Kenneth Lam is a photographer based in London and is the inspiration for this shoot, more specifically, his project 'White as Rice'. I chose this project in particular because of the he focuses on the colour white and the meaning behind the colour in fashion and culture, which is exactly what I wanted to explore for my personal investigation. I chose the colour red because I wanted to explore my own culture, the culture of Vietnam, red is an important colour in the Vietnamese culture, it represents luck, happiness, and celebration, which is different to what it is known globally: passion, love and danger. The model in Lam's shoot wears mainly white pieces of clothing, so I asked my model to wear different clothing in red, I asked my model to keep her makeup natural in order to imitate Kenneth Lam's work. I wanted the red clothing to be the thing that stands out the most so I chose one bright red clothing and the rest is black, which I feel is a neutral colour that compliments red well.
This shoot was based on my own heritage, which is something personal to me and I wanted to represent that in the shoot, therefore, I tried to make the shoot intimate to showcase this. I feel like I was able to achieve this objective through the angle and poses of the model. I think this shoot was some what successful, I like how the pictures came out and I was able to add intimacy into the images, but I feel like it doesn't represent Vietnam enough, the viewers may not be able to make the connection between the outcome and what I wanted to portray, so I wanted to develop this shoot but add subtle hints of Vietnam into the photographs such as the national flower or the motto to represent Vietnam.
This shoot was based on my own heritage, which is something personal to me and I wanted to represent that in the shoot, therefore, I tried to make the shoot intimate to showcase this. I feel like I was able to achieve this objective through the angle and poses of the model. I think this shoot was some what successful, I like how the pictures came out and I was able to add intimacy into the images, but I feel like it doesn't represent Vietnam enough, the viewers may not be able to make the connection between the outcome and what I wanted to portray, so I wanted to develop this shoot but add subtle hints of Vietnam into the photographs such as the national flower or the motto to represent Vietnam.
Contact sheet:
This is just a small portion of the images that I took for this shoot. I had to adjust the settings manually so that it suited with the dim lighting of the room which meant that I had a lot of test shots trying to get the perfect settings. Overall I ended up with about 300 photographs, this is because with each pose I took it in different angles so that I had various options to choose from.
This is my first portrait experiment where I used the marquee tool on Photoshop to copy and paste a section of the image to enlarge, the sections that I enlarged were chosen because I thought that the colours would stand out more against a black and white image, in this case, her hair, lips and eyes. I added a drop shadow to all three sections to make it seem 3D. The last thing I did was turn the image black and white.
This manipulation helps me to move away from realism and entering the concept of surrealism, the enlargement of some portions of the image may make the viewer feel uncomfortable due to the unrealistic facial features created, disrupting the beauty. Additionally, the pose and facial expression of the model gives off vibes of fear and the enlarged eye and mouth adds to this feeling of fear, especially with the slight open mouth and wide eyes. Furthermore, this type of edit was inspired by Nicholas Goodden's work of selective colouring. |
This manipulation was cropped out of an image that I decided not to showcase in my chosen images. I was inspired by Kenneth Lam for this experiment I saw some black and white images from his website and I liked the fact it looked quite eerie and it reminds me of an image from a CCTV footage. The first thing I did to create this image is turning it into black and white, I adjusted the hues in order to replicate the image, making the model's skin paler and everything else contrasting. Lastly I added noise to pixelate the image.
The model in this photograph looks sorrowful, with her eyes slightly looking down and looking to the side, she looks almost regretful, this makes the viewer question the situation the in which the picture was taken in. The edit itself, makes the photograph look old school. |
I was experimenting with the opacity of the image to see what effects I can do and as a result, I created the image above. I layered three of the same image making the image black and white and changing the opacity lighter with each layer, 38% and 21% respectively. I like this manipulation because, even though it is simple, it adds quite a bit to the image by adding movement.
Adding to the concept of fear, the blurred image almost looks like the model is turning towards the camera in slow motion and her expressions looks alarmed, as if something is coming. Furthermore, it's quite hard to focus on the image which may make the viewers uneasy, the movement in the image reminds me of the feeling you get when you're dizzy and trying to focus your eyes. |