Final images

 

 

Inspiration images

Planning for my shoot

Key words:

Pink
Natural
High key lighting
White background
Light makeup
Lips

I made a plan of my final six images.

I am going to ask my model to wear a white t-shirt as her hair is colourful and I wanted high key so the t-shirt will contrast and stand out in the photo.

I am going to look at either using a softbox or beauty dish for my images to focus mostly on her face as this is the main focus point in the images.

I want the lips to stand out the most in the photos and I am going to create a pink lip to achieve this.

Lighting for shoots

High key vs low key lighting

High key lighting is when the lighting makes the image look very bright, to create this you need to make sure your camera is set to a high exposure

Low key lighting is when the lighting makes the image look dark and dull and the tone is a lot darker.

There are different types of lighting equipment that can change the way your studio and image both look.

• background light - this projects against the back wall and lights up the whole studio
• spot light - this attaches over the camera lens to place direct light onto a subject
• softbox - large, transparent squares that are placed over a light and gives a soft light onto a subject (ideal for face images)
• umbrella - this is attached to a lamp and creates a flash which places a bright light on your model's face
• reflector - you can use gold or white reflectors and these reflect light into dark areas of your model's face, eg under the chin

Source:

http://photosecrets.com/studio-lighting-for-beginners

Set up

When you are photographing, you need to set your camera to the right settings. First of all, you will need several items:

• A digital camera
• An sd card, always better to have a bigger GB to save more photos
• A hot shoe adapter, this will connect your camera to the flash

To set the camera up, you need to:

• Reset the camera settings
• Put the camera in manual rather than automatic
• Change the ISO to 100
• Put the image to RAW image rather than JPEG
• Make sure the shutter speed is set to 1/160
• Sync lead

There are a few other things that are important to know in the studio.

If you want to make a beauty image slightly darker, you can place the a soft box above the model's head, if this proves to be too dark then you can add a reflector by the model next to the part that you want the light to focus on like the face for example.

If the image is darker and it looks slightly out of focus, you can increase the F-stop.

On a computer, you can edit the exposure on a computer to make the image less bright and bring the details back into the face. (This will only work if the image is set to RAW and will not work if it is in JPEG as it will look like the image is slightly shadowed over.)

If you are using a reflector and a modelling bulb, to make the image brighter you can turn the flash up.

When you are photographing in the studio, there are a few steps you need to take to set up:

• Look around your studio and make sure it is tidy and there are no hazards
• Set up your studio with the right background, add any black sidewalls if you want harsh lighting
• If you are photographing beauty shots, it would be best to use a tripod, make sure your camera is in the right settings and attach it to a tripod
• Connect your hot shoe adapter to your camera
• Connect the sync lead to the hot shoe adapter as this will set off the flash
• Add any lighting equipment you want to add such as a beauty dish or soft box
• Do a couple test shoots and work out what settings your brightness should be on
• Make sure any cables are tied away so no hazard is created
• Add any accessories you are using for your shoot
• Look to see if you are using the correct lens for the type of photo shoot you want.

If you are using a boom arm in the studio, make sure you put the safety tether is on to protect the camera from falling

Research - Nathalie Croquet

"It’s high time fashion got a sense of humour, right?"

Nathalie Croquet is a former magazine editor. For a project idea, she decided to put herself in the model's seat and create some 'fashion advert parodies.' She teamed up with famous photographer Daniel Schweizer and named her project 'Spoof.' The aim of this idea was to create real life versions of professional celebrity images.

The project consisted of 10 images of Nathalie dressed up as different celebrities posing for adverts. Her makeup, hair and clothes have all changed to make herself into these celebrities. I chose 4 images that I thought were my favourites from the collection.

Sources:
http://www.theloop.ca/these-fashion-ad-spoofs-are-the-best-thing-youll-see-all-day/
http://www.awesomeinventions.com/fashion-advert-spoofs/
http://nathaliecroquet.book.free.fr/nc/SPOOF.html

Post Production

'How far is too far?'

In an age where you can't always believe what you see, how far is it acceptable to go with post production?

