I knew that lighting would be a big part of this project as it can dramatically change an image in many ways.
Having no studio lights and not much space to achieve anything truly substantial inside my flat, I chose to focus mainly on outdoor or photography inside publicly accessible buildings with my friends/ subjects.

I knew that this would mean I would have to find both natural and unnatural outdoor sources of light for the photographs. I chose to go out at dusk, this would mean the dark moody sky above would be able to provide some light if I needed it as well as street lights beginning to come on to provide dramatic lighting.

For this photo, I utilised a powerful yellow light pointing downward from the roof of the arched entryway to the castle, as well as the dreary blue piercing its way in from the side.
The lighting itself is composed  of 2 complimentary colours which really helped to enhance the aesthetics of the image. Although it doesn’t necessarily look natural, I feel the use of opposite warm and cold colours helps to establish the idea of clashing good and bad emotions, as the subject appears to be within a distant thought  in the photo. This is also aided by the large magenta patch on the subject’s forehead. With magenta being the third colour in the subtractive colour wheel, it possibly creates this representation of a new idea emerging from the two meeting together.

I learnt about the idea of using complimentary colours within photography in this blog post. The post helped to give me an understanding of what exactly can be done when taking advantage of the colours within a given frame.

I chose to place the subjects left eye at one of the points within the golden ratio, this way the image has a nice composure and draws the eye towards the subject’s face.

I experimented with a similar idea and composition at a later time and different location. I chose to use a weaker and more neutral light source this time to see how that would affect the image.
I felt that the background of this image was more-so distracting than the original as well as this, I felt it was simply boring in comparison.