Third shoot

Here is a second idea of mine when I was practicing with the available light in my room. I hid behind veils to try and create a bit of a dream-like feel! I like the eerie, lo-fi feel and the shallow depth of field creating strong focus on my face. When looking at this image, I feel it relates back to my love for art and pre-raphaelites. The colour and effect added to the image portrays this.

Despite this image being a little bright, I was quite pleased with it because of it's composition and focus. I didn't have a tripod and I was perching my camera on top of flower pots and buckets whilst trying to manually focus on myself! I was trying out a new edit technique whilst attempting to achieve a vintage-like feel to my image in order to link in to my research and inspiration. I've always liked working with natural light and luckily, I didn't get any unwanted shadows because of the clouds.

Second idea

This was one image that I took on the second shoot. I explored colours and composition in my garden and actually discovered a place there which I had planned a shoot in the past which I never got round to using. I imagined myself/a model framed between the flowers using a wide aperture in order to achieve a shallow depth of field. Before taking this image, I was focusing more on the flowers than my face however this was a lucky shot! I enjoyed the lighting here also - I was shooting this quite late in the afternoon therefore the clouds were used as a diffuser. I have always been inspired by pre-raphaelite paintings and I've always planned to do something involving flowers and flowy long dresses.

First idea

This is a final image of one of my first ideas. I used candle light in order to achieve a dream-like effect. Whilst shooting, I struggled with focusing on myself, especially with me being so far away from the lens - More than arm distance. This, therefore, created an out of focus shot. I began to realise however, that out of focus-ness worked well and a good portrait doesn't always need to be in focus. This idea was then repeated in a lot of my photographs. I feel like this does portray an idea about myself; the idea of never really wanting to stand out in the first place.

Inspiration

I researched into using low light such as candles and lamps in order to create quite a "dream-like" feel to my images. I've always liked the idea of using just the light available and portraying light on the face and have the rest of the photo dark. I planned to use my 50mm 1.8 Prime lens because I knew that lens worked especially well in low light. I also wanted to achieve a shallow depth of field and allow my images to be soft.

Inspiration

Here is a photograph that inspired me which I thought portrayed a natural look about someone. It is by Rosie Hardy. The way it is photographed stood out to me because of it's technique of framing, using a shallow depth of field to blur around the main subject and give a strong focus on the girl. After researching how you create this image, I knew to use my dodge and burn tool to enhance the highlights and shadows and indicate the tones in the skin and flowers.

True Colours Assignment

For this week assignment "True Colours", we were asked to focus on improving our photography and achieving our own style. We needed to concentrate on what would create a good portrait. When I take portraits, I usually like to use a wide aperture such as 2.2 or a slightly bigger number to create a sharp focus. I have recently discovered using 1.8 with my 50mm prime isn't as sharp as I would have liked. With wide apertures, I create a shallow depth of field therefore creating less distraction in the background and complete focus on the main subject. A good portrait can also be more than just capturing what they look like, and will indicate aspects of their personality, their world or thoughts or lifestyle. Our self portrait needed to portray our knowledge of visual language in order to portray how we wish to be seen by others.