I followed the steps on this YouTube video to create the Polaroid. I also borrowed the same Polaroid frame they use in the video.

It was surprisingly much easier than I originally thought this was going to be, that said, it does take time. Using the tutorial, I was able to simply create a template. I will use this template for the Polaroids I will create during my main shoot.

I am quite happy with the result from the test shoot, I think the biggest issue I will face will be the text. I tried to scan text that I had written, and then place it on the Polaroid, but it resulted in a very grainy and fake text, it was less believable than the one I've ended up using.

I don't like the Polaroid frame they used in this tutorial, so I will change it to one that I prefer for the main shoot.

Project Pitch

My idea for my major final project is to do a series of photographs that are inspired by films that have male protagonists. For each shoot, I will photograph a woman in the role of that male protagonist, and make the image look as if it was from that film. For example, I will use Skyfall (2012, Sam Mendes), a James Bond film. I will take the James Bond character and have a woman represent him instead. The message I want to tell with this shoot is that one can put women at the forefront of films, and show that it can be done without overtly sexualising them.

During the project, I will research specific films from different genres and shoot one every week. My plan so far includes being inspired from stills from Casablanca, Skyfall, Black Panther, Indiana Jones, Superman and Harry Potter. This should give me a wide variety of genres and should improve my current skill set.

This will push my creative skills quite a lot, since I will have to come up with a different shoot every week, using completely different props and models for each one. This means that I will have to be very organised and it is something I have done before, but not to this level.

For my first shoot, I am intending to shoot in the style of film noir, but using Casablanca as a starting point. I really want it to have a very classic, black and white feel, and also, I want it to have that shine that old film used to have.

Minor

My idea for my minor project is to do a series of abstract portraits, which can be done in studio, and then I will layer multiple images of the same model and create an abstract image. This should push my skillset on Photoshop and Lightroom. The message I want to portray is all to do with how the media manipulates and controls us, and I want to use this message to create trippy and experimental portraits.

Update

16th of April

After three failed shoots due to complications with models and locations, I felt completely uninspired to continue with the idea of the cinematic shoot. I decided to change my idea, into doing a series of photographs for the album artwork / booklet of any given artist. The series of images should reflect the concept and themes of the album I choose; whilst also adhering to the conventions of the genre of that album. The shoots should reflect what the music from the album is about.

The Photography of Music

First Shoot

Research

For my first shoot, I will attempt to create the booklet and alternate album artwork for Lorde's Melodrama.

To do this, I try to replicate the look and feel of the Green Light music video.

During my research, I found out that Lorde has synesthesia, a condition in which people relate words or sounds to colours or other senses. Lorde uses this to her advantage in her music videos and album art.

Although Lorde has garnered major success in the past decade, people consider her to be a one-hit wonder pop star. I would consider her to be a bit underground nowadays, finding major success in her niche market, similarly to Lana del Rey. That said, this album is definitely a pop album.

Lorde goes against the conventions of the pop genre, by having a painting of her as the cover art. Normally, pop stars tend to have a quite basic cover which is just the face of the artist.

In several interviews, Lorde has stated that the colours from the cover, are the colours that she sees when she listens to the album. I will attempt to use a colour palette similar to this in my shoot.

The entire album follows Lorde, from the beginning of her breakup, to the moment where she finally feels that she is over the relationship. She uses the metaphor of a party, as the backdrop for the entire album. I will use the backdrop of the party for my shoot.

Shooting Plan

For this shoot, my inspirations are the two images below from the Melodrama album photoshoot. The first one is in the album booklet, and the second one is the single cover-art for Homemade Dynamite.

I will be shooting with my Canon Rebel T6i, using a 35mm lens. To make sure my photos are lit perfectly, I will be using a ring light as my primary source of light and then two LEDs on each side of the ring light. I will use these LEDs for the gels combinations I will use. I have not decided on which ones to use, so I will conduct a test shoot to see what light combinations to use.

I will shoot in studio conditions, with a black backdrop.

Test Shoot

I conducted a test shoot to decide what kind of lighting to use during the main shoot, and also to test the blocking of my subjects to truly nail the aesthetics from the album.

Out of the three, I liked the middle one, with the red light coming from the right and blue from the left. I didn't really like the photo on the left, the green filter makes the model look sick and isn't very flattering. For the main shoot, I've decided to go with the middle photograph's lighting configuration. I will use the configuration on the right as well, but primarily, I will use the middle one.

