Fear.

In this shoot I wanted to portray how the emotional side of mental illness impacts us, I wanted to show paranoia and how we can be afraid of what is not there. 

In these images I firstly took basic images of myself, I then took separate images of my arms reaching and grabbing. Then I added the two together to create this type of image where someone appears to be being attacked by a series of arms. Out of all these image this is my favourite one because of the positioning and number of hands, the image is not too over crowded it is simplistic. 

This image relates to more fighting your demons, instead of hiding away from your fears you face them . Again this is a very simplistic image because there is only two objects present, however I believe it has a strong symbolic meaning. If you face your fears then you wont be afraid anymore. 

Once again in this image I have showed someone shying away from the hands reaching out to grab them. With a mental illness many people can believe that surreal and non realistic things can harm them, however in reality non of it is true. I believe this image shows this as it clearly shows fear even though many of us would not be afraid of arms or hands. 

Abuse

In this shoot I wanted to look at how mental illness can be a form of abuse, however I wanted to look at the victims rather than the abusers.

In this image I firstly began by adding bruises to the face through using the paint brush and applying different colours to the facial area. Then I decided to add an effect onto the whole image as I liked the way the poster edge effect made the image more surreal. 

In this image I simply added different tone using the brush tool around the eyes,mouth and cheeky. I wanted to make the bruises look old and look painful on the skin. I creating this image as it allowed me to experiment with what tones worked best on the face. 

Plans for the next shoot.

In my next shoot I will be looking at three aspects of mental illness, these will be violence and paranoia. For violence I will show how someones violent outbursts can have an impact on another person, I will show the bruises left behind by violence. For paranoia I will show how someone feels trapped and everyone is after them, I plan to show a series of hands and arm creeping in to grab someone. And finally for the third I will be showing a traditional and surreal view of mental illness. In the past when someone was mentally unstable they were seen as being cursed, this is why I will show levitation to represent this. 

Skinny vs fat

In this shoot I wanted to focus on weight and how it can become a mental illness, in todays society weight is a massive focal point but when does it become a form of mental health problem. 

In this image I wanted to show how many women's perceptions of weight is many focused on being super skinny like the super models they see in magazines. The stick thin arms and waist has become a iconic image which many women aspire too. However is this a healthy obsession or is it a form of mental illness. I believe that extreme dieting and anorexia to achieve a height is a form of mental illness and should not be encouraged. I wanted to show through this image who a obsession caused by mental illness can become extremely unhealthy and un-natural. 

In this image I wanted to show how someone can view their own bodies in a negative way, they may look completely different to they way the think they are. The form of mental illness linked to weight it when the brain makes you believe you are a different size than you are in reality. This can lead to eating disorders on both ends of the scale, I have tried to show this in my image. For example someone may be skinny but views themselves as fat, or vice versa a fat person believes they are skinny and healthy. 

In this image I wanted to show how a mental illness also to do with weight can be denial, obesity is a growing problem and many fail to acknowledge this. In this image I wanted to show how someone may be overweight but happy because they believe this is normal and healthy.