Uses of Color

For my final since I am working with portraits of mouths and I am working very closey to my subject. Color is really important for me to keep in mind because I will be working with a variety of skin tones. Since I am working with skin I plan to make the subject in the photo the main color source. Almost like black white and one color. For example, since I started my project one of my friends choose her personality as overdramatic we decided to work with blood. Since she has very far skin we worked with white makeup and had dark red blood streaming down out of her mouth and on her lips. So the subject, being the blood would also be the color in the photograph, red. Here is an example of something similar to what i’m working with. You can see the red is the expressive color which the portrait works with.

Also I am trying to keep in mind lighting. Lighting is what is going to create the all over tone and color to the portraits. I will be working with natural lighting because I feel natural lighting is the most beautiful. But not just beautiful as they are difficult. So in order to block out harsh light, I am going to have my models face away from the light. This will create a cooler feel to my photos which is a big goal of mine! For example, the girl in the red coat is a portrait I picked because she is in natural lighting and outdoors and facing away from the sun so there is a light glow on her face and not harsh sunlight.

The next examples, like the girl with the fuzzy hat is what I picture my tone to be like. Very unsaturated in the skin and clothing but the lips and neckline pop with color. My portraits will involve props to help with being expressive so I hope to have saturation but spaces where their is pops of color. I also love how the tone of this photo is super allied at the same time, I want the lighting and skin tone of my models to be unified and create allied colors like in this photograph.

Last but not least, the photo with the mouth and neck are a beautiful shade of cyan but just enough in a way to make the red in the photo to pop. This is an example of how cooler lighting makes the subject and props glow. If my photos do not turn out with this blue-ish glow, I am strongly considering adding cyan to my photos to make them have more tone, depth, and color. I feel it will add more to the skin tone like in this photo.