Shoot 3 - portraiture

Portraiture 

Plans for shoot - My plan for this shoot was to take some images of a person in order to use them with my images from the 'patterns from Kew Gardens' post. These images will be in the style of John Strezaker. 

Photographers research - John Stezaker 

The idea I will be carrying out below is one of my two initial ideas for the topic 'transformation'. In this instance, I will be experimenting with the work of John Stezaker, especially the work he titles 'masks'. After carrying this out I will be deciding between this idea and the camera obscura idea to see which one works better. 

John's style includes overlaying landscapes or flowers onto portraits which acts as a mask. I really like this idea and would like to try it myself. Below are some examples of Stezaker's work:

Contact Sheets 

Best Images 

AO2 - For this shoot I used a tripod in order to get an image with no blur. This was important because any kind of blur in a portraiture photograph will show up. I also tried to use the whitest background I could so that my images reflected that of John Stezaker, whereby there's no confusion in the background, its just white. I feel that this makes the viewer focus on the subject and the concept at hand as anything in the background would be irrelevant. 

As for camera settings I tried to stick to ISO 100 in order to keep the noise in my photos down. This worked well as the room I was taking the photographs in was bright and mostly white therefore I needed no more light. I kept the aperture at F5.6 the whole way through as it increased the amount of light going into the camera whilst really focusing on my subject. As you can see from the images above I had no issues with focusing, the F5.6 worked well at the distance I was. Lastly, I mainly stuck to shutter speed 1/8seconds as this seemed to give the correct exposure in this setting. This stayed quite stable throughout the shoot as I didn't move the camera at all. 

Editing 

Below I will show the editing process of one of the images I have done: 

The first step I took on this image was adjusting the exposure and highlights so that it was a little bit more exposed. I done this because the before image was slightly shadowy and therefore had some dark and blank areas. 

The next thing I did was use curves, I only made slight adjustments as I wanted some of the detail to be brought back from when I overexposed the image. 

Lastly I wanted to de-saturate the image slightly as I felt that the yellow jumper could overpower the other image I insert when it comes to the experimentation. 

This is a different image that I edited however I wanted to show how I converted it into black and white. I used the black and white tool to adjust the different colours in the image as I thought getting the yellow on the jumper was very important in the overall appearance of the photo. 

AO3 & AO4 - If I was to shoot this again I would try to find a background that was entirely white therefore there wouldn't be any lines in it. However, in this instance I didn't have access to a studio so had to find a white wall in my home to use that had good lighting. This shoot is going to be used going forward to explore the work of John Stezaker. I will be using these images in conjunction with shoot shoot 1 in order to make these images. 

Experimentation 

Below are the images I have created using this shoot and shoot 1. They are in the style of John Stezaker, overlaying landscapes or patterns onto portraits. There will be further explanation on how I achieved this in the 'computer experiments post'.