For today, I wanted to capture aspects of my routine again, but this time making them extra posed and staged. I used a similar set up as day three, but this time focused more on where I wanted to be lit from and how. I wanted some slightly more dramatic lighting to really separate me from the background and to capture the intricacies of my face. I decided today was another day in which I shouldn’t use makeup as I felt that would clash with the overall piece, as it focuses on the everyday, and let’s be real, this quarantine has shown that no one is delving for a full face of makeup to stay in.
This set is comprised of three main images, which is less than some of the shoots I’ve made for this project, but each of these took significantly longer to edit and I feel they look more powerful as a triptych. For the first image, I had just gotten out of the shower and went to dry my hair ready for the shoot. However, while drying my hair, I thought the contrast between the background as the pure red of the towel would make an interesting feel to the image, so I tried to capture me combing my hair to move the hair from my eyes while the red towel sat infront of the blue area of the background. In Post, I used Lightroom to emphasise these colour contrasts further, whilst also highlighting my iris colour too. I muted my skintones slightly and added more warmth to them, as the original images were very cold with harsh red areas due to the white light in my bathroom.
This next piece was taken just after I had faked brushing my teeth, and I had allowed for loads of the white froth from the toothpaste draw down my chin; which is really grim, I know. I had taken many shots leading up to this image involving me putting toothpaste on my toothbrush, and many more with me with heaps of toothpaste froth falling from my mouth to the floor. However I just didn’t feel these were dramatic enough-didn’t quite match the stern seriousness captured in the last piece that I hoped to continue throughout this set. So this was my chosen image. I felt it captured the notion of brushing my teeth without explicitly saying that was what was going on, whilst also capturing that dramatic staring I was hoping for. In terms of post, here I had to mute the skin tones again whilst increasing the warmth, softened the Levels and increased the contrast slightly to add to the drama.
This piece has to be a favourite of mine, as I feel it captures the balance of drama and normality better than the last two do. I wanted to spot heal each of them, but I felt this would take away from the overall feeling of genuinity that I hoped to capture in this series, so I decided to leave them. This is one of the aspects I’ve found really difficult about this project, as I haven’t shot self portraiture before this quarantine project, but I’m learning the key do’s and don’ts of self portraiture and learning a fair bit about myself too in the process.
V E E L I S E K 