With this being my mood board I decided to take inspiration from one image and chose to take a more creative outlook showing the make of the makeup look, to give an almost behind the scenes mood.

Technical: The lighting looks like it could be natural as the hair is looking more golden than the rest of her meaning the sun could be shining on her. However, studio lighting could be used just to brighten the image up and get clearer features. For the white balance I don’t think theres any setting changed as tungsten wasn’t used because she isn’t blue and daylight wasn’t used because she isn’t yellow or really bright. I think the photographer asked the person to be located against a white wall in a studio or a home to give it a more sophisticated and clean look. The image doesn’t look over exposed although the saturation looks quite high to create an almost doll-like effect. The photographer decided to keep the tonal range warmer showing lots of different shades of orange and yellow contrasting with the whiteness of the t-shirt and the background. For the aperture it looks like a standard lens was used to take an upper body picture, the image isn’t blurry and uses sharp and focused depth of field. The ISO looks like it’s on a medium setting (maybe 800 – 1200) as the image isn’t grainy or coarse. Texture can be seen through the image from the veins on her hand to the way her hair is layed, this shows that she was the main focus.

Visual: Cindy Sherman decided to go with a warmer tone and colour through this image creating a more inviting space instead of using a cool toned palette perhaps to not ‘scare’ the viewer. Sherman layed out the model by making her look away from the camera but still smiling as if she’s looking at something that she’s enjoying. The image looks less formal than normal as the model looks like shes in casual clothes and has an averting gaze – it is almost as if its a non staged, staged photo trying to make her seem ‘casual’ and ‘easy-going’. The image doesn’t have symmetry but has a good focus on face so she isn’t hidden and blurred.

Conceptual: To my knowledge, Cindy Sherman doesn’t see herself as a self portrait artist as everytime she does a photoshoot she’s alway playing a new character(s). With this photo I think she might of wanted to break away from women stereotypes people create and show the real meaning of being a girl. The messy makeup look shows the beginning of something: her trying out a new style or practicing for the first time. Most of her photoshoots have normally been about over exaggerated things like the clowns or the traditional housewife but for this shoot, she kept it more simple and let her face do the work instead of her body.

Contextual: At the time of the 2000s fashion and bright fun makeup was very big. A lot of women decided to come out their shell and experiment with what they could do, this was shocking because before then women were traditionally seen as objects or people that were subordinate to men. The stereotyping to women came heavily when it came to photoshoots as they were meant to be perceived for the male gaze however, after Sherman’s photoshoot from 1977 I think she realised how much the world has changed about their view on women and how they should act, dress and look.

I worked with different heights, lighting and poses to give a variety of images to choose from. This allowed me to make a further selection in which images I want to edit and makes changes to.

Original Images

I then did the behind-the-scenes esque photoshoot where I pretended the camera was the mirror I was doing my makeup in.

Editing + Experimenting

I chose image 6 to be my final image to compare the original photo as I think I positioned myself best and used the the same facial expressions as Cindy Sherman. I also think the lighting and height were more accurate than the other images I could’ve chosen because I think the photo is angled lower rather than at head height.

Here I took the image I think fits best with Cindy Sherman’s photo and edited it to look similar. I cropped and upped the saturation to give an almost doll-like look to the image. I also used the drawing tool to give myself the same colour nail polish which allowed me to get the same effect that Cindy Sherman used.

For these images I decided to take on my own approach giving an almost behind-the-scenes take on it. I took pictures during me putting on the bright makeup. This to me shows a feminine side as growing up as a girl to me is exploring and finding out how to do makeup. The use of the bright makeup allowed me to be more creative with this shoot and editing because I needed to try and accentuate the brightness and extremeness of the look.

Here I also decided to mesh to photos together to create almost a story of how i’m getting ready. I think it looks good because the haziness of the left photo blended with the right makes it seem as if it were intentional. If I were to do this again I would make sure the camera is more focused which would make the image look clearer yet, it still works with how it’s normally taken.

My Final Images + Gallery

Next time, I’d use a tripod to help me set up and get the images straight which would mean less editing for me. It would also help me by having a place the camera can be set, I’d also try and use natural if possible as you can tell in the images how fluorescent the lighting is.