EVALUATION

I have really enjoyed the digital image project. Although I missed a few lessons due to illness, I managed to catch up really quickly and easily. I enjoyed learning new things about photography and can now say I have a full understanding about how to set up a camera efficiently. At the start of the project I had a slight understanding about photography and the graphical terms but never really got taught how they worked. I feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge in the past few weeks. I have also learnt a lot about lighting and how to set up the studio for a shoot, which i'd never been taught before. I have enjoyed being introduced to new equipment including the different types of lighting (soft boxes, beauty dish, reflectors etc...).

For my final images I wanted my model to be naturally beautiful and I wanted her to have minimal makeup. I used a brown shade from the Mac cool palette and a slightly darker shade for the crease. I used minimal face makeup because I didn't want it to be visible in the images. I used a pale pink shade from the Kryolan lip palette for the lips, which barely showed up on camera - which I liked. My model had naturally long eyelashes which was perfect for my shoot because I didn't have to pile on mascara to make the eyelashes long and visible.

I wanted to explore different lighting, mainly, in my two sets of images. I wanted to use the same model and makeup and just use the lighting to change the way the images looked. For the colour set I used a beauty dish which created hard lighting on my model. This meant there were a lack of shadows and all of her face was bright and her skin glowing. In the black and white images, I positioned my model in front of the soft box so the light was coming from behind her, highlighting all of her from the back and some of her face left in the shadows.

I had been taught photoshop in college so I was aware of how and what I needed to edit in my images for postproduction. I removed any blemishes and spots that were visible - although there were barely any as my model had lovely skin - and removed any hairs that were messy and unwanted on her face or visible in the background. I made the contrast higher in the black and white images because they were very soft and by making them black and white, it meant there were barely any visible shadows. I didn't edit my images much as I was very happy with the original outcomes anyway.

If I could do anything differently, I would have explored a different makeup look for the second set of images, maybe making the eyes and lips darker. However, I am very happy with how they looked. One thing I found difficult when taking these images was the time! If I were to do these images again, I would spend a lot more time perfecting them and exploring different lighting to ensure I have the perfect final images to choose from. Next time, I will take a lot more images in all different types of lighting so I can get the perfect images for my theme. Another thing I would change about my shoot is that next time I will have an assistant to help during the shoot. Me and my model struggled to hold up the reflector because there were only two of us and if my model was holding the reflector it would show in the images. All of my final images were taken with out a reflector so maybe this is something I should try using in the future.

Overall I am extremely happy with how my final images look and love the different use of lighting. Leah was a great model and fit my theme perfectly.