Blogpost 3
Alongside our better lives lectures I chose to do ‘Contemporary Portrait Photography’. We worked through different key ideas and techniques and I finished this course with 3 final outcomes that covered different breakdowns of portraiture.
My first outcome was a self-portrait. As a collective, we went through the different aspects of self-portraiture and how we could create a unique image. Overall I thought that my image was successful as a self-portrait and carried many of the traditional conventions, and I really enjoyed a softer editing technique when creating this final piece. I do wish, however, that I was a little more creative with my thinking when shooting the actual image and that I had tried a few more unusual techniques. My work was very simple and although it had a pop of colour I felt it could have been more effective and interesting as a stand-alone image. When we came together for critiques I found lots of my classmates had created more unusual imagery and this gave me the motivation to think more creatively about how I shot in the future.
My second piece was to be a portrait of somebody else and I chose my boyfriend as that is who I am currently isolating with. I decided to take this shoot in a different direction from my self-portrait and wanted to use a new location so that I could experiment more with the shooting and editing process. This is my favourite outcome because I really enjoy the depth created by the natural lighting that I later enhanced in the editing and I also enjoyed the shooting much more this time and found myself thinking more creatively about how the end shot would look. I was really happy with how this image turned out and this has inspired me to work more with natural light and see how it can change my future imagery in relation to my hair and makeup studies.
I think the biggest part of this project for me is how much confidence I has grown in my technical abilities. My Hair and Makeup Projects require a lot of testing and development and I can see in my recent work that I am using the skills I have learnt in my better lives sessions. It has allowed me to improve and broaden my creative thinking and given me a new motivation to not only focus on what is in the shot, but what I am wanting from each image and how I want my project to look all together. Learning more about the key themes and going through the lectures has also allowed me to think in new ways and has adapted my learning so I can focus on different studies and areas of research. Overall I really enjoyed this unit and I am glad to have had the opportunity to study in a different field, this has given me new skills that I can now incorporate into my own course work.