Studio Portrait session examples

 

The photos above are a few edited examples taken from my studio portrait session of Natalie. To begin the session i firstly began by setting up the lighting, For this i wanted to create a spotlight effect leaving the background lit yet with a graduated darkness around the edges of the shot. To begin with i found this really difficult to create as the photos were either too light on the face loosing detail or too bright on the backdrop resulting in no contrast of foreground to background. This was mainly resolved by either adding or removing certain lighting features such as the umbrella off the back light to create a halo effect and moving the front light to the right side of Natalie alongside a reflector placed on her left side which i felt balanced out the lighting creating less of a darker shadow to the face.

After this i instructed Natalie to portray an array of different emotions alongside poses and body language working with and in relationship to the cigarette. Surprisingly i found this harder than i thought as i have little experience with working with other people as models. The main difficulties i found were trying to explain to Natalie what i wanted of her as yet she did what i told her but not in the exact way in which i would have wanted if id done it myself. To aid this i brought in some samples of previous photographs as examples which i felt really helped the situation and understanding between me and Natalie within certain aspects of the shoot. As a tripod was used throughout the majority of the shoot i also decided to experiment freehand but didn't feel that this worked as well, it resulted in me getting a lot of unwanted background features in my shot as well as blurred and unclear images leading me back to continuing the shoot with the use of a tripod.

When i began editing the photos i found that due to finding the correct lighting in the studio i could create the exact colour background in which i wanted, somewhat similar to that commonly seen on a smoking advertisement, blue hue with a well lit foreground image. I also wanted to exaggerate the colours within the makeup creating a much more surreal and detailed appearance to the face. For my final i would like to add some form of text something similar to an advert involving a quote or statement reinforcing stopping smoking. I will be looking more into smoking adverts for influence on this.  Overall i feel that this went really well and i have achieved what i wanted to in the time frame i was allotted i also feel much happier with using and understanding equipment and over all studio practice aiding me in any future assignments.