The final portrait

Final potrait for the identity project

My final image shot with 1/80 f. 1.8 ISO400

 and a 50 mm lense

Photos from my last shoot

These are my favourite photos from my last shoot with Alya that i didn´t choose to be the final portrait. 

I had decided that I wanted a black and white portrait of Alya, that hopefully showed some of her personality. (This was mainly inspired by Vincent Peters and other black and white film photography). I also wanted to add a touch to it that would make it a little less ordinary, so I gave her a piece of jewlery that is meant for the hand. (Inspired by the fashion photographer Vivianne Sassen). I thought this would look good, especially while she danced. I had noticed that she uses a lot of arm movements and always poses her hands nicely, so maybe the jewlery could draw attention to that. These were the pictures I chose my final from. Altough I like these too, I don´t think they show the same level of emotion, personality or are as dynamic as the on I chose as my final. 

For my final image I chose one where I think Alya shines through. I wanted a photo where you could see her happiness while she dances and it really shows in this one. I thought I´d explore the identity of my model, and as that turned out to be Alya, I thought her identity as a dancer would be a nice thing to show. I also like the dynamic of the image and how you can almost predict where her hands are going. The best part of the photo though, is of course, her smile.

As the image is really dark I thought I would have to lighten it for the print, so here is the brightened version. I think it does look better with a bit more exposure. You can see her hair better and her shiluette doesn´t just disappear into the background. 

I experminted with shutter speeds, colour and different compositions and ended up choosing a simpler kind of image. I thought maybe making the potrait interesting with long shutter speed would be too easy, so I wanted to experiment with more traditional potraits. How can you make a potrait interesting without any special effects or tricks. 

I used the black and white effect on my camera. I like it, although it does look a bit different on the camera´s screen then it does on my laptop or printed. I like the grainyness too, but I´m a little worried it´s a bit too grainy. Unfortunately that couldn´t be controlled, so I just hope it still looks good printed on an A4. It might be that the effect is hiding more detail than I would like. 

During this project I found that I really would´ve liked to use film. I´ve never used it before so that probably woulnd´t have ended well with this, but I´d love to learn it, so maybe next time I could use it.