Development Two - Stylistic influence: Natalia Drepina

I chose to refocus my work to include my initial photographers, in these cinemagraphs I took stylistic inspiration from Natalia Drepina's work by contextualising the elements through the idea of death and the mystery around it. Different belief systems have a variety of explanations of what happens after death and different customs of how they deal with the dead. Some belief systems bury their dead whereas others cremate theirs - I chose to take cinemagraphs in a church graveyard. Christianity does not specify if the dead should be cremated or buried but they believe that it is just the body that these things happen to and that the soul goes to heaven, for eternal life with God. 

I chose to sketch out a plan of compositional ideas so I had a plan when I was on shoot, it allowed me to create better cinemagraphs as I had the basic idea pre-planned. This allowed me to focus on getting the correct composition by experimenting with different angles. 

For this cinemagraph I chose to pour water onto a statue but only show the movement of this water on the table, I think that this is effective as the lighting highlights the ripples in the water. The composition of this cinemagraph is effective as the statue is in the left third, in my opinion this is effective as it allows the negative space to create a sense of mystery, similar to Drepina's work. 

This cinemagraph shows the very subtle movement of cobwebs on a grave stone, this is influenced by the dark nature to Drepina's work. The movement of the cobwebs is effective as it is placed in the right third of the composition, filling some of the negative space. 

This cinemagraph is a subtle representation of the element earth, following my theme of death - inspired by Drepina's style - I composed this cinemagraph to look like someone scattering ashes. The movement of this hand is effective as it shows the soil or 'ashes' falling from the model's hand. I chose to change the composition from my sketch as using just the hand lacked context and was overall less effective.

The final cinemagraph features a simple white candle next to a grave with the candle flickering. I think this portrays Drepina's style of photography as it leads the viewer to become inquisitive about the story behind the composition.