For our midterm, we were told to select a verse from any song and take 5 pictures that aesthetically matched the feel of the song. I chose the song Revelry by Kings of Leon. The way I understand it, the song is about a man who is still in love with his ex-girlfriend, and they are both heartbroken. He seems to still be in pain and emotionally attached to her, but he isn’t looking to settle down yet. Rather than him focusing on the freedom he now has, he still thinks about her and missing her no matter how hard he tries not to. The entire song refers to his loneliness the feeling that he made a mistake, but I believe this verse captures those emotions the best. The aesthetic I tried to capture was one of loneliness, sadness, depression and suppressing emotions. When editing and shooting my photos, I used the following as inspiration:
Lyrics: In the dark of the night I could hear you calling my name With the hardest of hearts I still feel full of pain So I drink and I smoke and I ask if you’re ever around Even though it was me who drove us right in the ground See the time we shared it was precious to me But all the while I was dreaming of revelry
My first picture is of lit candles. This image symbolizes burning passion and love, yet the saturation and shades of black and white emphasize an element of sadness. I thought that by placing them on the ground and in a corner, it would convey a sense of being trapped and held down, similar to how the male in the song feels. My second picture is of an old stone bench that appears to be isolated in park. In order to make this image look even more desolate than it already did, I chose an angle that made it very apparent that there is nothing and no one surrounding it. Even though it was a sunny day with lots of colorful leaves, the grey contrasts and hues make the photograph seem eerie, melodramatic and solitude.
The third image is of a variety of pills that are sprawled on top of a desk. This is a rather dark image that I thought fit nicely with the lyrics “So I drink and I smoke and I ask if you’re ever around”. For emphasize, I blurred the edges to give off the effect of being under the influence and having a cloudy mindset. While using color for this picture would’ve made the individual pills “pop” more, I thought that the saturation made them “pop” as well, but in a more depressing way that also takes away from any one pill standing out more than another. The fourth photograph I included was of a girl curled into a ball, sitting on the floor wrapped in a blanket with her head down. This image focuses more on the female character, rather than just the male to show her sadness as well. I placed the girl to the left to make it seem like the edge of the picture was supporting her and holding her up. Similar to the image of the candle, placing her on the floor with black and while saturations symbolized her sadness and loneliness.
My final shot is of hands holding a photograph of a couple. I added the “matte” effect on iPhoto to make it seem as though the person holding the photo is reminiscing while looking at it. I also blurred the faces to show that he/she is trying to move on. The angle I chose is from the point of view of the person holding the picture to make it seem more powerful.