Me, photographing my roommate, Amy Randall, as "Michelle."

Hello lovely people.

Today, I was supposed to do a photo shoot outdoors in New Richmond for my Intro to Black and White Photography course; the general idea was to take the characters from Grand Theft Auto V (GTA) and recreate them as women.  I consider myself an avid gamer (when I have the time), and I absolutely love GTA; however, the video game company, Rockstar, that created the GTA franchise as well as other successful games has yet to put forth a female protagonist.  In fact, most gaming companies go with a male lead over female.  Even the Mass Effect series, which offered the choice of playing as either gender, used the male Commander Shepard in advertising on the game cover, trailers, and posters, as the intended character.

Me, directing Terisa into a pose for "Treva."

With this art project, I hope to combat gender roles in gaming, showing that women can fulfill the role just as well as men can.  Therefore, "Michael" became "Michelle," "Trevor" became "Treva," and my tentative model for "Franklin" became "Francine" (the three protagonists in GTA V).  I may be playing into the "Ms. Male Character" that Anita Sarkeesian described in one of her videos from her feminist You Tube channel, "Fem Frequency," but this is not the intention (the video is included at the bottom of this post, should you be interested).  The idea is to imagine these characters as women; what would something like that look like?  Is this what we can hope to see in the future of gaming?  Can't women be badasses (for lack of a better term) too?

Terisa Peer, posing as "Treva."

Well, as you can see, the photo shoot took place indoors; I am still in my pajamas.  With a winter weather warning, driving out 30 or 40 minutes to set up camera equipment in the snow didn't seem ideal; as if that weren't bad enough, one of my models canceled on me.  This project needs to be finished up (ideally) by this Friday on top of everything else, so I improvised.  Using natural sunlight, a neutral toned wall, and a couple of floor lamps, I created a photo shoot right in my living room.  The included photos show a small snap shot of the three rolls of film I ended up using with my borrowed black and white film camera.

I will post more about this project as it progresses through the week, but until then, stay classy San Diego.

I had to throw in that Ron Burgendy reference with the impending "Anchorman 2" upon us! Have yourself a wonderful day and as always, thanks for reading.