Final Photos: Edits and Layouts

So after being ill for about a month and a half, I've finally finished all my shoots, chosen the final photos and edited them. The hardest part of this process for me has definitely been trying to sort through the photos and choose an acceptable number to use as my finals, then deciding on the layout. I wanted to end up with 4 photos from the 4 shoots as I felt like that was a nice even spread, with enough to show my work but not too much it gets repetitive. Here's what I came up with for my final layouts:

These are from my 80's inspired shoot. I found it so hard to whittle the 350-odd photos I took down to 4, just because I loved them all so much.  I think it was a combination of having a really great model, loving the makeup and the lighting working well. I managed to end up with these 4 and I am honestly so happy with them, even before editing I loved them so much. The only thing that did annoy me was that the larger one on the left is a slightly different colour to the others which is a bit of an inconvenience. I'm not even sure why this happened as they were all taken on the same setting, and they were all edited in the same way. The only thing I can think of is that the shutter speed was off and the flash was caught at a different time with that one. By having that one as the larger one and setting the other three out as a triple I got around this and I think the three really work well together anyway. As for the specific sizings, I'm going to have the big one as an A1 and the triples as A2, ordered as shown above with potentially more of a separation between the single and the triple.

One of the reasons I think these came out so well is that he doesn't look like a stereotypical over-the-top drag queen; the makeup doesn't look out of place on his face.  This really helps capture the slight overstep of the gender boundary in a way that isn't clownish to the extent that people can make fun of it, but still blurs masculinity/femininity to the point where it's noticeable in a 'normal' way.

With my 20s shoot, I had a bit of an easier time picking out my favourite photos because in a lot of them the lighting was off and I didn't take as many as the 80s shoot. I knew right from the start that I'd want these photos in black and white, just to give more of a 1920s vibe- colour photography wasn't widely used until the mid 20th century. Originally I did want to look into the types of cameras used in the decades I was looking at, but I've been ill on and off since the start of this project with bronchitis, so I haven't had time to look into everything on my proposal and the camera research was something I chose to sacrifice. These prints will be the smallest of the 4 shoots, the top 2 being A4 and the bottom being A3. I did have 4 pictures but two of them were just too similar so I decided having one a bit larger would have more of an impact than 4 similar ones of the same size.

It's a shame that the female model I originally planned for this shoot was unable to do it in the end, she was a lot more androgynous than this model so the gender-bending would've worked a lot better. I also wish I'd have had some more money to buy a dress for Jimmy to wear - again this would've added to what I was going for. Overall I'm pleased with the way they came out and I think they do convey the message, even if it's not as historically accurate as I would've liked.

My 60s shoot is a lot softer and just feels more lighthearted than the rest of the shoots. I am slightly annoyed that the different tones for the background, but because the portrait shots and landscape shots both have similar tones respectively, I don't think it matters a huge amount.  I didn't do much in the way of editing, just changed the levels to give them a bit of life and changed the tone slightly. I've decided to display all of these photos as A3. I would've perhaps liked the top right picture a little bigger, but they were taken with a higher ISO so they are quite grainy compared to the other shoots (in my defence it was my first studio shoot in a while, I was rushing and I'm not a camera wizard quite yet). Also, I didn't want the top left photo to be displayed alone but I don't think it would've worked well with the other two on it's own. 

Of all the shoots I did, I feel this one least represents the shift in gender boundaries. I mean, sure, she has short hair, but that was pretty fashionable at the time, even for women that adhered to the set gender stereotypes. This does, however, highlight the shift in what was considered femininely  attractive in mainstream culture; half a century previous women were still wearing skirts and corsets and the fact that such a 'masculine' hairstyle became such an iconic style for the time.

Edit- I removed one photo from the final layout because it wasn't as strong as the others and the space looked better with 3 photos.

The punk shoot was the only one I did outside and without being able to control the lighting as much,  I felt like these needed a bit more editing. When I first shot these, I loved them. The model was great- really relaxed and not awkward on camera at all. It was the first shoot I did so liking them gave me a little sense of relief. After editing all the rest of my photos from the studio shoots that had all used lighting purposely and thoughtfully, I really had a hard time editing these. Originally I wasn't going to do these black and white but because they all had different backgrounds - from being shot on location as opposed to a set backdrop - I didn't feel like any of them really fit together in colour. Putting them into black and white was my way of tying them together a bit more, which I think worked as a lot of the punk images I came across in my research were in black and white anyway. They all look a bit more harsh than the 1920s black and white (where a softbox was used) but in my opinion this adds to the punk theme.  The larger image will be displayed as A2 and the other 3 as A3. 

