CATHERINE MACDONAGHMAC08231923photography elective wednesday 4 - 6

STUDIO PORTRAIT insecure

I believe that the visual language is successfully portraid in this photo. The model is stood at an angle with her body facing the key light and with her arms crossed. I have chosen to have a black background with a background light, lighting it slightly. I decided to do this as I didn’t want the photo to be completely dark and moody, but more shy and insecure about the world. This body lanuage can be seen as either showing clo-sure to the outside world or being fed up. Her facial expression seems unhappy and no warmth is shown in her eyes.

STUDIO PORTRAIT flirtacious

Compared to the previous photo, this one has more of a light and airy feel to it. It has a white background and I used a Key, Fill and Back light. Subtle flirtacious actions can be seen, such as the eyebrows being raised, a cheeky pout / smile and her finger pointing to the right of the camera. She is once again possitioned at an angle but this time she is looking over her shoul-der showing confidence.

IN THE STYLE OF richard avedon

The original photo was shot in the 1960’s for a fashion magazine. The majority of Avedons work I like are the fashion shoots (for Vogue and other big magazines) and portraits (The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe etc).

I have decided to concentrate more on the movement of the photo instead of the garments. Avedon has captured his model throwing her-self away from the light. I loved this technique as shadows are cast both on the floor and across her body which gave the photo movement (without having a blurred or fuzzy background). I used a tripod, which Avedon would have used and placed the lighting in the same way as the photo. As it was a light background I used a background light to boost the white. My key light was placed to the left of the photo to define the body and to cast the shadow on the floor. I also had another two lights so the contrast of the shadow on the floor could be seen. I used a quick shutter speed to capture the image as she was moving when I was taking the photo. I then used Photoshop to make adjustments (changing it to black and white, adjusting the contrast and using the clone stamp) to perfect the photo.

The experience I had taking this photo would have been a different experience that Avedon had. I shot this photo in the studios with a Digital SLR camera and got to view the photo instantly. Where as Ave-don would have had to develop it in the dark room, which was a longer process. I also was able to use Post production on my work.

POST PRODUCTION photoshop

Magnetic Lasso Tool – around the body and guitar. Copy and paste the selected area to cre-ate ‘Layer One’.

Layer OneEraser tool – delete excess brick wall – diam-eter 30px, hardness 38%Layer – New Adjustment Level – Exposure – 0.20 and Gamma Correction – 0.88.Clone stamp – Spot on chin, spots on neck, hair on right of forehead, getting rid of white spots on the brick wall.

BackgroundLayer – New Adjustment Layer – Levels. White balance from 255 to 220.Image – Adjustment – Curves – Output : 97 and Input : 112.Filter – Blur – Lens Blur.Layer – New Adjustment Layer - Hue / Satura-tion.

I wanted to emphasise the blue on the shirt, clear the spots on his face and neck and to make the models body and guitar stand out more than the brick wall. I used Adobe CS3 Photoshop for my post production.

My inspiration of this photo was to create exciting movement. To cap-ture movement, I had to move the camera whilst taking the photo. I found it tricky at first but once I worked out the correct aperture, shutter speed and ISO, I captured a handful of successful shots. I have chosen this photo for my port-folio as I think the shape of the mini works well with the vibrant colours in the blurred background.

PHOTO one

PHOTO two

I created ‘Depth of Field’ in this photo by concentrating on the one icicle with a raindrop about to fall off. I still wanted the background there but only wanted one icicle and raindrop in focus. I found it tricky to control the aperture function as I had to capture this photo quickly to get the raindrop in its fullest form.

PHOTO three

I wanted to capture the busyness of a building site but I don’t think that this photo is perfect. Walking down the street, the colours of the sign and work jackets caught my eye. To improve this photo I should have focused more on the man holding the sign instead of the surroundings.