Nowadays pretty much every photo we come across has been enhanced in some way. We see images of celebrities every day and none of them are what they actually look like. We see models walking down catwalks and then the photos are in magazines being completely retouched and changed.

Retouching images dates back to the 1860s when you had to physically paint the image to edit it. There is a very famous photograph where it shows Abraham Lincoln apparently posing for a photograph, it turned out that it wasn't actually him and that the only part that was him was his face and the rest of the photo was edited.

(Abraham Lincoln's edited image)

This image of Joan Crawford is also an example of retouching. This image on the left was taken by George Hurrel in 1931, the image on the right is the retouched version. The retouched version looks so flawless and smooth that it almost looks like a painting rather than a photograph.

Even if you look at an image and you think it hasn't been edited, there is a very large chance that it has. Every image is retouched no matter how small, the best retouching will fool you into thinking that nothing has been done at all.

This image is a modern example of retouching. The one on the left is the original and the one on the right is the edited version, you can tell a lot that this image has been altered. Her skin, hair and even her body have all been photoshopped, she looks dull and grey in the first one and flawless, skinnier and highlighter in the second one.

But is this too much? Do we look at these images and think they look too much or do we like them?

I personally like the look of photoshopped images, I like how flawless they look. I understand that people may not like them as they could make people feel insecure or they might not meet the standards of beauty set by celebrities but as a makeup artist, I love perfection and so I prefer edited images. I do think that some photos can be too over edited though.

This is an image of Madonna posing for Dolce and Gabbana, you can obviously tell that the left image is the original. By looking at that photo, I would agree to edit it but when I look at the image on the right, my first thought is that it's way over the top that her face almost looks like a cartoon character, her skin is too flawless that it doesn't look real and the whites in the photo are too bright.

This is another modern example of a retouched image. You can very much see the difference between her skin in the two photos.

So, what's worse? The fact that this amount of retouching goes on? Or the fact that companies feel that they need to go to these lengths in this day and age?

I feel that there is very high pressure in this day and age with how people look, if a celebrity went out in public with a tiny bit of cellulite or stretch marks, you would see it all over newspapers the next day so for companies, especially cosmetic brands, they have to strive to make the adverts look as perfect as possible as this generation has become so judgemental towards the idea of beauty. I think in this day that this amount of photoshop is deemed as normal. People actually believe that Beyonce looks as flawless as she does in the second photo that when they see the first one, they're completely shocked and it doesn't even look like her.

How much of this is down to what the people in the photographs want?

Usually on any photoshoot, the photographer is essentially one of the most important people. It is up to them how they photo ends up looking so this photoshopping craze could be because of how they want the image to look like. If a magazine such as Vogue contacted a photographer, they would expect the image to look nice and I think if they got sent the first image, they wouldn't use it in their magazine, they would expect flawless skin in able to publish it.

How much of this is down to what we expect?

The reason Vogue would only publish Beyonce with flawless skin is because of our reaction. Magazines publish purely for their customers, they post what we want to see. If we seen Beyonce with non flawless skin in a magazine, we might be tempted not to buy it again so companies won't do it. As I said previously, it's down to how judgemental we've become that we would stop buying a product simply because the image doesn't live up to our standards of beauty.

There have been times were certain adverts have been banned because the images have been edited far too much.

These are two examples of this. Both images have been retouched that much, that the advert had to be banned. You can see more in the Dior advert that the model's skin looks too unreal, it is so smooth with no blemishes or flaws that she doesn't even look like a real person. The second image shows Twiggy who is a 66 year old woman, the image doesn't look like a woman of this age as her skin looks so flawless, she actually looks like a woman in her thirties.

There have been adverts such as the one above that is using fake advertising. The image above is meant to show what the mascara they are advertising can do, but it is false as the model is wearing fake eyelashes in all the three shots so you cannot tell truly what the product will really be like.

We watched a video in our lecture which I thought was very interesting, it was called 'Speed Retouch: 90 min in 5' and shows a tutorial of a photo being photoshopped but it's sped up so it's only 5 minutes long. It goes into great detail and they make sure they capture everything including making sure the hairlines are straight and her lips have light in them.

The before version

The after version