What really throws this across the gender boundary is the buzzcut. Punks were known for pretty much saying F you to every social stereotype there was, so it was pretty easy to use this style for the project. 

Correspondence with Sarah Waters

In my proposal, I talked about being influenced by Sarah Waters, who is my favourite author. Her books are always period; Victorian usually, though sometimes wartime/post-wartime Britain. I've emailed her in the past, just praising her books and she was very lovely. I decided that, at the beginning of my project, she would be a good person to ask for some direction on research resources. Here are some screenshots of our emails:

Now, I did email her with the full intention of buying and reading the books. Had I been a bit more organised with money, I could've bought them and spent my bed-bound bronchitis month reading. Unfortunately, I didn't and because of the time I'd lost working because of being ill, once I recovered I had neither time nor money to read them which is a shame. I'll agree with her though, the internet was a great resource!

4th Shoot: 1920s

This shoot was one of the ones I was more excited for. It's the only shoot I did with more than 1 model and I really wanted a strong gender-bend theme. I wanted a short-haired, masculine female model who would wear a shirt and trousers with a bow tie, and a feminine male model wearing a 20's style flapper dress. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough money to buy a 20s style dress, so I decided to dress both models in the same thing.

Makeup for the male model. I didn't create a face chart for the female as it would
only be some foundation then straightening the eyebrows and defining the jawline. 

 I'd also decided that like in my punk and 80s shoot, I wanted to use cigarettes and cigarette holders. The ones I used in the studios were fake, though I'm really happy with them and I don't think they look fake at all. I decided to use smoking because I think it's a really easy way to change the models' mannerisms and make them appear more feminine/masculine, without getting them to pose overtly different.

I had a lot of trouble with the lighting on this shoot. Both of my models turned up late on this day, meaning I had to not only rush the makeup and hair, but also rush setting up the studio. After the model's got comfortable with each other (and the camera), the poses became a lot better and came out well.

3rd shoot: 80s

My third shoot for this project was an 80s inspired shoot with a male model. I was inspired a lot by 80s stars like Bowie, Madonna and Boy George.

What I really love about this shoot is how the lighting looks. The first half of the photos as a bit too bright, but the second lot came out so well. I just used a single soft box, high up but angled down. To create more black shadows, I used 2 black card boards either side of the model to create more shadows to define the contours of his face. Luckily he was a really natural model too so I took a lot of pictures without him running out of poses or getting awkward, like in the previous shoot.

I found it so hard to choose only 4 to use, but these were the ones I ended up with:

2nd Shoot: 60s

My second shoot of this project was a 60s based shoot. I wanted this shoot to look quite lighthearted and feminine overall but with the short hair being the focus of the shoot.

I chose a white background for the shoot and just used  softbox light with a Nikon D7000 camera. I wish I had more knowledge on lighting, I think that would've made the photos look just that little bit better. 

My model for this was pretty awkward and I think that shows on camera a lot. Luckily I managed to get a few good photos that looked more natural but overall I think most of them look pretty awkward. The foundation also looks a different colour on her face which is annoying as this only showed up on camera and I'd taken so long trying to set up the lights that I had no time to try and fix up the makeup. 

These are the unedited photos I chose to use from this shoot:

1st Shoot: Punk

My first shoot for this unit was a punk style outdoor shoot. I decided to do this pretty spontaneously. I originally wanted all my shoots to be in the studio but the more I thought about it, the more I thought the punk shoot would be better in a run down, rough looking area. This worked out well as all the studios were booked up for this week but I really needed to start on a shoot.

This was my moodboard/face chart for this shoot. I ended up changing the eyebrows and just leaving them natural as my model had very light eyebrows and I felt this also worked.

The location I chose was halfway between college and my house which was pretty handy. It's an old, empty pub and football club which I think has quite a grungy feel. My model already had shaved hair which I was super happy about; it really works both with the punk theme and the gender boundary themes I'm working with.

These are the photos I've chosen to use from this shoot (unedited):