UTOPIA.PHOTO

Category: Research

  • Two actor/models needed for academic photography project

    Could you help? I am an academic photographer/researcher interested in the use of images to convey emotions. To complete a small project as part of my research, I am looking for two models with acting experience/training to pose for a series of illustrative images.

    Psychologists classify emotions using a system devised by Robert Plutchik in 1980. In this, eight core emotions, each with three degrees of ‘strength’ were identified, which combine in pairs to form a further eight emotions – 32 in all.

    File:Plutchils-emotional-wheel.png - Wikimedia Commons

    I am hoping to create an illustrative set of portraits for each of these emotions, using at least two actor/models – one male and one female. The images will be used for a variety of purposes, primarily to support future research.

    Other than the emotional expression, it is important that the models should be ‘neutral’ in all other respects: no make-up, no jewellery, no tattoos, clean-shaven, and ideally between 25 and 40 years of age. The images will be head and upper torso wearing grey t-shirts.

    Unfortunately, I do not have funding for this part of the project, but will gladly provide a set of images for your portfolio and pay agreed travel expenses.

    I have been offered the use of a studio in Banbury, Oxfordshire on Saturdays between 9am and 1pm, so the shoot will need to be carried out then.

    If you would be prepared to help with this, please email me on graham@utopia.photo. Thank you.

  • The Emotional Response

    When we look at an image it provokes a uniquely personal emotional response. The great photographers know how to stimulate this. The first step is to understand ourselves and to know where our own emotional responses come from. This short ebook looks at this process in more detail and then gives examples illustrating the kind of self-analysis that you can use for you own work.

    Click here to download: http://utopia.photo/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Wilson-GB-2018-The-Emotional-Response-FULL.pdf

    Print, Kindle, and Apple versions available here: http://www.blurb.com/b/8475654-the-emotional-response?ebook=651371

  • Road speed tempering

    Road speed tempering

    The peak age range for pedestrian road deaths in the UK is 5-14, with boys out-numbering girls roughly 2:1. There is a charity campaigning for the introduction of 20mph limits in residential areas, known as “20’s Plenty”, and voluntary signage is now available for these roads. We know that motorists respond to caption-based supplementary signs mounted below the 30, 40 and 50 mph statutory ones. Behavioural insights suggest that we might expect a photograph to result in a greater reduction.

    The concept is to mount images showing happy children interacting positively with the motorist. If this was to be developed, I would approach the charity with a view to conducting a trial within a selection of communities that are equipped with SpeedWatch guns, so that the impact can be measured.

    Targeted police campaigns often report that it is local people who make up a significant proportion of the offenders. Therefore, it might be worth soliciting local ‘models’ for the signs? This would have the added value that fewer signs would be the same around an area, or even nationally, and so there’s the likelihood of a reduced degree of over-familiarisation.

  • Street Harassment

    Street Harassment

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    Very large numbers of women report street harassment, ranging from looks and wolf whistles, to aggressive, sexually-focused assault.

    In 2013, a Vancouver student, Pomona Lake, produced an image highlighting victim-blaming around skirt length. Her image was subsequently plagiarised by a German women’s group.

    This mini-project was inspired by Lake’s idea, but the message is targeted differently, written using behavioural insights concepts, and emerged from an informal ‘focus group’ which I arranged. The original idea was to display one image at a time in the same place, replacing it with the next after a week or so, however they could simply be on a scrolling display as I have used here. There are many ways of assessing the potential impact, particularly through street surveys of attitudes to harassment, close to the display both before and after its appearance.