape.
I started to look at the more personal emotion and we feel epic psychologically. To be honest I started to struggle and my ideas were very numbered. I was trying to find a new way and a unique interpretation of the word. Something that no one else will convey, instead of looking at the obvious, what can we see?
One of my hobbies is running, and I have been for the past couple of years. It was during a run that I thought of a new epic scale of emotion that I go through once, twice or thrice time a week. Running is a very personal emotion. Running down the long road and track until your body reaches a peak, and then you carry on even more. Words cant describe I think the thoughts and psychological battle as you do a long distance run, fighting through the pain, the intensity and yourself. You are in battle with yourself to finish with pride and at a particular time in order to self-achieve. Its a personal battle that only you can decide if you win or lose through the momentum and psychological power that is in your mind. That to me was epic. A personal scale of big. A degree of spectacular.
It was an approach that I thought would work IF I could do it right. So the best way to think of taking photos of a runner is to go out on a run yourself and relive the emotion. Figure out what makes you achieve, fight and keep on going in your mind. I discovered the theory of ‘the wall’. The psychological term for when a person hits a dead end, a place where it seems impossible to continue, however you must. You must fight over this emotion to carry on. Your there, red cheeks and your chest hurting. Your legs feel weak and the sweat is riding down your face representing a tear in which is crying for you to stop and fall. But you shall not. You must carry on, carry on running and complete the track and when you arrive at the end, then that is the best feeling in the world. A feeling words cant describe, a scale in which is bigger than a image of a planet or building, because its your mind. Its in your heart and you feel it more. That is what I wanted to show. Emotional epicness.
Taking photos of myself expressing this emotion would be impossible and fake. I would know what I want to show and so the organic element would disappear and I would struggle to take images of myself as I run. I decided to take photos of one of my friends as he proceeds on a 5K run. Of course he knows I am taking photos of him, but I issued to him that he should just run, and also he didn’t know where I would positioned. I structured my route in a car, knowing the route as well gave me the advantage of placing myself where I can capture the feeling of the runner. One disadvantage was that he could stop at any time and I may not be there to replicate this, but a risk is a risk and so the shoot went ahead on a early afternoon. The runner started off nervously, which was expected, however he slowly became more focused to the run and his emotions began to bleed through. The camera became invisible and he was just leaking emotion, pain and the personal fight in which I planned.
On the whole I took around 300 images for just a final presentation of 12. One problem in which I did have was establishing the focus. Due to his 100% movement, he sometimes went out of focuses and the image was blurred. As it shows below in colour, this was a common occurrence but by taking so many, the chances were greater of capturing his emotions.
The below images now are some of the better images in which I produced. I feel these photos show more meaning. They replicate more of what I wanted to achieve in the photograph. A slow progression of emotion and facial expressions. More and more showing more pain until he hits the wall, and then there is the battle of beating that wall and carrying on. By putting these images in black and white I feel express more feeling into the visual. Black and white draws the attention to the image in photograph, instead of focusing on the colour of the world around him or the tone of his shorts, I wanted the primary focus to be on the runner himself. His emotions, his feelings, his pain and battle. That is the element of epic in which I wanted to establish and I believe these images convey this very well. In a different style completely to Gurskey or Sinkachu, this express more psychological emotion that I think not everyone would understand, but to me these photos are spectacular, epic and big.
Daniel Booker, Lens Media 