When looking at my body of work, I noticed that there was a barrier between myself and the viewer. Where was I in my work? I listed out the things that I wanted to move towards in my art. 

I realize that is a lot to tackle at once so I'm going to do a breakdown below.

Most of what I thought of was a lack of meaning or personal input. So I put all of that under a category of being "Self reflective" then listed some ways I could be more self reflective.

Reading it now, it seems a little redundant however these notes were a part of the thought flow and I wrote down anything that came to mind. I broke this down even further and listed different ways I could accomplish these things in an image.

After listing these different ways to "personalize" my work, I expanded again, this time just throwing ideas of how to piece these different components together in a single image. I used arrows to connect the ways a concept would fulfill the content I was looking for.

I sketched up a couple ideas that touched on the things I listed. One of the sketches took the theme of "self reflective" literally by including mirrors and myself twice. But I found it to be a little too literal and maybe a bit cliche. 

(Please keep in mind that the following image is in fact, a sketch, and NOT a photograph!)

I liked the play on words with the thought provoking idea and thought I would play around with it. Although the concept is a little bit of a cop-out (making the meaning of the image trying to find a meaning for an image) I still wanted to pursue the idea. I made a couple sketches in a different notebook since my other paper filled up.

I wanted to include a couple things that related to my interests (nature, photography, tobacco) and I very realistically drew myself in a thinking pose as I found myself sitting with my hand on my face as I sat and thought about what I should make. By making the sketch though, I noticed that where I drew my hand on my face seemed more like daydreaming rather than in thought. So I played around with the relationship of the hand on my face and the tilt of my head to give off a sense of inquisitiveness. Then went so far as to tilt the head completely around the be ultra-inquisitive.

I was pretty satisfied with this idea. So the next step was to figure out how to technically put this together in the darkroom. I needed two images: one of my body in its surroundings, and the second a photo of my head upsidedown. (I didn't want to just flip a photo of my own head because I wanted my hair to be falling down) The second image would have to be shot in a studio.

Lucky for me I found a table inside the house with the perfect look for my photo. I don't want to get too technical, but I used my friend as a replacement model so I could position my frame, then I set my exposure, laid out the notes I used to come up with this project, and put an air trigger under my foot so I could pose and fire at the same time. I took a few trying to capture the concept by blurring my face just in case I couldn't manage to overlay my head successfully. Below are a couple different photos from the shoot. 

I apologize for my facial expressions, just keep in mind it's going to be covered up later, with another of my face.

The following day I headed into the studio with an assistant and only three photos left on my roll. 

I set up the lights to try to mimic the lighting in the abandoned house and wanted as much light as I could on the back drop to make the final overlaying easy, so I had two lights aimed at the backdrop. I laid backwards on the chair and shot my last three photos trying to match the angle of my head to the old photo, making sure the cable release wasn't in the photo, and that my hair covered the legs of the chair. I tried to have a calm expression although I was straining to keep my body in this position. The three images below are a little awkward on their own as well.

I played around with two combinations in Photoshop so far, using only adjustments that I'm comfortable making in the darkroom. These are the two images I came up with and intend on printing the second as my final piece.

Assistants: Dakota Gosser and Kelly Renegar.

Thank you for showing interest in my process!