Final Portrait

Final Portrait
1/200     f1.8    ISO 1250 
After taking what I'd learnt from my photographer research and experiments with the cheese grater, this is my final portrait. I achieved the lighting effect by shining my phones torch through a colander with a black background behind my model.

What I concluded made a good portrait from my photographer research was having areas of high contrast and also having some features of the model shrouded in shadow to give the portrait more of an enigmatic quality. I chose my model (Zannah) because she has naturally white hair which I thought would really stand out in a black and white portrait that deals heavily with visual contrast. I also made her wear a black T shirt so her hair would be all the more contrasted. By using a colander as my stand in gobo mask I was able to cast this interesting embroidered shadow that hid her lips yet made the rest of her face seem semipermeable, as if she was her own prisoner. I also made sure that my phones torch was reflected in her eyes because the placement of a catchlight makes a more striking portrait.

To make the photo monochrome with no post production editing I went into my cameras picture profiles settings and completely decreased the saturation, this way I was able to achieve black and white photography in camera.





Another thing I learnt from my photographer research is that the placement of the eyes in a portrait is extremely important. Because of this I made sure that Zannah's right eye was looking directly into the camera and was also in the middle line of both the x and y axis. This trick empowers the portrait and strengthens the mysterious quality around it.

Overall I am happy with my final portrait as it allowed me to experiment with lighting effects that I had previously not thought about. It also allowed me to experiment with different outcomes and themes to a portrait that I wouldn't have necessarily strived to achieve before this module. In the past I'd always seen portrait photography as a method of beautifying a model with the aim of persuading the viewer that said model was attractive, usually with the side crusade of selling something. However after this module I can now see that portrait photography can be used to achieve different emotions in the viewer such as mystery and curiosity, and that these different emotions may actually create a stronger portrait despite being atypical to the norm.

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