Planning the Shoot
For my last photo shoot I will using self portraiture as a way of representing fashion through dance costumes. The influencer for this shoot is fashion photographer Hasson Hajjaj who is known for his colored photography, as well as being a self-taught designer and filmmaker. I have chosen him as an influence as I love the sense of fashion he includes in his photos which he captures in a colored background using a fast shutter speed. I think this will fit in well with my other shoots and my whole photo book as costuming can be seen as another archival term and represents fashion throughout different years and how it has developed. The costumes will be linked to my other shoots to create a selection of images where you can see the growth of costuming within dance. These images will be in the photography studio with a plain white background where I will be both photographing costumes as well as modelling my recent costumes in a way of self portraiture. Due to Hasson taking his images in portrait style therfore I will follow the same layout as I think this will be an easier way to show my images in a book. I will also not include my face in this shoot and may include dance poses to add to the dance element. The images will also be in color as it relates back to Hajjaj’s style as well as helps to show the costumes for how they realistically are. Futhermore, i will be using artificial lighting which may include a transmitter to capture my images, I will not be using any flash photography as I don’t think this will help towards the effect of my images.
Looking into camera settings/ equipment into more detail, I intended to use a Canon Camera with a setting on Manual Focus so i can play around with the camera settings freely. The use of a tripod will be important as there wont be much moving around in the image and i can then place the camera to a height where i feel as if will be the best angle to showcase the costumes. The artificial lighting will be coming from a soft box which will be placed to each side of me as well as an additional light in front.
Process of Elimination
Planning Editing Process
I am extremely happy with how my images turned out and don’t think they need much editing doing to them as they are well lit, however i plan to edit them using Adobe Light room to do simple edits such as cropping of image, contrast change, brightness etc to ensure the image doesn’t look too over edited.
Editing my Images
The process above was then carried on for all other images which will be shown below. In order to elaborate, the images below have cropping edits, contrast, brightness, exposure, highlight edits in order to create even images.
Best Edited Images
Technical Analysis- Technically, I used a Canon Camera on Manual Focus in order to allow change to settings. Therefore, I had a high ISO setting of 1600 with my shutter speed being quite high to allow a fully focused image. In regards to the lighting set up I used, I used three artificial lightings in total, one placed either side with the other being a ring light which was placed in front. I also did some of these images in ‘self portraiture’ therefore used a tripod for my camera which was placed in the middle of the ring light.
Visual Analysis- Visually, we can see that the images are clearly focused and there is no intended blur. The images are clearly lit showing the three lighting points worked, carrying on from this there is a white background used to add an aesthetic to the images.
Evaluation
Overall, I think I have been able to capture successful images with the use of camera settings and location. I like the positioning of the hanging costumes as well as how the modelled images worked out and I wish I had developed this more with other costumes as I found these images were better.