Miniatures - Noir
The main premise regarding this shoot was to focus on the manipulation of lighting to change the subject's feature's purely through use of light rather than the significance of props and location.
Overall composition and clever use of lighting was crucial in creating a much more noir atmosphere over a bright or generally shadowy feel displayed in previous shoots. Using vignette, silhouettes, an element of natural black and white tones as well as centering the subjects to isolate them similar to Tatsuya Tanaka's work with a darker tone compared to his bright and vibrant work.
As well as this using high-intensity light paired with very high shutter speed enabled the camera to capture only the subject before reaching the background, creating a circle of light on only the subject, as well as this it also highlighted some interesting textures on the foundation surface for the subjects which occasionally gave it either an asphalt-road or wet-rainy looks, adding to the atmosphere.
Artists:
Slinkachu
Tatsuya Tanaka
Focus:
Macro
Noir
Film-Grain
Depth of Field
Rule of Thirds/Centering
Development:
Photoshop
Lightroom Classic
Critical Links:
Contact Sheets:
Silhouetting, centering, shadows
Centering, isolated subject
High vantage point
Rule of Thirds, depth of field
Gradient lighting
Angles, high vantage point
Perspective, angles
Perspective, angles
Shadows, rule of thirds
Selections:
Developments:
The aim here was to describe a potential scene, developing the images with Adobe Lightroom using features such as grain and vignette creating a vintage, old-film feel to aid with the noir atmosphere. The scene here was organised in such a way to suggest a path of motion for this person with the bag. The added post-crop vignette significantly emphasised the border of the lighting from the high shutter speed, further isolating the subjects and darkening the background. As well as this, the shift up in exposure followed by a significant manual contrast transforms the miniature's into silhouettes, which highlights the main central character focused on in each image, making sure to focus on centering and the rule of the thirds.
An additional bonus to these developments was after transforming the images into black and white as well as playing with the depth and grain caused some images to display various effects such as fog/smoke, and wet/rainy surfaces; it also made the light source occasionally present as a street-lamp when aided with the vignette due to to it's rounded area-of-effect.