Shoot 2 - Work Diary

Evaluation

During this shoot, I decided to place different gems on the face of my model. My lighting setup consisted of a backlight, lighting up the backdrop, and it also consisted of two lights at the front of the camera. This allowed me to light up the face to get a soft yet high key lighting effect on the model. When shooting, I looked at a range of different methods in which I could focus purely on the face, without blurring out the stars in which I placed around the eyes and on the forehead. I ensured that the makeup used was fairly subtle, so that it didn't stand out and overpower the see through stars. I changed the background several times in my shoot, which can be seen through the contact sheets. Editing the images was one of the hardest parts of the shoot, as I had a problem sharpening the stars and the eyes without making them appear to full on and stand out as fake. On photoshop, I changed the levels and curves, however I realised that the colour of the stars also went a pale orange colour when they were usually see through. Ideally, I would have used metallic stars in my shoot as I feel like they would be more successful in refracting the light and making the image more effective, similarly to that of Rankin's diamond shoot.

My favourite image from this shoot was the following. One of the reasons I like this image so much is due to the composition in which the model fills the majority of the frame, but also because it features some of the blue colour in the backdrop. I understand that the colour blue is not often used, however I feel as though it was a nice contrast to what I had already seen, and when I used a white background it appeared quite unclean and messy. I like the way in which the eyes are the main focal point and the model is looking directly into the camera. In photoshop, I didn't airbrush the skin as it appeared unnatural this close up, although I did enhance the colours of the eyes and changed the colour of the stars. I also took the colour picker tool and matched one of the stars to the colour of the lips so that there was a correlation between the makeup used and the accessories chosen.

One of my regrets when doing this shoot was not using the technique of 'Colour Gels' from my shoot 1 in this. By doing so I feel as though I would've been able to create images with more colour and texture, while illuminating the face in a softer way. I will also aim to take pictures in my next shoot from further away as this time they were all very close up.

Progression

In my next shoot, I want to do the same type of shoot by placing accessories on models, but instead I want to follow the work of Elisabeth Hoff who I studied in my photographer research and place it on males. By doing so I hope to subvert the stereotypes and make a feminine aspect of beauty on a masculine figure. I will do this through different coloured backdrops and emphasising the face with the gel lighting.