Georgia Spence – Work in progress

To practice my final photography style of portraiture, I made sure to get three images which varied in proximity to the subject. I shot all three on proshot, edited on snapseed and resized for online use on photopea. More than anything, I wanted to play around with the editing, in which I added vignette to accentuate the subject’s face, turned the brightness down because of the moody feel of the photo and also reduced highlights and shadows.

I wanted to do a full body shot due to the topic of my final project, which is trans adults before gender reassignment surgery. With my mix of documentary and editorial portraiture, I need to tell the story in the image so a full body shot of a trans person will do this well. I selectively brightened the face of the subject because the camera is so far away. I also added a slight lens blur and vignette to again, accentuate the subject. If I was editing again, I’d maybe highlight the red brick but I originally didn’t want to take the eye away from the subject.

For the close up, I used portrait mode on the iPhone camera so lens blur was automatic. This adds a lot of depth to the image and I really like the quality. In my final piece, I need to be more creative with posing the subjects, especially if I want the editorial side to come through. The pictures will tell the story as the subjects are the story, but I do want more colour, more interesting backgrounds for the shoot and creative posing.