Final Project Proposal

I wanted to combine the skills I learned in the studio during the semester for my final project. For example, I incorporated different lighting and color schemes into my final project. Cindy Sherman, Richard Avedon, and Michelle Monique’s work inspired me for this project. Cindy Sherman is a conceptual artist who lives and works in the United States. She is widely regarded as one of the most influential photographers of our time. Richard Avedon was a portrait and fashion photographer from the United States. He designed Vogue and Life magazines. Finally, Michelle Monique is a Los Angeles-based photographer specializing in advertising and editorial photography in the fields of beauty, fashion, hair, product, cosmetics, nails, and other products. I wanted to combine all of these artists’ works to create photos with different actors playing different roles, product placements, and magazine covers. In the studio, I chose to create some of the photos using low-key lighting and three-point lighting. Some technical issues I had were having the products being displayed in the light but the models’ faces would be dark. It took a while to adjust to get the correct color and light ratios. Another thing was getting the models to feel comfortable in front of the camera, which did require more effort to create the right mood to take the photos. For the photos, some of my models haven’t done any photoshoots before and they wanted to try different concepts. Although they all may have potentially different careers in the future, this will be something that they could’ve done if they chose a different career path/major. This is why I named my project “Parallel” to refer to a parallel universe if we all chose different choices in our lifetimes.

Outcomes:

• Colorful high definition images of models
• Different products to show the aspect of product placements
• Dressed for the roles they play
• Edited to look like magazines (some images)
• Taken in the studio with adjustment of different lighting (low-key, and attempting three-point lighting)
• 3-4 images of edited magazine cover photos(combining all three artists inspiration, 1-3 photos of trying out each individual artists’ works)

Methods and Materials

• DSLR Camera
• Editing using photoshoots and an application called “Prequel”
• 3 Lights from the studio (adjusted accordingly)
• Props: product placements, accessories, etc.
• Reflector (sliver and gold sides)

Inspo:

Works by Cindy Sherman:

Works by Richard Avedon:

Check out this link to see more of Richard Avedon’s works: https://www.avedonfoundation.org/

Works by Michelle Monique:

Check this link to see more of Michelle Monique’s works: https://www.michellemoniquephoto.com/