Micki Kahlon DFSA

The pictures below show the un-edited and edited final portraits. I edited these in Photoshop and my reason for having done this is so that each photo has the same amount of brightness/exposure and that neither one is too distracting for the others. As I had mentioned in previous blogs, it was very difficult to get the same lighting for each model - as they are all of a different skin tone, therefore harder to see some features. Also, the lights were moved a lot during the recording process. The way the shoots were planned was that we took a photo of one model, then recorded that same model. This was due to the fact that some of our models were unavailable on certain days. In the future, it would be better to take all the photos first, as the lighting set-up would remain the same and therefore easier. However, this was not possible for us. Although I the lights were a pain, which meant that I had to edit the photos in post, this was not a major problem. I simple used Michelle's

Due to our previous shoots, Dani and I were 100% confident and prepared with our final shoots. We set up fairly quickly and knew exactly what the both of use would do during each shoot. We began with Michelle and Reeya, which Dani was in charge of painting and I being the one taking the photos and recording. We had both selected 3 works of art each from their culture which we were going to collaborate onto each each models face. Some of the obstacles we faced was mainly adjusting the lighting to suit each model, whilst not exposing the backdrop too much. Another issue with lighting, was that it had to be much brighter during the filming because the cameras brightness was much less in this setting. In addition, the lights would die out, at least two times during the recording of each model. This wasted time as we had to wait for the lights to cool down before turning them back on. Although this issue was easy to fix in post, the final result wouldn't look as smooth as we

Our work is a representations of people's identity that you wouldn't always see. Digging more into he cultural side, we wanted to present art from their ethnicities by painting on their face, which we then projected over the bare-faced photographs. We selected three women, each of a different ethnic background, those being: Hong Kong, Nepal, Ghana/Saint Lucia and each with an interesting story to tell. We wanted our models to express their fondness for their culture and to share any experiences they have had with mistaken identity and stereotypes. This can be heard aloud, (through 4 speakers set up to create a surround sound effect) all voices playing at once - as we wanted the audience to listen in closer, trying to figure out what is being said. The amount of sound going on at once is supposed to transmit the idea of a lot of individuals in the same position.

Obviously we're not going to completely change our idea😄 But after speaking with Paul Vivian (head of our course) I was leaning strongly to the ideas he suggested. I was never fully keen on the idea of plain white masks, which is why Dani and I decided that we create our own masks in the shape of the country of where our models culture is originated. These would include: Nepal, St. Lucia/Ghana, Hong Kong. We would place these masks over certain parts of the face, between the photographic print and video projection. However, Paul wasn't sold on the idea. He said that we needed to have more in depth meaning. Not just masks in the shape of a country. I understood what he meant and I definitely agreed with him. We came up with the idea of hanging objects from the models heritage; whether it be a head scarf, face mask, chopsticks, etc. This idea was good and stronger than what we initially came up with, but we didn't have that much time - as we were about to break up for th

Art work 1 FIRST SHOOT Our first shoot was with Nina, who is from the Philippines. We used a white backdrop as we thought that it would be easier to see a projection over. Both Dani and I chose a piece of art from the Philippines, which we then painted each on half her face using makeup and face paint.  The problems with this shoot were: the white background didn't work as we'd hope, both of us doing makeup at the same time wasn't a good idea, the colours were too dull, not enough research. Art work 2 I think the most impressive part of this shoot was the fact that I was able to set up the camera by myself; Considering I had never used a camera until last year, I confidently got the right settings we needed.  Although the shoot wasn't a complete success, it helped us to realise what we wanted and needed to do in order to improve. We researched properly this time, before we undertook our next experimental shoot and gathered a collection of artwo