Editing Portraits in Photoshop

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Examples of Portraits

None of these photos are mine; they all belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

Formal Portraiture

Anne Hathaway as Fantine photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vogue

This portrait, of actress Anne Hathaway, is part of a recent set for Vogue Magazine featuring the upcoming film Les Miserables. As a fan of not only Leibovitz but the musical on which the film is based, I love how well the portrait captures the character (Fantine) that Hathaway portrays. Regarding the technical features of the portrait, the lighting is also used sparingly but effectively, creating a subdued, almost documentary-like atmosphere.

Informal Portraiture

Faye Dunaway photographed by Terry O'Neill

Terry O'Neill was a very interesting and very prominent photographer of the 1970s. I really like the combination of formality but mostly informality in this photo, of actress Faye Dunaway after her Oscar win in 1977. The portrait seems to convey a sense of weariness or dissatisfaction, perhaps with media or pop culture as a whole. It's made even more fascinating by the fact that O'Neill and Dunaway were married at the time.

Self-Portraits

This week, we explored self-portraits in photography. Both of these photos I took by myself in the reflection of various cases in the school hallway. I think both of these worked well due to the dark colour of the background papers, as I can see my general reflection quite well.

Light Photography & Red Lighting

Light Photography

I loved working with light photography - I've never done anything like it before and I found it quite exciting. In this photo, I like how the shape of the heart Sydney is making seems a bit wild and undefined.

I really like this photo because - keeping with the Halloween theme - of the unintentional ghost shape that appeared!

Both of these photos were very minimally edited - I only saturated some colours and lightened the photos.

Red Lighting

To take this photo, I covered the flash of my camera with sheer red paper and proceeded to take photos normally. There was no editing done on this photo.

This was taken with the same lighting technique as the previous photo - as well, there was no editing done.

Light Sculpting

A self-portrait done with the same red lighting technique as the two photos above. It reminds me a bit of an old horror movie, with harsh, unusual lighting and lots of close-ups. I only edited this photo a little by adding onto the shadows to achieve a darker atmosphere.