portrait – Miranda Estep

This week is a continuation of my last project in Illustrative Imaging, in which we took three portraits and created a social media campaign concept that would tie them together. This week we added a text “tagline” and a “call to action” button. My concept for these portraits was building on the #metoo campaign and the controversy it sparked. My portrait series and social media campaign is in response to the doubt and backlash women received after coming forward to report sexual assault. My campaign is an answer to those who ask “Who are all these women coming forward with allegations?” well, “It was her.”

For this series, there are three images of women so I decided to use a different phrase for each, which were the following: “It was her” “It was you” and “It was me.” They each draw attention to the fact that there are many individuals out there who have been sexually assaulted that are not making false allegations.

Each portrait will link the viewer to an interview with each sexual assault victim and will ask for a donation to the #metoo charity fund that goes towards the aid of sexual assault victims.

I did many sketches and variations of my design (included below) but I kept coming back to the idea of the women’s mouth or eyes being covered. The mouth or eyes being covered symbolizes the suppression of the woman’s voice and the blindness of society to the victims. So, I decided to use a technique from the “Bada** Photoshop Effects” book we are reading in class. In the book they use different layer styles to overlay text on images in interesting ways.

To create these images, I first made a red rectangular shape to go over the eyes and changed the layer style to “overlay.” I then put white text over the image and changed the text layer style to “difference.” I thought it was a very interesting effect. (Images below.)

Hello everyone! Today’s post covers my third week in Illustrative Imaging, an online course I’m taking at Wake Tech. The prompt was to take a portrait (self or otherwise) in a kitchen while holding a colorful mug. We were also instructed to leave overhead lights on in the kitchen, in order to give the photos a yellowish cast. The objective was to perform photo corrections on the photo using Photoshop’s RAW interface.

Below is my original image (shot in RAW, per the assignment):

As you can see, there is a yellowish cast from the overhead lights, which needs to be fixed by changing the white balance. I also need to crop this image to frame the subject (me) better. I also need to do mild blemish correction on my skin and face. Because my lens is slightly wide angle, I will also need to use the built in lens correction feature of the RAW interface to correct the ‘bulging’ caused by lens distortion. The contrast of the photo could be changed as well to suite my preference. Finally, I will also use a few presets included in the RAW interface to make the photo more ‘flat’ and ‘matte’ which is a look I prefer in my photography.
Below is the final result of my editing using the RAW interface:

As you can see, this results in a much more pleasant photo. Below are the before and after side-by-side so you have a better understanding of the changes:

The second part of the assignment was to use the correction brush to desaturate everything in the photo except the colorful mug. Below is a screenshot of me using the correction brush to accomplish this:

The final result:

Again, I’ll include the before and after below so you can really see the difference:

Overall, this exercise was a great introduction to the Photoshop RAW interface, which is something I’d previously ignored before, opting to edit all my photos in Adobe Lightroom instead. I look forward to learning more about what editing in Adobe Photoshop’s RAW interface has to offer and hope my fellow photographers out there give it a shot as well. Cheers,
– Miranda

Tag: portrait

“Portraits with Purpose” Social Media Ads

Performing Basic Photo Corrections