A2 Photography Exam theme
Hi, I am focussing on the theme of 'Translucent' for my A2 Photography exam, I have completed 3/6 photoshoots but unfortunately am stuck for further ideas linking with transparency. Any ideas towards this theme would be greatly appreciated! Thank you 
What have you done so far? Remember, translucent doesn't have to involve transparency (transparent things are totally clear and translucent things are partially clear). Perhaps you could use it in a metaphorical sense, for example shoot some portraits of people with translucent fabric over their faces and use it to link to notions of identity or having something to hide? I know that might not be up your street at all but that's just an idea of how you could make it a non-literal response. Otherwise, these are what I've come up with offhand.
Ice
Smoke (for example, as in this photo by Robert Mapplethorpe
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ce/ff/43/ceff43192dd55539215b269c499051ca.jpg)
Plastic
See-through fabric (draped over nude bodies if you're into that kind of thing)
Jellyfish
Jam
Water (add swirls of paint or food colouring to still water, use running water?)
Glass (could experiment with creating reflections through different light sources)
Tissue paper
Things scrunched up and held over camera lenses to create blurred effects
Cobwebs
Double exposures (ghostly figures, demonstrating the passing of time etc. Perhaps contrasted with photos of plastic (eg cellophane) to show how translucency can represent age and disintegration but also permanence)
What was your reason for choosing translucent over all the other possible topics? Presumably you had some kind of initial vision when you picked that theme. Picture it. Think about how beautiful that idea is to you. Put on some good music and keep thinking about it and when the ideas start to flow, write down any that stand out to you no matter how wild they sound. If you've already done a photo shoot that displays your initial vision, then remember it won't be long before you have enough evidence of experimentation and can go back to your favourite idea to work on refining it. In the meantime, look at as many artists whose work vaguely touches on the theme as you can find. Even if you only like a tiny portion of their works it could be enough to give you the ideas for the next three photo shoots.
Another way to approach it is to think about the kind of photography you do outside college, what you do when there is no pressure whatsoever from anyone else telling you what to do. Then find a way to link that back to the translucent theme.If you spend your spare time taking black and white photographs of skateboarders at your local park for example, you could use a film camera and double-expose to capture them in motion, appearing to be in a translucent state. Or explore your park from a different perspective and take some macro photos of glass bottles and translucent plastic rubbish lying around instead. If you prefer nature photography find a pond or river and see what the water can offer you, or find some young leaves (might have to wait a week or so for that though) and hold them over your lens and let the sun shine through. I took this kind of approach over the last couple of terms when I chose the topic of 'subculture' for my project. I had been doing mainly portraits but really struggling with them so I decided to find a way to combine subcultures with my personal interest in wandering around a local graveyard taking photos of whatever interesting stuff I found there. So I had the idea of photoshopping some images of people into some macro photos of natural forms I'd taken in the graveyard, so I was creating strange subcultures of people who lived in our world but on such a small scale it was barely recognisable. It was a total U turn on my earlier stuff and almost closer to the bacterial sense of subculture than the human sense, but it worked and lead me into a lot more exciting stuff.
Good luck!
Incidentally I have the same exam paper, though I chose the Information Age.
Ice
Smoke (for example, as in this photo by Robert Mapplethorpe
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ce/ff/43/ceff43192dd55539215b269c499051ca.jpg)
Plastic
See-through fabric (draped over nude bodies if you're into that kind of thing)
Jellyfish
Jam
Water (add swirls of paint or food colouring to still water, use running water?)
Glass (could experiment with creating reflections through different light sources)
Tissue paper
Things scrunched up and held over camera lenses to create blurred effects
Cobwebs
Double exposures (ghostly figures, demonstrating the passing of time etc. Perhaps contrasted with photos of plastic (eg cellophane) to show how translucency can represent age and disintegration but also permanence)
What was your reason for choosing translucent over all the other possible topics? Presumably you had some kind of initial vision when you picked that theme. Picture it. Think about how beautiful that idea is to you. Put on some good music and keep thinking about it and when the ideas start to flow, write down any that stand out to you no matter how wild they sound. If you've already done a photo shoot that displays your initial vision, then remember it won't be long before you have enough evidence of experimentation and can go back to your favourite idea to work on refining it. In the meantime, look at as many artists whose work vaguely touches on the theme as you can find. Even if you only like a tiny portion of their works it could be enough to give you the ideas for the next three photo shoots.
Another way to approach it is to think about the kind of photography you do outside college, what you do when there is no pressure whatsoever from anyone else telling you what to do. Then find a way to link that back to the translucent theme.If you spend your spare time taking black and white photographs of skateboarders at your local park for example, you could use a film camera and double-expose to capture them in motion, appearing to be in a translucent state. Or explore your park from a different perspective and take some macro photos of glass bottles and translucent plastic rubbish lying around instead. If you prefer nature photography find a pond or river and see what the water can offer you, or find some young leaves (might have to wait a week or so for that though) and hold them over your lens and let the sun shine through. I took this kind of approach over the last couple of terms when I chose the topic of 'subculture' for my project. I had been doing mainly portraits but really struggling with them so I decided to find a way to combine subcultures with my personal interest in wandering around a local graveyard taking photos of whatever interesting stuff I found there. So I had the idea of photoshopping some images of people into some macro photos of natural forms I'd taken in the graveyard, so I was creating strange subcultures of people who lived in our world but on such a small scale it was barely recognisable. It was a total U turn on my earlier stuff and almost closer to the bacterial sense of subculture than the human sense, but it worked and lead me into a lot more exciting stuff.
Good luck!
Incidentally I have the same exam paper, though I chose the Information Age.
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