For my second photoshoot, I wanted to take portraits in an outdoor setting, similar to those of Lillie Langtry’s portraits taken in nature. To do this I picked an outside area with agriculture such as trees and flowers in order to capture the cascading sunlight onto the face. I also used the same costume from my first photoshoot to incorporate the vintage style of Lillie Langtry’s era. I used both a short and long lens to achieve a strong depth of field in some of my images, to recreate the same depth of field in the photos of Langtry.

Recreating Lillie Langtry’s portraits

Once adding my images into Lightroom, I rated them through the flag and colour system to narrow down the large group of images into a selection that I wanted to use and edit for my final images. The images highlighted in green are what I believe to be my most successful images and those which I want to further improve.

Editing my images

To edit my images, I began by adding a black and white filter to the images, and adjusted the exposure and contrast in a similar way to my first photoshoot to give the images a vintage aesthetic. By altering the exposure and contrast it enables the images to become lighter and softens the contrast between the highlights and the harsh shadows.

Then I added a yellow tone in colour grading to the images to create the idea of the images being faded and weathered. I also altered the temperature and tint of the image to make the images have a warmer yellow tone to them.

To add detail to the images, I added a grain affect and lowered the clarity and texture of the image to reinforce the image being ‘vintage’ and to recreate the grain and textures of an old film camera.