Golden

Welcome to week five of Trusting the Process! While laying in bed the other day I got this random idea for this photoshoot out of thin air. It’s funny, sometimes ideas just pop up in my head when I’m not even thinking about photography. But I took this idea and brought it to life and named it Golden. This week instead of one picture I gave you two; I was indecisive. Take a look at my process below!

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Kaila Hicks, Golden, 2021

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THE SET-UP

Here is a picture of my very goofy set up. I found these wooden skewers, painted them pink, then stuck them in a headband as you can see in the picture. I painted half my face yellow with Apple Barrel acrylic paint from Walmart. I only did half my face cause I knew I only wanted to take a picture of my mouth. I then found a golden silk material in my basement that fit perfectly with my idea. I didn’t initially plan to use the material but I didn’t think about how my shirt and hair didn’t match the whole look.

I tried to tie the silk behind my neck but it didn’t like that. I then tried to use a clip to keep it in place but that didn’t work either. So, I had to manually hold the silk in place and then use my other hand to take the pictures. You can say my arms were pretty tired during this process, but it was well worth it!

This is how the studio lights were set up. One on the left and one on the right of me to keep my face evenly lit. And as you can see I had my tripod set up pretty tall so that it was head on with the bottom half of my face. For the settings in my camera, the shutter speed was 1/60th of a second, the aperture was at f4 and an ISO of 200. 

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EDITING

Out of this photoshoot I got 105 pictures and chose 6 good ones to edit. Out of those 6 I chose 2 golden ones that I couldn’t decide between. These are the ones I completely edited as the final images for this project. 

With these images, I boosted the exposure up by .35 and brought the highlights down. I then added a little bit of contrast. After the basic editing, I then smoothed out my skin on both images as it was looking pretty rough because of the paint. I didn’t smooth out my lips though because I liked the crackled look. 

After smoothing out the skin, I colored the silk on both of the images. Since the silk was gold and my face paint was very yellow, they didn’t blend very well. So, with the brush tool I painted the silk with the hue at 12.7 to get the same yellow as my face paint. This got the images where I wanted them.

But, one thing I didn’t care for was how pink the sticks were. A couple other of my projects included a lot of pink and yellow so I wanted this to stand out as its own. I adjusted the magenta hue to more of a red tone so they weren’t so pink. That worked out fairly well, and the photos were completed!

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SUMMARY

I had no idea how this project was going to turn out as it just popped up in my head with no concept to it whatsoever. I am very proud of the results though; the photos were very satisfying to capture and edit. I really enjoy creating photoshoots that have no concept. Just random ideas and playfulness. It gives me a break from the stressfulness of life. No deeper meaning to interpret, just photographs that keep my mind at ease and my eyes satisfied.

This doesn’t mean as my viewers that you can’t create a meaning of your own for my photographs. Maybe they remind you of something personal or you find a deeper meaning to them. That’s okay, I just hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Let’s see what I create next week!