Bibliography

Books

• Child J and Galer M (1999). Essential Skills Photographic Lighting. Oxford: Focal Press. p2 - 135.
• Ewing W (1996). A Fetish For Beauty Blumenfield. London: Barbican Art Centre. p1 - 256.
• Smith B (2008). Pro Digital Fashion Photography. East Sussex: Ilex. p6 -192.

Films/TV/ Youtube

• 7 Photographs that Changed Fashion 2009, television program, British Broadcasting Company (BBC 4), London, 14th January.
• Making of: Vogue Japan - Special Edition - Obsession by Mario Testino - Japan 2014, video, Vogue Japan, 25th Sept, viewed 11 October  2015, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztviA4W3C40).

Internet

• Stampler L. (2013). American Apparels 'Unisex' Ads Portray Men and Women Very Differently. Available: http://www.businessinsider.com/american-apparels-unisex-ads-2013-5?IR=T. Last accessed 4th Nov 2015.
• Stampler L. (2013). How it Would Look if Men Posed the Same Way Female American Apparel Models Do . Available: http://www.businessinsider.com/if-men-posed-like-female-american-apparel-models-2013-5?IR=T. Last accessed Nov 4th 2015.
• Wyasaki J. (2015). If an Average Woman Modled for High Fashion Ads. Available: http://www.pleated-jeans.com/2015/08/05/if-average-woman-modeled-for-high-fashion-ads/. Last accessed 4th Nov 2015.
• Unknown. (Unknown). Rankin: The 7 Photographs That Changed Fashion. Available: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4161221/Rankin-Seven-Photographs-that-Changed-Fashion.html. Last accessed 8th October 2015.

Magazine

• I-D  (Spring 2015). The Activist issue No.336.
• InStyke (November 2013). Drew Barrymore.
• LOVE (S/S 15). Miuccua on Kim.
• Vogue. (June 2014).

Evaluation

I think that from this project I now have a basic understanding of beauty photography and how to set up and shoot high key and low key images, however I am not as comfortable with doing this as I think I should be, I really struggled with getting to grips with the technical side of photography. The way I solved the problem with this was by practicing and speaking to other people on the course to help my understanding, it also helped me writing down step by steps on how to shoot an image. The way I developed my research was first by getting an insight and knowledge on beauty photographers, by watching the 7 photographs that changed fashion and getting myself familiar with iconic images. The other way I gained research for my final photoshoot was by looking in magazines like I-D and LOVE, my main inspiration was the Frayed Beauty shoot by David Sims (Seen on my 6 poses I find inspiring post on blog) and this is what I based my form of natural beauty on, I wanted to make the subject more abstract and challenge the conventional image of feminine beauty. The images I produced I am really pleased with, however if I was to do this again I would like to be a lot more familiar with photoshop as this would make my images a lot more professional. Overall, I think I have took small but very essential steps towards having knowledge about photographers (past and present) in the industry and I am also starting to take photos that I would be happy to have in my portfolio.

Photoshoot Call Sheet

16^th November 2015

Creative Director : Bronya Leavesley

Email:bronyaleavesley@hotmail.co.uk

Phone : 07712237017

Bronya Leavesley

Photo Shoot Call Sheet

Assignment

The Perfect Base

Location

Photography Studio: JM405, Southampton Solent University

Concept

The concept of this photo shoot is the perfect base with the key colour orange, to emphasise natural beauty.

Technical Requirements

6x images, 3x colour, 3x black and white, of which some will be high key and some low key, including a profile shot, side shot and a hair shot. Shot on a white background.

Moodboard

Timeline

Team meet at 4.45pm (15 min brief)

Makeup 5.00pm – 6.00pm  (1hr)

Shooting 6.00 – 6.45pm (45mins)

Clearing up 6.45 – 7.00pm (15 mins)

Team

Makeup and Hair Artist - Bronya Leavesley
Photographer - Bronya Leavesley
Assistant - Beth Haile
Model - Charli Roth

Final Edited Images

HIGH KEY

 LOW KEY

 

To chose these images  I followed the steps from Bruce Smith's book  Pro Digital Fashion Photography, these steps are;

• To get rid of the obviously failed shots for example out of focus or if the model has been caught off guard.
• Pick out images with good overall look and shape.
• For each shot you have been asked to take you should have about 5-10 images.
• When editing images save as a copy so you can always access the raw image.

Smith B. (2008). Post- Production. In: Juniper A Pro Digital Fashion Photography. East Sussex: Ilex. p143.

Post Production

For our final images we had to do some amount of post production whilst still making the photos look as if they have had nothing done to them. I wanted to use a bit of smoothing and i also wanted to find out how to remove under eye bags on photoshop however we were not taught how do do this in our post production lessons, so I had to use my own skills on photoshop to try and edit my pictures. 

I pretty much applied the same concept of editing to all of my pictures which I will detail below.

• This is my image that I have chosen to retouch
• I started by creating a new adjustment layer and made a layer to change the brightness and contrast of the image.
• I turned the brightness up to 25 for my high key photos and about 15 for my low key photos, but this sometimes varied, but never went over 25.
• I then changed the contrast to 11, this was the same for all of my photos as it was subtle.
• if my image was in black and white I would have created a new adjustment layer and selected black and white and then merged the layers down, I did try changing up the levels of colour within the black and white but I found that it looked better just adjusting the brightness and contrast.

• This is what my image looks like after doing these two steps, as you can see the photo looks more vibrant but isn't too different from the original image, I like the warm glow that this effect gives to the skin.
• The final thing I wanted to do was just to bring out the highlights and shadows a bit more so I used the dodge and burn tool.
• Lightly I used the burn tool through the eyebrows to fill in sparse hairs and along the lash line and eyelashes to emphasise them.
• I also used the dodge tool to emphasise the highlights.
• When doing this I always use a brush that has a 0% hardness so it blends nicely.

The Pictures below show my step by step for post production, as you can see the burning and dodging is very subtle, but it just brings out the highlight and brows and eyelashes a little bit and brings the photo together. 

To make these pictures better i would have liked to know how to use the clone stamp tool to cover some of the imperfections like cuts and bruises on the skin and also on closer inspection you can see slight fallout under the eyes from the mascara which I could not correct and I would have liked to smooth the skin just a little bit but unfortunately we were not taught these skills. 

Post Production

Photoshoot Set up

For my photoshoot my brief was to use two different lighting set ups for my high key and low key photographs, and to think about which ones would look better in either colour or in black and white.

For my high key set up I kept it simple, I want these photos to be in colour to display the pop of colour, so to do this I will be positioning my camera on a tripod, with a light with a beauty dish on directly above my model, then I will be getting my assistants to use a reflector around the models face to get rid of as much shadows as possible. I have chosen to do my high key photos in colour as I believe this will show it off better and will look more vibrant.

For my low key photos I will be using 2 different lighting set ups, for both of them I will have a white  backdrop, a light for flash, and also a light with a soft box on it, for the first lighting set up I will position my model in front of the soft box and for the second i will have the model against the background still with the soft box on. I have chosen for these photos to be in black and white as this will really emphasise the shadows of the face.