*Final Portrait Photography Photographs are on the previous blog post.

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This was my second set of photographs (above) which I took during the previous weekend. I maintained the same theme, showing the working class’ anxiety and stress through everyday life, however, added upon more techniques and a larger variety of postures to make the set look more appealing to the audience. I also experimented with close up shots on on facial expressions and eyes to convey mood and emotion. I continued on using dramatic lighting effects on my subject, placing the lighting in a low angle perspective, illuminating certain body parts while leaving others in shadows, with this combination bring similar to the audience’s automatic vision of someone feeling stressed out. I let my model put her hands on her face in these portraits, showing her uncertainty and unwillingness to face challenges and life and what is potentially awaiting her, introducing more storytelling elements and a wider vision and imagination for viewers to relate and connect themselves to my portraits.

The biggest improvement with this set of photos would be how my use of lighting became softer and diffused, adding depth to the overall portraits and letting the image seem more three-dimensional compared to my first set. I did so by reducing intensity of my light sources, especially the red light, which I felt was overly dominating by previous set. Interestingly, I was able to keep a good level of contrast between shadows and light, which still showed the duality of personality and interior conflicts faced in one’s mindset.

I also used more close up shots and got closer to my subject compared to the first set. While keeping the focal length the same (typically 18-32mm), getting closer captured more sensory details of my subject and made the image’s theme more direct and immediate to understand by viewers. This also allowed me to show more color details reflected on the face, which added upon tension and intensity of my photographs, how the hardship faced by the subject under societal pressure by this dynamic energy.

I also focused a lot on sharpening the portraits as needed to emphasize the subject’s dominance by enhancing edge definition and also showed more texture, such as the patterns of the skin and facial language.

Yousuf Karsh was my reference throughout this set of photos. This dynamic lighting pattern and rapport to capture a subjects inner feelings/atmosphere of the portrait were all applied to after analysis of how a true candid photo was based on an “illusive moment of truth” ,when character is revealed through an unconscious move of the subject. As an example, the first photo in the set was when the subject subconsciously leaned against the wall after a long time of posing, showing her tiredness and exhaustion from life and wish to take a break from what she is facing. In my first set, I also used wallpaper backgrounds, which I changed after seeing Karsh’s minimalist background technique which kept the background clear of distractions and elements which could capture and distract the eye of the audience away from the subject.

These are some of the other shots I attempted during the set, which I believe weren’t as successful but built up my skillset for higher quality photos. Note that they aren’t edited.