For this photoshoot, I went into the studio with my two friends and took images of them individually and together. I did this as I wanted to explore who they both are as individuals and capture their personalities and how although they may differ in this sense, they still are able to be close friends. I positioned in different ways like: getting them to face to the side, straight forwards, hugging each other and placing their heads next to one another. I then also got my friends to recreate some of their baby images. For example, I got one of my friends to recreate her primary school photographs and got her to make her hair like seen in the older images. I decided to do this as I wanted to create a side by side image showing how they have both changed over time. Additionally, I also got one of my friends to recreate an image of her and her sister dancing together when they were younger. The idea behind this was to cut out the image of her recreating the pose now and add it into the old image to create a photograph that looks like she’s dancing with her younger self. The main focus of this photoshoot was to create a visual relationship between their younger self and now.
Once I had completed this photoshoot, I then imported my images into Lightroom and began narrowing them down using the same system I normally do. This consists of me first giving each a white flag or black flag (white for want to use and black for not going to use). Next, I turned on the filter setting and changed it to flagged so I could only see the images assigned with a white flag. I then gave all of these images a rating out of 5 (5 being the best and 1 being the worst). I decided to edit the exposure, contrast, white balance etc of the images I gave a 4+ star rating to.
I then further experimented with different manipulation techniques by opening up my images on photoshop and creating images where I incorporated photographs of my friends now and when they were younger all into one image. I then made these images of my friends when they were younger into black and white and lowered the opacity of them to convey the idea that these are their past selves and creating a comparison of how much they’ve grown individually and together.
I also used the quick selection tool to drag a cut out I had made of my friend recreating a dance pose she was doing in an old photograph from her childhood to make it look like she is dancing with her younger self.
Final images:
These are my favourite final images I created when experimenting with different tools and ideas on photoshop. I think this photoshoot was successful in portraying the journey they have both gone through as people as they have evolved from small children to adults. I also liked this photoshoot as it allowed me to have a lot of creative freedom and turn these once boring portraits into something more unique and challenging.
Bobby Neel Adams inspired:
I then decided to recreate the work of Bobby Neel Adams using these same studio portraits and images of my friends as children that I had previously taken. In order to replicate his work, I first began by opening up the two different images: one of my friend now and one of her as a child. I then used the quick selection tool to cut out only them from the images. Then, I dragged both of these cut outs onto a plain piece of A4 paper. Next, I used the magnetic lasso tool to make a rip like shape down the centre of the image and brought this around the studio image. I then pressed layer via copy and hid the layer that had the full studio image in. This made it so that I now had a split image: showing one half of my friend when she was younger and one half where she is older. I then added a drop shadow to both of the cut outs. This created depth in my image and made the rip down the centre more pronounced. I also decided to split the background in half and give the baby image side a more yellow toned background to create the illusion of the image being vintage and old. After I had done this for both of my friends separately, I then decided to create my own version of his concept by adding half of one friends face and half of my other friends face together.
Final images:
Overall, I think I managed to successfully recreate the work of Bobby Neel Adam’s in a way that’s explores the friendship between my two friends. By combining younger versions of my friends with their current selves, it creates a sense of nostalgia to my images while also highlighting how they’ve grown/ evolved over the years. I think it was crucial to highlight how although they have changed a lot since they were younger, their friendship has remained strong and consistent. It also shows how strong friendships can endure all physical and personal transformations. Additionally, I also like how I adapted him work and made it more personal to my work by combining two different people together instead of just one person at different ages. By adding my two friends together, you can start to see similarities between them (as people often become a product of who they hang out with) but you can also appreciate the differences between them. I experimented with making some of my images in colour and some in black and white as his work often varies in this sense. However, I prefer the images in black and white as it enabled me to blend the two different faces together more smoothly as in colour, the difference in lighting was more prominent and made the final image look a lot less seamless and smooth. One improvement I would make to this photoshoot is getting my friends to recreate the exact same faces they were pulling in their childhood photographs to make the link between the two more smooth and clear. This would also mean that my work more closely replicates Bobby Neel Adam’s’ work as he gets his subjects to act out the poses they were pulling in their childhood photographs which leads to an overall better final image.