Studio Photography Project for Dervin (:

Chosen Portrait Photographers.

Here we had to pick and research three portait photographers that inspired us and give a reason why.

Elisanth

I chose this photographer for one of my examples of portrait photography because I think these images are beautiful, I love the designs of day of the dead sugar skulls and I think to have the designs painted on someone looks really effective. I would love to have a go at having a go at something like this as I think these images are really inspiring as they’re so different. The only thing I did not like about these photos was that maybe on the first photograph I would have painted all of her body white instead of just her face so then her face matched the colour of her body instead of the face just being white.
If I was going to have a go at these kinds of pictures in college I would need to brin g a variety of face paints in and have a bit of time to prepare and paint the models face.


Darko Komorski

I picked this as my second photographer because I think this photograph is beautiful, this photograph has such strong contrasts in it, and I love how you can barely see any of the models face but how much of an impact and how strong her eyes look in the photo. I would also love to have a go at using this as inspiration for some of my own photography. If I’d of done this photo myself I would have had just a plain black background as everything in the photo is quite textured and I think a plain one would put all of the focus in the photo on the model and the fan not the textured background.Stanislav 


Perov

 I picked this for my last photographer because I love how strong and striking this image Is, the darkly dressed model against the bright background works very effectively. The high key photography set up makes the models skin look brighter and whiter and has worked really well with her dark clothes. I also really like how the model isn’t in the middle of the photograph, the off center placement of her works really effectively. I would also love to have a go at some pictures like these, dressing someone up in a gothic style and having them in a high key photography shoot. The simple stance of the model also works very well. The only thing I would change about this photograph would maybe have the models face in a little more detail as I think it doesn’t stand out that much and I would want it too. 

For my final set of images for Dervin out of the three photographers I looked at, I decided to go for the day of the dead makeup ones, the first photographer. For this I am going to use a low key photography set up, with just one light I think just on one side of the model. I then looked into different makeup styles to decide the possible design for her makeup, here are some images that I found off the internet on various websites that I used to inspire my own makeup to do on the model.
for the makeup I used pale foundation all over her face. then started to black out her eyes with black lip stick and draw a circle around her eyes in eye liner. I then blacked out her nose the same way. I next did all the little circles around the eyes in eye liner, then drew an outline of a heart in liquid eye liner on here forehead. I next coloured it in green with green glitter liquid eye liners. I then drew the spider web on her forehead. I next drew a stitch mark on her lips and drew the hearts and blobs on her cheeks and chin on, I then coloured them in with green eye liner.
I lastly drew the patterns on the cheek, trying so hard to make it semetrical, I spent about 45 mins in this, and after I'd done had to go over it neatening parts up. 

I then had a practise on myself, even though this picture of me is terrible, I think the makeup went well..

On the day of the photography shoot, me and my friends hired out one of the studios at college. I had to go borrow a piece of black material from the material cupboards and clip that up because a black background wasn't available, but it worked just as well. Then we set up the lights, I originally was going to use two lights, like in the photo, but after turning out the main lights and on the other lights it looked alot better with just one.

I then did Lily's makeup :)

After all the lights and everything was set up, I did a test shot on my camera to see what the settings were like, it came out like this.. so I used the light meter to see what I should use.

For these photographs I used a F number of 4, and ISO of 100 and the shutter speed as 1/250.
After taking about 45 images, here are my final five that I edited in photoshop.
To edit these photographs I changed the hair colour alot, using a new layer then adding a hue to it, then deleting it away from the bits I didn't want coloured. I went along all of the black lines in the photo using colour burn and darken and neatening them up in the liquefy section. In the images where you can see the models eyes I used colour burn and tinted the iris using hue in the brush tools.
I also desaturated the skin to make it look paler and added a Gaussian blur to each of the images and put their face in focus using the rubber tool.

Task ten 

Justify your choice of photographs, and state how they matched you proposal.

I chose these final five images to edit, because I felt that they were the ones with the best light in, the ones that showed off the makeup well, and the ones that showed that I took influence from my chosen photographers.

I spent ages going through all my images, trying to pick the best angled ones, and I hope that I did.

Over all I am pretty happy with my images, after spending about 45 minutes setting it up, and about 20 minutes taking pictures, I think I came out with 5 pretty strong images.

I spent about 2 hours on each image editing it, and now looking back I did miss a few bits, and I could pick at certain parts, but after the time each picture took, I am happy with how it went, especially changing the hair colour, I think that went really good. I defiantly learnt lots of new things after doing this project from looking online on Photoshop tutorials. 

If I were to do these photographs again, I would have definitely taken more shots and maybe dressed the model up more clothes wise and got some shots with more of her torso in. Also, when editing the photos I would have changed things, and knowing things I know now, I probably could have many spent a little less time editing them.