Main Shoot

The picture above is probably my favourite from the entire shoot. I love how saturated and vivid the colours are defined on the subject's face, which makes the whole image be unique, and very different from most things I have shot before. The colours are also heightened by the grain that I added to the image on Photoshop, to make the image fit the aesthetic of the album. I really like the composition of the image as well, and way the subjects are blocked in the image, which shifts the focus of the viewer directly to the central subject.

Overall, I am very happy with this shoot, but there is still room for improvement in some areas. One of the difficulties of this shoot was that I had to shoot with a very limited amount of time due to the availability of my subjects. I found that doing a test shoot was very helpful, since I allowed me to do this shoot in a much sorter amount of time than usual, since I had done the experimentation beforehand. Whilst the shoot was done with a very limited amount of time, I feel that I managed to shoot a great series of images, that said, it meant I couldn't do much shooting and have different outfits or lights, and that is clearly noticeable in this set of images.

If I were to re-do this shoot, I would attempt to shoot it elsewhere with more people and with more time. The scope of this shoot could have been much larger, instead of doing the shoot in a studio, I could have attempted to re-create a party, but I shied away from that since I personally thought it would be been too much to handle.

The lighting for the entire shoot was the same for every shot. In the diagram below, one can see how I used the studio and what my lighting setup was.

I'm really happy with how this image turned out, I love how the ring light creates a white circle inside the pupil. I used red and blue to represent the colours of Melodrama. I used red to represent the love and passion of the record, and the blue to represent the nostalgia and 'melodrama'.

I spent a lot of time editing this image to create a re-creation of the booklet image I used as inspiration. To achieve this, I first attempted using a red light on the actual shoot, but as one can see in the original image below, the result wasn't as similar as the inspiration. To achieve the most accurate recreation, I used the colourise tool on Photoshop, and used the colour pink to create this. I personally quite like it, but the background doesn't look pink like in the original. I could have changed this by having a white backdrop.

Second Shoot

Research + Shooting Plan

Taylor Swift's 5th studio album 1989 is inspired by the 80s both sonically and visually. Swift wanted to create a very cohesive album, and I believe this is the reason why the album was a massive success. This cohesiveness was both in the sound of the album, as much in the visuals of it. For example, if you bought the CD, you would get ten Polaroids of Swift. These images were my main inspiration for the shoot, and I will attempt to re-create particular shots from these Polaroids.

I will shoot on my DSLR, and then edit on the Polaroid's frame afterwards. I will conduct a test shoot, in which I will trial this. For the actual shoot, I will use a very simple lighting setup, using a DSLR and my DIY reflectors.

My model will be styled to look very similar to Swift, from the shoot of the Polaroids.

Test Shoot

Major

Main Shoot

Overall, I am extremely satisfied with this shoot. I love how I was able to re-create the Polaroids just how I wanted and also, how realistic they look -- apart from the text. The part I love the most from the shoot is the composition of most images, since I had to work with square images. I also really like the colour palettes in the images, and how they capture the vintage feeling I wanted.

Inspiration for this image

My favourite image from the whole shoot is the one on the left. The reason I love it so much is because of the positioning of my model, it's a very well composed image following the rule of thirds. To get this shot right, I had to step on a chair, so I could get the high angle. I used a reflector pointed at my model's face to make sure she was brightly lit.

Inspiration for this image

I really like the colours in this image, even though they're not the same as the ones in the original image. In the original, the shot is full of sepia tones, and also has a high-key exposure that makes the whole picture look softer. I decided to go against this, with a much cooler colour palette and sharp shot. I prefer my version a lot more, since I am not very good at making sepia coloured photographs look appealing nor real as seen in

the next photograph. That said, I am very happy with the overall result of this image, especially since the cool colour palette makes my subject's face and her hair strike more from the rest of the image.

My biggest issue with this image is with the colours. As stated earlier, I don't normally achieve good results when working with sepia tones. I used the filter tool on Photoshop, selected warm, and then attempted to find a balanced opacity to make sure it wasn't too brown but not too light. I really struggled finding a result that I was happy with, so I kept the one that came closest to that balance. Another issue that came about

Inspiration for this image

with shooting "Polaroids" was the text. To create it, I downloaded many royalty-free handwritten font and decided on this one because it looked the most 'real'. I then followed the tutorial I used for my test shoot to make sure the text looked like it was written and not Photoshopped in.

