Final Year: Personal Practice Porfolio
October 25, 2019To introduce my blog page i thought id start by sharing my current plans for my final year university module, ‘personal practice portfolio’.
For this module i have chosen to create a commercial portfolio i consisting of fashion/beauty and product work.
Back story to this decision…
After working a year in industry due to a placement, i came to the conclusion i knew i wanted to work in the commercial industry. I really appreciate documentary photography work also! But unfortunately this just isn’t my forte and the creative side of my brain lights up when given a brief to work with, as i find my mind starts to wonder in 500 directions if I’m given the option to create a story with no limitation. Another factor of choosing to create a commercial portfolio, was due to wanting to prepare myself for industry. I get extremely inspired by magazine and popular culture for my work, e.g. Dazed/ Harpers bazaar and ID magazine. So my idea is to create imagery good enough to be seen in this form of context, in which i can possibly show to employers post-graduation.
To kick start this practice i began attempting beauty lighting in the studio.
My first beauty work attempt i firstly researched into practitioners that inspired me to start photography. Someone who always sticks in my mind, from research into portrait work is Brock Elbank. His series of work focuses primarily on skin/face/body features that can sometimes be classed as ‘falls’ and helps glorify and show the beauty in these ‘falls’. example below…
This shoot did take trail and error, my very shoot first attempt did not go as planned and i ended up creating very harsh highlights on the skin creating a very uneven and harsh look, which looked nothing like Elbanks work. I also originally didn’t notice the little features which make the biggest difference! e.g. the background, as i originally used a white background which i felt looked to clinical for the look i was going for. However after reflecting i went back and reshot, resulting in the final image…
By taking inspiration from his style of shooting and put it towards my own work for my first project, i aimed to make my work to be just as sharp as his. As well as using tones similar to the skin tones for the background really helped to make the image more flattering.
Heres the Final result!
Disclaimer! - The lighting diagram is just what worked for me in order to achieve this result, it does not reflect how Brock Elbank shoots his portraits. This is just to document my lighting progress in order to for me to reflect back on my work.
overall, work could definitely still be done to make the image look all round softer (maybe more depth of field), and id like to experiment more with postproduction to perfect the images. However for a first attempt, I’m happy with my results!
Hope you enjoyed reading about my starting point for my university degree work! Thanks Chloe.