"Hip hop started out from the heart, Now everybody trying the chart", of course the famous words of Lauryn Hill from her song superstar. In this blog I wanted to showcase a project purely on the theme of Hip Hop. In this project I asked Annalise to model for me as I set up a makeshift brick wall to help resonate the vibe of an 80's hip hop shoot. To organise the shoot it was simple, a mood board of images were shared to communicate the goals intended for the shoot.
In this blog you will see my thought processes for this shoot and also some of the cool results.
For me when I see this era, I see ladies who could were baggy clothes, have natural hair and that was ok. It was also a time where community and positivity was celebrated. My goal was to think back on those times and flavour the shoot with this vibe.
Lighting wise I wanted the images to have an out door night vibe with a street light. Though this is limited in a small room, the light remnants give some essence to this effect. For me it adds a level of complexity to an image. It helps to set a scene.
For some reason, I love doing low-key images, this is where light hits the subject in specific areas and misses others, creating some mystery. I loved the way she closed her eyes, it gave this image a dreamy feel.
During shoots it's good to use what you have. In this case a step ladder, made an improvised seat. One of the hardest things to do is to recognise what you have in your environment and how it can be used. When working with a creative you can bounce off ideas, however clients often cannot see the potential and will reject anything they seem as strange or do the sabotage. "The Sabotage" is when a client agrees to an idea then screws their face killing the idea in it's tracks. One way around this is to remind the client that if the idea flops we just wont use the image.
As part of my learning journey, I decided to flip the colours to match the background which is now red. This is harder than it seems, even the reflection on the ground needed to change, it took many attempts. As mentioned in the last post, I am striving to learn new things, so it's important to keep practicing.
This pose was taken from the mood board that was used to reference the vibe and poses I wanted to nail in the shoot. A mood board can help parties in a group have a clear idea of what to go for when shooting a session. It can also be used in the shoot as a prompter, to remind you of the goal and objective. It can also bring inspiration.
Lastly, I put some efforts into a cartoon effect for this image. This was not done via a cartoon app, but was done using tools on photoshop. I like how this turned out, she now reminds me of a fictional game character. Perhaps one day I'll do a whole theme on cartoon effects, once my brain can interpret what the end product will be.
Thank you for reading through this blog your support is always greatly appreciated. Also shout out to Annalise who did an amazing job modelling for me, always good to see you.
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