Shadows

Dubble D - /500, F1.8, ISO 500, 50mm

Dubble D - /160, F1.8, ISO 640, 50mm

When doing a shoot for a friend's DJ page, I had the idea to do some shots with a darker side to them. These photos were taken at F1.8 on my D7000, and with the very bright sky in the background it left the background overpowering the subject and leaving him in the shadow. I had to use a low ISO to help balance out with with high F stop to compensate with the background. This could be solved with using a lower F stop, but I wanted to keep a nice dreamy blurred background. An example where I shot with a lower F stop (3.5) to bring more detail into the background is attached below:

DJ Q at Fire Vauxhall
/10, F3.5, ISO 1250, 18mm 

Dubble D - /160, F1.8, ISO 640, 50mm

Originally when doing this shoot I was going more a more straight forward approach to the photos, and I did supply straight forward portraits to my friend as the end result, but when I thought about the subject I was doing in class I felt that I could edit the photos in a way that fitted the title 'convert and obscured'. I used the same presets when editing this batch of photos. With the help of Adobe Lightroom 4.2, I decreased the highlights massively and brought back some details in the background which originally was blown out. I also lessened the exposure in all the photos which brought even further detail around the face. Though the title is shadows, where you expect a completely flat image that is just black - I wanted to adjust the blacks and shadows in a way that left the majority of the subject completely black but allowed you to see some of the light bouncing off the front of the subject's face (around the lips, nose and brow). The concept of editing these photos in this way is to show people the dark side of people that we all seem to have hidden away inside of us, but at the same time we do portray a positive face to the outside world that we all want to be seen - this is the light that is seen around the lips, nose and brow of the subject. The second photo attached is a mirrored image that I felt was powerful in the sense that it showed two faces, literally showing that people are two faced. This is a shoot that's final outcome I am happy with. However, I would like to experiment more with some more cinema graphs, gifs and film photography throughout this project.