Building on my research into Victorian photography, and having some of these photos for set dressing the exhibition, I worked on a way to project a photo that was different to the others. Elements in this photo would ‘come alive’ and the photo would move and change. These changes would be quick and brief, in order to confuse the audience, making them unsure if they saw any changes at all.
The idea for a photograph is to feature a person mourning at a grave. The photo would change by making the person at the grave move slightly. A person would appear see-through around the grave and join the mourner, representing the ghost of the person in the grave. Their hands will appear grasping the grave, and the person will also appear in full around it. The text on the grave will change as well; instead of reading something akin to ‘loved by wife’ to ‘murdered by wife’. The mourners face will also change to reflect this, being sly and smug as opposed to being sad.
To achieve this effect, a camera will be set up on a tripod. Once the picture is framed, the camera will not move. This will allow the subjects to move between photos, whilst the scene remains the same. Keeping the camera locked will be essential to the editing process, as this will only the subjects to change whilst the background remains the same. The different images can be changed and combined in order to create the movement and changes. The spectral figure can appear transparent in the photo, whilst the rest remains the same due to this layering effect.
The final photograph features a subject sitting at a grave. During the course of the duration, her head moves round, looking in different places; but focuses on one image. This image also features ghost hands appearing on the grave, and eventually a full person standing behind the grave looking down at the mourner. This layer has a lower opacity than the mourner, separating the ghost from the alive person. Although this does not follow standard Victorian aesthetics for photographing the dead, it fits more with the idea of a ghost picture. Although originally the text on the grave would change, this effect was not achievable, as the original grave text did not show up well in the photos; meaning changes to it would either be unseen, or out of place. To end the piece, both subjects; the ghost and the mourner, briefly look straight ahead, at the onlooker of the photograph. This direct nod to the audience is intended to add an additional factor of surprise to the moving photograph.