Photo Shoots & Editing

25thMarch2014

These are the final images produced from the overlapping inspired photo shoot. I feel that I have achieved exactly what I intended to, the imagery really speaks for itself, the concept of boxing, movement and elegance is all portrayed through one composition. In order to produce these final images I had to take about 100 photographs of a single movement e.g. skipping or punching… As simple as this may sound - clicking away while my model skips/punches - it certainly was not. I used a pop up studio for this shoot, which consisted of a flash and a soft box, so repeatedly clicking away at the shutter button will only deactivate the flash producing pitch black photos. Potentially I wanted capture the rope at different positions as it moved, but it seemed to be getting it at the same position every time.  Embarrassingly, to resolve this problem I had to ask my model to slowly do one skip at a time and I would then calculate by eye when I would have to release the shutter button. This was an extremely slow process but the results produced were definitely worth it. Once I had collected all the photos I needed, I transferred my images into one document on Adobe Photoshop and simply altered the opacity of each layer until I was satisfied.

(Authors Own, Experimenting with photoshop skills - Skipping&Boxing)

27thMarch2014

(Authors Own, Experimenting with photoshop skills - Masculine vs. Feminine)

Unlike the previous shoot this one proved to be much simpler due to the movements required. As I previously mentioned, dance is becoming a new inspiration for my project. Before the shoot I researched ballet poses by watching clips on youtube and googling images. I converted these ideas into a visual mood board to show my model and then I let him move freely while I photographed him. The casting for this particular model was easy, this is a friend of mine who previously attended gymnastic classes, his physique is slim but muscly, not too big and not too small. The poses that he was performing accentuated his muscles greatly which worked really well when creating the double exposure. The only difference concerning editing this shoot was that I felt the images needed more contrast, so that the shadows created by his muscles were accentuated. The positioning of the overlapping muscles reminded me of wings which motivated the next idea [see below]. I decided to really play on the idea of masculinity and femininity. So I then styled my model in all white boxing gear; white hand wraps, white boxing gloves and white shorts with a pair of handmade angel wings. The angel wings really exaggerate the feminine aspect of my idea, so to counter balance this I decided to super impose tattoos all over my models back and arms. I shot with and without wings. I am really happy with the results produced from this shoot, it spurted from a random creative visual and its transpired into another interesting visual. If I were to reproduce these images at any stage and build upon them, I think I'd give a lot more thought into tattoo design and placement, but for this idea I think its worked well.

2ndApril2014

(Authors Own, Experimenting with photoshop skills - Boxing vs. Ballet)