In this shoot I decided to go on location instead of shooting in the studio.This allowed me to experiment with depth of field by blurring the background and focussing on the subject in the foreground. This shows a great link and influence of Steve McCurry's work due to the fact of my shoot being on locations, showing depth of field and also through the use of a sari for costume. I brought in a sari and got a model to wear the sari around her head and top half of her body. In doing so I was able to display the similar sense of culture and ethnicity to Steve's work. However, I wasn't able to photograph a more cultural/religious model which I originally wanted so I could in future shoots photograph this type of model. Despite this I feel that I have still remained to produce successful pieces which show a great influence to McCurry's work.
Here I intended to create a type of pastiche of McCurry's work. However my work is slightly different due to the ethnicity of the model and I feel that it provides a sense of mystery. Above, the left image depicts my original unedited photograph and next to it is my editing which illustrates the grate amount of editing which I applied to gain the final outcome. The costume of a sari provides a sense of culture due to their association with religion. I desaturated the background in order to allow the vibrant subject to stand out very effectively. I then selected the sari by using the lasso tool and altered the colour balance to change the colour of sari. I transformed the sari from a pale purple to a bright saturated blue/turquiose which is very similar to one of Steve McCurry's photographs. I feel that the fact that the model is placed slightly below eye level as the camera is looking down on her makes her look innocent and vulnerable. The eye contact made is considerably mysterious and I also slightly edited the colour of the eyes to match the colour of the sari in order to form a blue colour scheme. I then used the burn tool to make her to dirty and gritty and sharpened these areas to make it seem more realistic and less edited. This slightly difference is shown through the image below where the image looks more realistic and provides a sense of texture in the skin. I also changed the colour of the subject's lips in order yo make her look more natural and also altered the curves and levels of the piece in order to increase the amount of contrast.
Progression:
In my next shoot I will explore and experiment with Steve Mccurry's work further by doing a location portraiture shoot with a model of asian ethnicity.
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