Wednesday 18 February 2009

Broken

Today I made a conscious effort to really get going with my second image for our ‘Word’ brief. The word I chose myself for the brief is ‘Broken’ and for a while I’ve had an image in my head that I want to capture of an elderly woman grieving. Old people are often considered broken down and this along with the emotion of someone grieving is a double whammy of broken that I wanted to capture. I set off to my first old people’s home and they were very friendly. They introduced me to an elderly lady called Pat. She wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for the shoot; she was plump and had a very smooth face. However, beggar’s can’t be choosers and I told her I’d be back tomorrow with my camera.

I got on with the rest of the stuff I had to do that day, which included picking up some meds from the pharmacy, I suddenly realised the pharmacy was right next to an old people’s home, plus I also had my camera on me. Bingo. So I decided to try my luck and went inside enquiring if there were any residents there that wouldn’t mind being in my photo.

Well, it must have been my lucky day as I was introduced to Edna. Edna was a star- I mean literally! In her day she was a famous tap dancer in London’s west end and had one the most glamorous lives you can think of. She also had the most expressive face and could really act so she followed my direction perfectly. While I was shooting my images Edna told me about her husband, who died from Alzheimers. She spoke about how they were in love their whole lives and how she looked after him until he died. It was really moving to hear. She also spoke about her son who she clearly doted on and who doted on her. I nearly fell off my chair when she told me he was in his 70’s and that she was in her 90’s, 93 to be exact!

Anyway here are some of the images from my shoot, Broken:


2 comments:

  1. Great shots Sammi.

    Nice to see how much work you were willing to put in to get a desired shot.

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  2. Cheers hon :) I took loads of all three Word Brief images but was only happy with two from this shoot- one i've not put on here actually :~ perhaps I will.

    Did you get all your stuff in on time?

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