28.

Research shoot 7 – we just didn’t connect.

I had had to change the original idea for this image, as I had wanted to use three girls but when it came to finding the models and booking them, I found that it was just going to be too expensive to do. Instead I booked a professional Model named Emma, who has just been signed up to present on an MTV show. I thought it would be a grate opportunity for me as using people who have the potential to become known is a grate way of getting your work seen if they use it in their portfolio and she also had a grate look and had done underwear shoots before and was confident when it came to working in front of camera.

The shoot – this shoot was really about experimentation, as I wasn’t going to be working to the drawing like I had been doing before. I also wanted to take what I had learnt when taking photos in my last research shoot, how low angle shots could really make the subject matter impose on the full frame and when shot right look like the subject matter was coming out of the image at you. Myself and Emma spent a while trying out different poses and shooting at different angles, I had this idea in mind of her looking like she was pushing me away, almost as if she was trying to get away from me. I decided after experimenting with poses and then uploading and looking carefully at the images that this idea had the greatest visual impact. And after some careful positioning and very slight adjustments we got the image I wanted. Where it looks as if Emma is pushing me away and walking away from me and she looks like she is close to tears, whilst I am in the background looking disheartened and conveying to the audience this sense of this happening time and time again.

Model – I found Emma really easy to work with, she is actually the first fully professional model that I have used so far. She was very easy to direct and knew all the “poses” as they say. I think her experience and confidence shines through in the images. I know that using professional models is going to be expensive but when you see the results on film I know it is going to be money well spent.

Editing – I had to learn some new skills when editing this image, In the industry it is know as “air brushing” and it is a given that every image you see in magazines and on billboards is going to be air brushed. As I was working with a professional model Emma expected that I would be air brushing the image to make her look as good as possible and this was especially important if she was going to be using the image in her portfolio. So I researched into a number of different ways and techniques of doing this on the internet. I came across the video below on Youtube, which explained one of the most comprehensive ways of airbrushing this. I sent a long time experimenting and after a while got the hang of removing undesired bumps and excess. To be fair the image was a low angle shot which caused some areas to look less than flattering. I also learnt how to add high lights and low lights to faces and the body, which was something I had really wanted to learnt how to do as people like Jill Greenberg and Dave Hill use it to great affect when editing their images, as well as altering eyes and adding my own effect to the image. I have to say I am very pleased with the final result and I don’t think the effect is as heavy as on some of my other images but it seems to work and is something worth considering when it comes to editing my final set of images.