Following our first session with Roy Mehta, we were tasked to remotely direct a portrait in the style of photographers such as Fran Monks and Jackie Russo, situating the sitter in the context of lockdown & isolation. I asked my best friend from home to do a Zoom call with me in the evening so we could make an attempt. For lighting, we positioned her table lamp on her vanity surface to her left side, and she sat on her bed in front of a celestial tapestry. She used her rose string lights and tarot cards as props, but we also took some less serious images in response to the absurdity of the pandemic. In terms of direction, I asked her to pose with "angst" and suggested some food for thought, as well as making sure the light was hitting her face. Whilst the shots suffer technically from bandwidth issues and laptop camera quality, I shot in .RAW to have greater control in post.
I did some basic framing, cropping, sharpening and exposure/colour correction on the final images. For some extra touches, I added some experimental colour-grading and background blur to give the images some pop, and in retrospect I would have angled the light a bit further away so there was less chance of overexposure on the side of her face. All in all, this was really fun and editing the photos was a challenge in making the most of things, much like producing work during the pandemic in general. In one edit I added agitated scribbling and flames aligning with my friend's head to the frame, and in another I added & colour-graded a creased plastic texture. In one humorous shot I thought the black space acting as the frame was too dull, so I added some context by masking in and blurring some text from:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-announces-national-lockdown
My contributor kindly provided some context for the tarot cards she picked out, chosen specifically to reflect her feelings towards lockdown and the situation in general.
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