For my bridge 3, I choose the theme– Gender. I am researching about the topic: The lack of masculinity misconceptions towards Asian-American males due to the differences within the concept of stereotypes.
The Westerns’ stereotypes of lack of masculinity towards Asian-American were due to the reason that they had different understandings and perceptions of manhood. I would like to point out the fact that it is wrong to use stereotypes to determine whether an Asian man lacks masculinity, even if this is often an unintentional move.
I want to emphasize that the “characteristic, posture, feature, etc” within a person should not direct being used to define rather an Asian-American male is lacks masculinity or not. SinceWesterners and Easterners have different definitions of masculine stereotypes. By understanding the differences of perceptions about masculinity from the Western and Eastern helped me pick my model and conduct my photoshoot poses and how to present mine model. Showing the stereotypes features that represent both Western and Eastern within the same photos. Also, use the shadow of different prompts on the top of the photos to indicates that stereotypes from different places could possibly be different and people should be mindful while placing stereotypes towards others.
Joseph and Bryan helped me to develop my research topic in-depth. Joseph gave me the advice to do research on BTS (Korean pop-music singer/dancer) and different perceptions of Westerns and Easterns. And Bryan gave me examples of Macho attitude which inspired me specifically to ask my model to pose poses that made him show as very tough.
Here are some photos I found from VogueChina; photos that inspired me.
Progress: Here are photos I took for Bridge 3.
Next class:
- Making adjustments for my photos. (crop/color adjust)
- Find signifying object photos or take pictures of those items if could not find the ones I need.
- Adding shadows layers of prompts. (creating transparent images of signifying object on the top of each photo)
- Finalizing photos in the order I want.
- Use InDesign to create a digital album of the photos. (If it would make more sense and look better instead of just being photos)
4/28/2020
I talked to Bryan and my group member about the photos that I took for my Bridge 3. They both gave the common that the photos that I took in the setting of the bathtub kind of lead the final result towards another direction. I also think the setting of the bathtub is a bit confusing for the viewer to figure that I mainly wanted to focus on the posture and the characteristics of the model. Bryan also talked to me about the plain background and the relationships between the blank spaces and the model which I also agree with.
For this week, I decide to choose some of the other photos that I took instead of those that are taking place on the bathtub. I also decided to do some editing to see if the results could be better. I tried to take out the background of those photos that I took in the bathtub and add some shadow of different prompts to see if it could make my photos present my topic better.
The biggest challenge on this project is the poses for the model and the process of finding a good angle to take the photo. Since I do not have access to a studio nor professional photo-taking tools. I could only try to use my iPhone and my lamp to try to create better lighting.
I think I made a good choice of picking the model. He should be the strongest part of my project because I think he is a perfect candidate for the topic that I am trying to protest with my photo series.
4/29/2020
Here are the new photos that I took.
Next Class:
- Try to edit more photos to see what could be done better.
- Put them in good order.
- Create a digital album.
5/6/2020
I tried to do some more photoshop and one reversion of the previous photoshopped photo.
