Edit: I was editing my project and had it on private and forgot so, it was private so I’m posting a new one and hopefully I can get some input before class! Thank you!

For my final project I was thinking of doing either a social issue or a brand.

For the social issue, my topic would be about the topic of journalist freedom and how reporters around the world are getting killed or imprisoned for sharing news the government don’t want them to share to the public. The government censors the free flow of information to control citizens. And every year, reports are killed or imprisoned for it. Just in 2017, 51 Journalist, 7 citizens journalist and 8 media assistants were killed. While 181 journalist,121 citizen journalist, 16 media assistant were imprisoned. This was based of the website and organization call Reports Without Borders: For Freedom of Information. These statistics are ones were the RSF was able to confirm that they were killed or imprisoned because of their journalistic work. This is the link: https://rsf.org/en/barometer?year=2017.

And these are two articles that talked about it:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/20/era-of-propaganda-press-freedom-in-decline-says-reporters-without-borders

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/04/reports-borders-journalism-tipping-point-170426055328722.html

For the photoshoot I had ideas of using still life and portraits.  For the still life, it would be similar to a the campaign that Reporters Without Borders were they showed pens and pencils being broken and saying “reporters are treated how you treat your pens” but I wanted to take it a step further and break the pen in two and have ink coming out. Also, I wanted to maybe use the ink in a graphic way. Using any items journalist would use and turn them into a gruesome one or showing it being imprisoned.

For portraits, I was thinking maybe having a “hand shadow” in front of subject as if they’re covering them, preventing the person from talking. Another one would be using plain old tape or wire to cover their mouth.

Another idea was of a newspaper as a prop being distorted.

Another idea was to have a camera in someone’s hand as if they are the handcuff. Probably from the back. With everything black and a spotlight on the hands.

Or perhaps, having a microphone on one side and someone trying to talk with tape on their mouth.

FOR BRAND

I was interested in doing hot sauce! Tabasco. I’m an advertising major and always loved the ads done by that brand and would love to put my own twist on it.

I was, of course, thinking of shooting still life of the bottle like in the manner of the example you showed in class of https://www.shappsphotography.com. Bringing real peppers to the class as well. I want to play with the transparency of the bottle and how it cast shadows.

And perhaps ask classmates to show reaction of someone who ate something super spicy. In a comical way.

I don’t know which of the two topics to go through so I would like your opinion on what would work best and what sounds like a better idea.