the shoot above.

In the previous post I mentioned that my mind was filled with countless ideas of the style I wanted my portraiture to explore. Perhaps unsurprisingly I found myself so overwhelmed by the stylistic ideas that I felt like I had some sort of a photographer's block - I felt like I couldn't take any photos until I figured out a meaning or a journey. It was almost like I refused to try until I had finally developed a final series in my head. To no surprise, that is a very nasty, worrying feeling. 

So I did what I do best and took a train, met up with my friend and just kept snapping images until the battery of the camera died. Whilst I wouldn't say this in any way relates to my previous train of thought, I did try to keep in mind that for these series I wanted to push myself to do something I hadn't previously done. 

And in this scenario that was me directing. Properly so. All of these images are wholly staged, including clothing and make-up. To my own surprise I found it very easy to tell Clio exactly what I wanted from her, something I never thought I'd be comfortable with. 

The last two and the bottom image are my absolute favourites from this shoot. I directed Clio to use her hands and legs as if she was moving to Madeline Follin's Funnel of Love - a feeling of free flow and feather-like lightness. I also tried a low angle - something I never do as I usually aim for shots from above or on the eye level. I found out that it is actually something that I like. On top of that, I really like the use of reflection I had in the first two images so that is definitely something that keeps sneaking into my photography recently, so perhaps I could explore that some more.

In the end, I realised that sometimes a photograph doesn't need a deep, thoughtful meaning - sometimes it creates it for itself after it's been captured. I'm thankful I did this because I finally don't feel stuck. Instead I just want to see what else new I could try.

And not to forget, Lightroom and Photoshop were a big part of why I feel these images are such a success. They were all individually toned and coloured, and I played around with the levels of rgb hue and saturation. Afterwards I added a thin white frame around them in Photoshop.