To begin my editing process I started with this photo, it was already a good photo and I felt it gets the point across quite well, that being that a largely feminine thing is too claim ‘beauty is pain’ when doing painful or uncomfortable things on the premise of social expectations and stereotypes. I didn’t dislike the photo in colour but I feel the high contrast black and white makes the photo as it has a moody, emotive feel to it. This also benefitted some of the props like the tiara before it wasn’t overly noticeable but now it has added highlights to the photo and contributes to the overall look and feel of the image. The highlights now being a lot more visible also helped the lip gloss sheen to show up and balance the models overall complexion.

I decided to make another image black and white before moving onto trying different techniques. This allowed me to get a feel of what the shoot required in terms of editing as the lighting and composition is relatively similar throughout the shoot. I actually think the photos largely benefit not only compositionally form the change to black and white but also emotively as they appear a lot bolder and stronger in black and white as well as complementing the models look.

This is a photo I edited, inspired by Cindy Sherman I used the lasso tool to cut out certain areas of the photo and bring the colour back, I loved the original image and it was a strong image however this only improves the idea of the shoot. Having the bulk of the photo in low contrast, black and white allows the highlighted bits to really be noticed and focused on when looking at the image.

This is the final edit I did and was heavily inspired by absurdism. This was the most creative edit I did in the controlled conditions and I don’t dislike the final outcome but I think it has strayed quite far from my original intentions.

I have posted my presentation of my best final outcomes in a separate blog post.