Selection of imaged for final portrait

portrait research

here is the research I have done for my portrait photo-shoot

First I looked at the National Portrait Gallery's Website to see the different styles of portrait photography and what if any images I thought would be appropriate for my photo shoot. http://www.npg.org.uk/

I have also looked at fashion photography blog as well http://www.fashionphotographyblog.com/ and i looked at the photography 101 section, although I will probably do something different to this I still would like these images and they have given me an idea as to what i may want to do.

Product shot

Product shot research Shampoo/conditioner research

As both my products are linked with the same research i will put it in one post.

First of all I looked at TRESemmé’s official UK website http://www.tresemme.co.uk/ to establish how they promoted their products visually and I noticed that pretty much all of the images were shot against a dark black background,

As well as looking at TRESemmé’s website, I thought it would also be usefull to look at the products if their competitors

although i have only uploaded an image from http://www.headandshoulders.com/en-US/index.jspx I found when doing my research that most if not all the other competitors shoot their images on a white background and that TRESemmé do not conform to this usual way of photographing their products. Perhaps this is to give consumers the illusion that TRESemmé products have something thats much different when compared to competitors.

this is research that I looked at for the conditioner

I have looked at the Pantene website http://www.pantene.co.uk/complete.html at an image on there and found as with many of the shampoos thats the background was white.

the images below were sourced from http://www.tresemme.co.uk/ http://www.herbalessences.com/en-US/hair-care and Radox for men website http://be-selfish.co.uk/men

Lighting workshop

In this workshop, I learned about various different methods of lighting a portrait photograph in a studio.

Side lighting only lights up half of the subjects face, and is often more flattering for someone with a broader face.

Rim lighting is similar to using a kicker, however the light is placed directly behind the subjects head creating what looks like a rim of light around the hair.

A Kicker light can be used to highlight part of the hair and give it a glow that stands out a bit from the rest of the portrait.

Broad lighting shows the whole face, however it is not often flattering to a subject who has a broad face.

there are some light drawing images from the studio here

all these images were taken using long shutter speeds to create an interesting effect that you can really play around with.

Lighting session

At uni, we have had a session on lighting and the effects you can create using lighting and long exposures, there are some images what I will place on here that I would like to talk about.

All the images in this post were taken using different shutter speeds and lights, it is interesting to note though, that none of the lights used for this were professional studio lights, it was mainly desk lamps and torches that were used. though a speedlight was used for the top image.