Despite all the issues, this image made the cut because I love the pose my model is in, and technically, it was a very strong shot.

Inspiration for this image

To make sure I was able to create a 'vintage' aesthetic for my images, I had to edit them in a way to create this mood. The three key things I used to create this look were: colour palette, grain/noise and light leaks.

To create the grainy effect of old Polaroids, I created a 50 percent grey overlay layer on Photoshop, to which I applied the grain to. This allowed me to make them more opaque or

remove them very easily if I wanted to. I personally felt that the grain really added a lot to the 'realness' of these Polaroids.

To create the light leaks, I used two techniques. The first one was like one on the tutorial I watched earlier, in which I created another layer and then used a white brush on two corners and then made that layer opaque: this is the technique I used on my test shoot. During my main shoot, I used the second technique. Instead of using the brush tool, I simply rendered the light leaks on Photoshop and then opaqued them a little. I preferred this technique, hence why I used it on my main shoot.

Third Shoot

Research + Shooting Plan

Radiohead's 3rd studio album 'OK Computer' is often considered one of the greatest albums of all time due to its very particular themes and overall concept. The album deals with themes of fear of technology, anxiety over privacy invasion and being afraid but embracing the future at the same time. This album was what separated Radiohead from mainstream alternative rock, given it's extremely experimental sound. This experimentation is also noticeable in the album artwork, and the marketing for it.

I will attempt to create multiple variations of the album cover, using the themes as the main inspiration for it. I will also dissect the album cover to select specific elements of the original cover art that I can replicate in my own interpretation of the album cover. The main skill I want to improve during this are my graphic design skills.

Main Shoot

Overall, I feel this was a very successful shoot. I managed to replicate the themes of the album, whilst also borrowing elements from the original artwork. I really focused on fear of technology, and used most of the skills that I learnt from the past project on phobias to create this.

My favourite image is the one above. I really like it because it conveys many themes and ideas, whilst also being aesthetically pleasing. This image was very complicated to create, given how many layers were involved and how they all had to blend to create the final image.

For this image, I borrowed the human silhouettes in the original artwork. To achieve this, I shot five subjects individually, they all stood looking at a wall and I shot their back. Then on Photoshop, I used the magic wand tool and removed the background. Finally, I joined all the images together and created this image.

The image on the left was the first variation I created. The base image is a bunch of cables that I bundled up to create the image, I shot around fifty images of it, but I just used one of the pictures.

Here, one can see all the layers and how I was able to create this composite. I made the two base images be in black and white, so only the gradient added on later would add the colour to the image. I used the curves tool to increase the contrast in the images quite significantly, hence why the final image has that very rough, electric look in the cables and binary numbers.

I really liked this image, and it was what sparked my interest in continuing this project.

Background for this image

This was the most simple of all the composites. I tried looking at a very minimalistic cover, and see how I felt about it.

I did minor edits to it, like boosting the vibrance of the original picture and using the blending tools against a layer with a gradient of blue and green to create the final look.

I personally found it to be quite simple, but it doesn't translate

the themes of the album very well. That said, it makes the cut because it's aesthetically pleasing, and conveys some of the themes, like fear of technology, in a very abstract way.

For this final image, I used only two images to create it, the binary background I created and the other image I've used in all of the others. I had also a gradient layer with a rainbow on it, and blended it as a hard mix. I added a slight vignette and created this.

My favourite detail of the shoot, was the choice of font. I chose Helvetica Neue, since it used to

Background I created for the images

be the default system font on iOS and OS X devices, so it's easily recognisable for a viewer, since it will most likely feel familiar. This heightens the themes of the album like being afraid of the future but embracing it at the same time.

Conclusion

If I could re-do this entire project, I would make sure to use my time more wisely and also, would have made sure that I really wanted to do the original pitch. Had I done both of these things and I would have been able to squeeze in another two more shoots I believe. That said, I am very happy with the way this project turned out, despite the issues I had at the start. I feel like I have created a successful series that replicates the albums' sound and aesthetics, visually. I also feel that I have used all of the skills I have learnt over the past two years into one project.