After taking inspiration from my planning mind-map, I was able to take a series of images for my first photo-shoot, revolving around the theme of breaking masculine gender roles, and merging both masculinity and femininity in order to show a liberation from gender stereotypes and roles. Here are my results:
Green tick: Will use in editing – Green L: Small lighting problem – Green ?: Possible final – Green F: Small focus problem – Red X: Rejected image – Red F: Focus problem – Red P: Subject position = wrong – Red L: Lighting problem
The final images from my selection can be found below:
After creating this contact sheet, I was able to using editing software Photoshop to edit the images I decided that I would use. I used different editing techniques on the images in order to show different final results, and made an attempt to enhance the colours and contrast of each image using the editing tools on Photoshop:
I decided to experiment with the hue of some of my images in order to give them an overall more blue/green effect. I did this because I believe that by increasing the presence of this colour, the image takes on a more delicate, soft overall feel, therefore reflecting the feminine side of the image that I am trying to convey.
Here, I adjusted the hue, saturation and lightness slightly to give the image a softer effect
As well as editing the hue of my images, I also focused on increasing the contrast and altering the colour balance, in order to give the image an overall slightly softer and lighter effect.
After adjusting these settings, I was able to form an outcome of the image below:
I believe this image works very well, as it conveys a softness in the colours and lightness of the image, but at the same time, the masculine pose of the subject and the focus on the masculine arms helps to draw a comparison between how the subject presents themselves, versus how they may be feeling. The folded arms are protecting/hiding their femininity (the dress).
In my images, I also took steps to eliminate the background of the subject, or replace it with a colour that made sure to push all focus to the subject themselves, and to remove the background that did not match the context of the image. To do this, I used the eyedropper tool to locate a suitable colour on the background, and used the paint brush to carefully paint around the subject, and fill in the background.
In some of my images, I made attempts to show as much contrast as possible between the light and dark areas of the photo, and in doing so enhanced the shapes and patterns of the subject and their clothing, which I feel helps to draw attention to the parts of the image where there is contrast (masculine legs vs the feminine clothing)
Here, I haven to cu around the subject to remove the background, I will then replace the background with a better image that makes more sense to the image.
After cutting out the subject from the background, I changed the image to black and white, and increased the contrast drastically. I then altered the colour balance so it sat more towards a blue hue, and therefore the final image is a black and white image with a slight blue tone, giving it a softer, but still stark bold overall look.
The following images are also a collection of my final images from my first photo-shoot, after the editing process:
This image took very little editing, I simply cropped the image to focus on the hands, and increased the saturation.
This image involved cutting out the image from the original background, and pasting it onto a white background. I then changed the image to black and white, and rose the contrast significantly.
For this image, I used the lasso tool to cut a jagged line down the centre of the image, and highlighted one half of the image in order to select it. I then copied that half of the image onto a separate layer, and was able to adjust the contrast of each 1/2 of the image separately, to create this split, distorted effect on the final black and white image.
This image was cut and pasted onto a white background, and was changed to black and white, with a slight raise in contrast
This image involved using the lasso tool to cut the lines through the image, and I then merged the layers of the lasso images together, in order to create the broken effect. I then individually edited the 2 layers, changing the colour balance of some fragments of the image so they gave a much more pink hue, in contrast to the black and white fragments of the image. I then used the lasso tool to copy and paste sections of the background, in order to clean the background up.
I used the lasso tool to cut and paste certain parts of the image, in order to separate the image into different layers to work on separately.
Here is an example of where i cut part of the original background out. I would then shape this cut-out-part to fir it into any areas where there are blemishes in the background in order to cover them
This image included cropping the image to focus on the hands, and changing the colour balance so the image was more red-toned. I then increased the saturation slightly to bolden the colours.
The above image included using the lasso tool (as used in previous images) to select a portion of the image to copy and paste onto a separate layer. I then edited the 2nd layer to an overall red hue, and increased the contrast of the first layer, also changing it to black and white. Furthermore, I cut the image from the original background and pasted it onto a white background.
