Mise en Scene Photo

                                         Mise en Scene Planning and Photograph

 For this assignment, we were given a handful of vague prompts that we would come up with an image and backstory for. I chose the prompt "trying to get to the other side." We planned what we wanted our image to look like, including camera angle, distance, lighting, props, costumes, etc. Then, we had to go take the picture as homework, I chose to take the picture by the lake in my backyard since I had the idea of the "other side" being the other side of a body of water. 

My story behind my image is that a girl has being trying to push her paper boats to the other side of the lake for hours. For this reason, I chose to take my picture later in the afternoon, close to sunset. I hoped that this would help show I also needed a lake to put the paper boat in, I originally planned to use the lake that is behind my local park. But, since I have a lake in my backyard I ended up using the latter, it ended up being much more convenient because I didn’t have to carry all my props with me to the other location and it did not compromise my original idea at all. I was taking pictures from the time the sun was starting to set from the time it got dark out. The image I ended up picking though, was one of the first that I took so it was slightly more bright than what it seemed like in person and what I planned for. So, I adjusted the colors in Photopea to be more red and slightly more dark, this helped achieve more of a sunset look for the lighting which was one of the biggest things that I was focusing on while planning. Also in Photopea, I blurred some of the foreground that I thought was unnecessary to keep in focus, mainly just the grass and weeds closest to the camera. Along with this I sharpened what I wanted to be the focus of the image (the paper boat in the water and myself). One main thing that I changed was my camera angle. In my planning for this project, I originally wanted to do a slightly high angle shot. But, because I was taking the picture outside, it made it hard to find a place where I could get my camera to the right elevation while remaining sturdy. So, I decided to lower the angle I was trying to get, but to keep it interesting I decided to do a canted or Dutch angle. I felt this also worked better with my mood which was supposed to be upset or dejected.