Shoot 3 - Portraits of my sister

 For this shoot, as planned I wanted to focus entirely on taking portraits. This is because I would like to include portraits in my final outcome and I needed to practice different framing and poses, and the right lighting to use etc... A big inspiration for this shoot was Sam Contis' work and her projects such as 'Deep Springs'. Her black and white portraits that feature shadows and depth portray such visually aesthetic themes. I really like her compositions and the black and white look of her images, so I would like to emulate that in my own shoot. I will shoot somewhere in my house that doesn't have a distracting background, and I will use a higher aperture and a longer shutter speed.

This contact sheet below shows the selection process of how I chose the working images. The images with crosses I won't use because of either incorrect framing or exposure, or if they are too blurry.

I bought them to Photoshop to crop them and make sure the subject was in the centre of the frame, but other than that I didn't change anything in terms of brightness and saturation. I just adjusted the exposure when I was actually taking the photos.

I like the softness of the lighting that these images have but I also wanted to see what they looked like in black and white like Sam Contis' work. So I took the images to Photoshop and used the adjustments bar to apply the black and white setting to the same photographs.

I really like how these images turned out as the black and white really adds to this editorial vibe from this shoot. The black and white filter brings out the shadows in the background more as well which really add to the depth and keeps it visually interesting and not so flat and 2D.

The final images that are my favourite from this shoot are:

I took the photos in front of a curtain in my house which added some texture to the images which I think it needed because without it they were to flat and 3D, the texture gives them some depth and makes interesting lighting in the background. The poses were very much inspired by editorial shoots from vogue and editorial shoots of Kate Moss, and the neck image was inspired by Sam Contis. I utilised the natural lighting which was diffused with the use off the curtain which created a really nice dreamy effect with the soft focus. I consciously made sure that the subject was in the centre of the image each time so that she was the focus of the image. The shutter speeds I used ranged from 1" to 5", so it was a bit harder to shoot the images without them being blurry. The black and white images turned out really well as they brought out the shadows and contours of the image to make it more interesting.

My previous shoot focused on photomontage more but this shoot gave me the chance to focus on the portraits themselves more than the process of collaging. I have learnt what lighting works best with the black and white filter on Photoshop and I also learnt to really think about the framing and where the subject is in the frame, which will be important for later shoots and my final outcome. In future I will definitely want to use black and white images again but explore more the different levels of contrast that can be found in the black and white filters. In future shoots I want to also try taking photos of people just doing regular things without posing because I think that's what I want to be included in my final project.