Studio Portraiture Work Diary

Description of the shoot:

This shoot involved two sections. Both of which were taken in the studio. The first involved taking head shots on a coloured pictures. This was inspired by  . The idea was to focusing on the facial expressions as there is no background so all the focus is on the face and the angle from which it was shot was important. I then took some pictures that included the head and the top of the body, everything besides the legs. This looked more at the position of the person being shot.

Here is an example of a head shot:

This was one of my favourite images as I like how her hand is on her face I think it looks like quite a natural position but because it's been captured from the front it still gives a structured look.

I edited this picture in photoshop. I chose this one because I wanted to edit it so that the face and the eyes had more highlight and definition so I chose this one as I liked how her eyes were looking straight into the camera. I think these edits make her eyes look very piercing and they draw our attention towards them.

This shows the different layers I used to create the effect of the picture above. The vignette helped darken the edges so the picture seems to be getting lighter as it goes in. You can see here that I also sharpened a layer and I did her eyes which helped to define them even further.

Picture I liked:

F/9    ISO 200    SS 1/125

Over all my pictures I think this was my favourite as I think her eyes strand out a lot. I also like how her expression is in dead pan however there is still so much emotion to this picture. I also like the contrasting tones as there is the negative space in the background and theres highlighted tones on the left side of her face and there's also some darker shadows to create a nice contrast. I made it black and white to create a dismal mood to match her dead pan expression. The fact that she is playing with her scarf in this picture also build this connotation.

This shows what layers I did to edit the picture above.

Progression and image I disliked:

I didn't really like this picture as I think I took it from too far away so I got too much negative background space above her head which isn't necessary and also the negative space cuts out at the top and it is slightly slanted so it makes the whole image look quite distorted rather than straight and well measured like this head shot  was supposed to be. Also her face is not entirely in focus which disregards the point of portraiture as her face is the most important part so if it is slightly blurred like this, the image lacks definition and depth as there is no foreground so she is not separated from the background.

If I had a chance to re do this shoot I would try to experiment with angles more to get more of a variety, especially in my head shot pictures. I think this is important as different angles can completely change the perspective of the whole picture so by having more of a range of angles my pictures may be more interesting.

Images from the internet:

This image is a good example of very a head shot portrait that has very piercing and defined eyes. This is the kind of thing I was trying to create by editing and sharpening the eyes in some of my head shot pictures.