Task 2 - The Faces

This task was focusing on location portrait photography. Location portrait photography is quite common when it comes to album cover artwork of usually the musician/singer or someone anonymous which may relate to the title, or for summing up the mood of the album. Here are some of my portrait photography images that I've produced on location:

Overall, the shoot went quite well and I managed to get some nice silhouette images. Along with the portrait technique itself, I've been considering the locations too. Here are some of my images:

This is one of my favourite image from the shoot. I like how the silhouette is formed above the light in the centre. You can see half of a face and the identity of my model is anonymous which is a cool effect for a music cover. I like the details of the hair because it looks a lot more softer than the actual outline of the face. I've made no changes to the edit except making it a square, and that was well considered whilst I was shooting because I wanted the light to go bang in the middle. Overall I am happy with this shot because of the outcome.

This is another silhouette that's been shot in location. I went shooting at centenary square again after my night shoot for my landscape images because I liked the location with all the lights. This image is of a random woman who actually helped to model. So this actually required us to communicate with her so that she knew what we was doing. I like how in this image, she has stood near the light and posed in a disco style. This could work for an album cover because it's quite a funky image and it can be edited further to make it more funkier for the theme.

Additional

In this shoot, I was focusing on using a reflector to see the difference in portrait photography. We've tried using white card indoors and outdoors to bounce light back on to our subject and I believe it's been a successful shoot. Here are some of my selected images in a diptych:

Indoors

This image is taken indoors and there's a comparison between using a reflector and without. In the image on the left, I'm not using a reflector and you can see dark shadows on the model's face. The image on the right is me using a reflector and you can see a significant difference. You can see in the glass behind her a reflection of the card as it was on held on the right side of the image. If you look at her jacket, you can see that it's a shiny material and with the reflector, that also brightened up. Now there's hardly a shadow on the model's face.

Outdoors

Here is another example that is shot outdoors. This time I got my model to have her hair covering part of her eyes. This allows me to create some shadows on her face, particularly under her eyes and her cheeks. Then using a reflector, we held it against the left side of the image. This made a drastic change and bounced the light back on to the cheeks and around the eyes. It almost changed the dynamic of the image, like it lost details on the face because it just exposed it a lot more. It also made it a little more equal to the right side of the face. The actual light that is bouncing back on is quite bright and you can see this white tone shining on her jawline. This looks cool and would be suited for a rock genre if this image was edited and zoomed in a little closer towards the face. 

Indoors 2

This is another example indoors. Similarly, you can see the how the light is being bounced on the card from the window opposite it. The light in the left is full of shadows on the face and even the scarf. Then when the reflector was used, it brightened it up and changed the tone of the image. Even the scarf is a lot brighter and you can actually see the reflection of the card in her glasses.

Outdoors 2

This is another outdoor example. This was taken by placing the reflector on the left side of the face. You can see the major difference in this before and after example. I like how the background is blurred so it's focused on the model. In terms of the shadows, you can see how there's a lot near the eyes and the cheeks and once the reflector came in, it was all brighter. 

Some additional examples:

Using Fill in Flash

Overall, this task went well because I got to focus on these specific techniques. I've tried out silhouettes and using reflector as my main techniques but it also worked with other techniques like using fill-in flash, window light and placing them in urban/rural/city landscape. I've also shot different ways, like the side of a face and some experimenting with depth of field. For my planned shoots, I will ensure that I have portrait photography for one of my shoots. This will correlate with this task so I can do more images using different techniques and location.