Project 9: Portraits

Project 9 involved taking pictures of people--portraits--and editing them into both artistic and commercial portraits.

Artistic

This is a picture of my sister Lindsay's eye that I made into a multiple exposure. I felt that this was a good representation of my sister because she is not made up of just one layer--there are several sides to her, and a static photo didn't show that. I put a tree on her face to represent her love for travel and the outdoors, and I thought it created a really cool effect. I cropped the pictures and fixed the exposure in Lightroom and made it into a multiple exposure in Photoshop, as well as turning it black and white to provide contrast (below).

This is a picture of my best friend Emma. She's a colorful and musical person, and I thought this image captured that side of her. While my favorite thing about this picture might be the contrail, I love how simple the shot is. Only the exposure and contrast were adjusted--it was a beautiful day, so the lighting and colors were really good for photography--and the other editing I did was cropping the photo and fixing the glare on the black car in the background. 

Commercial

This picture is advertising the necklace. I added a dramatic vignette and increased the contrast of the necklace while softening the rest of the picture, and turned it black and white to add interest. I like the final product because of the contrast of the sharp necklace and the softness of Emma's face, and your eye is drawn right there as a commercial portrait should.

This commercial portrait is advertising the bag, and to give it contrast, I desaturated all the colors but the pink. I had to remove the pink that was in the dress and around her eyes using the adjustment brush, and I cropped, rotated and fiddled with the levels of the photo. I like how simple this result is, and how it's not in your face as advertisements typically are, even though it's still all about the bag.

Extras

Project 9 Pre-Work

This project is all about portraits--using composition and pose to create fine art and commercial portraits.

Fine Art Portraits

This is a portrait of Hillary Clinton, taken by Annie Leibowitz. What I like about this portrait is the posing, as it conveys a part of the subject's personality. The coloring is nice and the background is not distracting, and the lighting is great. 

Another example of fine art portraits is this one, taken by Rolland András Flinta. I like how the pose does not show the entirety of the model's face, which is unique and makes for an interesting composition. I also like the movement of the hair and the fact that it is black and white, which adds a certain mood that makes the portrait more compelling.

This portrait of U.S. Marine Carlos Orjuela, taken by Louie Palu, does a really good job of conveying emotion. The posing is simple yet striking because of the expression, and was enhance by the black and white (almost sepia) tint. 

Commercial Portraits (Magazine Cover)

This cover stands out to me because of the lighting and the color choices. The portrait and pose itself is simple but the final result is very beautiful.  This was done by Jason Lee Parry. I think that the actual name of the magazine could have been in color, but other than that, this was done very well.

This magazine cover was shot by Agata Pospiezynska. I like how the color of the portrait contrasts with the black of the magazine's title, and the expression on the model's face brings a little life into the shoot. I also like how this is a different than the typical "stare sultrily at the camera" thing that most covers have. 

Project 8: Surrealism and Photomontage

For this project, we created surrealist images meant to be fantastical or dreamlike using three or more different pictures.

This image was created from 10 separate pictures and several copies of them. There were pictures of street signs, a picture of a post from a beach volleyball net near Lincoln City (still continuing the beach picture trend I've had since project 2), a picture of a trail I took while on a hike, and a picture of Carly taken on our walking field trip. I chose to make everything but the street signs black and white to make the signs stand out, and to give the image a gloomy mood. I also chose to make the stop sign far brighter than the others to make it stand out, so that your eyes gravitated there. There was a lot of editing involved in this picture, all of which was done using Photoshop. I had to edit the detour sign in particular--the words needed to be flipped back around when I rotated the sign horizontally.
I took inspiration for this photo from Alice in Wonderland--the Disney movie--when Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are telling Alice to go in multiple directions (hence the two "one way" signs on the same post). I think my final project is creative and really reflects all of the work I put into it.