During our Week 6 photography workshop we put into practice everything we’d learned about portraiture over the prior week of lectures. We were asked to dress as our alter egos, something that was very heavily outlined in that weeks seminar reading, ‘The Selfies: Social Identities in the Digital Age,’ by Crisia Miroiu, that in essence discusses the theory that every person presents themselves differently based on their situation, and with the rise of social media, we have even more “selves” that we present to others, and our actions during the workshop would work to support that.
Baring this in mind, I chose to dress rather dashingly (going so far as to borrow hairspray from an ever patient flatmate), and then milk the everliving heck out of it for the duration of the workshop.
These are just a few of the images taken of me during the workshop.
And now, while much less dashing, some equally interesting portraits that I personally took.
I found this workshop to be incredibly valuable to me for several reasons. Primarily, I would like to focus on portraiture for my final project, and this was great practice and really gave me perspective on one key aspect of the genre: shooting in a studio.
While my final photographs will almost certainly end up being shot outside on the fly, with minimal to no control over the lighting aside from a reflector, this experience was invaluable particularly in relation to the use of radio synchronised flash, the use of appropriate (and perhaps a couple fun but inappropriate) lenses, and putting into practice everything we learnt during the still life coursework on a much larger scale.
I look forward to taking these skills and applying them to my final project.