"Body Identity" - Photoshoot Redo

In total, I had around 26 shots of Kyra for this second photoshoot so it was hard to conclude it to only these 6 pictures. I Judged them based on composition, how the high and low lights looked, and on the posture of the picture. In reality, there was around 8 that I deemed of high quality based on those factors. I then had to extract the 3 best shots from those 6, which are located at the bottom. I used similar adjustment presets from "Love, You" final shots to edit these 3 shots but I saturated oranges and warm tones to complement Kyra's complexion and used some minor blur on the backgrounds. When you compare the 3 unedited pictures with my final ones, you can see how lifeless their cold tones looked, they also look slightly more uninteresting.

"Love, You"- Title Art

Similar to the title art process for Short Kings, I relied on hand-drawing my font. The workspace is also similar, I have my palette in the corner and my sketch at low opacity on another layer. As you can see, to save file space and time I made all the title arts on the same Photoshop file.

 Finished product...

"Body Identity"-Title Art

This a snapshot of my 3 choice fonts, the bottom one was already in the midst of editing. From to bottom, the fonts are Kingthings_trypewriter, moms_typewriter, and what was originally, stampwriter_kit. I source them all from dafont.com, a website that specializes in free and donationware fonts. These three specifically, are 100%  free fonts who were mainly sourced from real typewrite that was then scanned and vectorized.

I asked my friends which I should choose initially but I just figured I might as well just mix them. My original concept is for it to look mismatched and tense to portray the discomfort that comes with body dysmorphia and transitioning. The reason I only use typewriter was because of the setting and professional feel I was trying to portray a pressing ambiance while also choosing something that seemed to fit the background.

Finished PNG...

Works Cited

Mom'sTypewriter is copyright Christoph Mueller 1997

www.kingthingsfonts.co.uk

"Short Kings"-Title Art

This what my workspace looked like. I wanted to keep within a cartoonish, fun theme when it came to the crown, so I used color and shading sparingly. As you can see the crown uses only varying shades of yellow and red. To allow me the most flexibility, I drew the crown on a different layer then attached it. For the font itself, I basically sketched right over my preferred sketch and then smoothed out my letters using the eraser tool. Finally, I went letter by letter fixing things like proportions and tracking. I used my Wacom drawing tablet to get the job done.

Below is the finished PNG (Portable Network Graphic) transparent I will be using. (all my title and assets besides my pictures will come in this file format)

"Body Identity" - Retouching Process

"Short Kings" - Retouching Process - Group Shot

Ruben and Alejandro Retouch Shot

1. image rotation- 90° clockwise
2. Open a new layer with a white to transparent gradient in the corner to brighten up the image.
3. I only want to brighten up the dark parts so I make a color range selection on all the dark parts.
4. Use the selections to create a layer mask on the gradient layer. I select hide from selection.
5. I select the distant background and apply a box blur to help establish a  visual hierarchy.

Finished result.

"Short Kings" - Retouching Process - Solo Shots

 Joseph Solo Shot

1. I tried to level out the colors first by adding saturation with a hue/saturation adjustment layer.
2. I fixed some of the strong shadows by creating a curves adjustment layer.
3. Lastly, I cropped all the awkward space away and used the rule of thirds to center his face in the uppermost row.

 

Finished product

 Joseph Solo Shot 2

1. I wanted to preserve my lighting from the previous shot.
2. Next, I added another layer adjustment to fix the coloring
3. Then, I cropped it to make his head the center focus.

Finished product

Preliminary Title Sketches

This is the result of an hour and a half of brainstorming and sketching:

Table of Contents Inspiration and analysis

The table of contents isn't really bound by a precedent of my theme, it's usually purely aesthetic

I will be using this example from The Smithsonian as my main inspiration.

My organization will go like this:
Make body identity and short kings into half pages on the same page before the two page spread

Table of contents will be the first left page

grid format with hierarchy dependent on size with short descriptions, similar to this Smithsonian table of contents. 

Cover and Table of Content - Color Palette Ideas

My feature story will be my "Love, you" 2-page spread which is mainly a monochromatic group of pinks so to make the cover and spread cohesive I should keep it in that realm of hues. As for my table of contents and extra pages, I was thinking something cleaner like whites or differing hues of light grey. I won't be including the table of contexts swatches since it's very visually limited
Instead, here are the cover swatches:

"Love, You" - Color Palette Ideas

the Love You palette in my mind has always been a various shades warm pink and cool purples

Original Palette uses various desaturated pinks
Too desaturated to be considered pastel.

This was my second attempt at trying to come up with pink and blue palette.
Now it's far too saturated and bold

This is the same as the palette above just that it's been bit desaturated and lightened
This is the closest I've come to the pastel tones I was looking for.

"Body Identity" - Color Palette Ideas

Since the initial shoot came out very warm I created a mainly warm set of swatches.

Like with Short Kings, I already had an idea in mind for what I wanted my layout to look like.
Due to the limited money and time for this project, I can't go out of my way to buy a matching outfit or set for it. Additionally, these colors don't invoke my artistic image as I thought they did previously.

This specifically really works with her skin tone and initial outfit. I included that one blue to throw off the monotony of the warm tertiaries. I modeled the brown from the frames in the background.

"Body Identity" Photoshoot 2

"Body Identity" Photoshoot

For this shoot, I contacted one of my long time friends who I know has had a rough time getting accepted and transitioning. The direction I gave her was to "just act like yourself". The shoot was really fun on our first day since we shot at my house. The downside to shooting from home was the limited time and space constriction we had.
After taking the picture I had noticed another detriment to our shoot. All the pictures had come out extremely blurry and warm- toned. The reason I called to notice earlier was because of the size of my camera which has a screen around the size of a credit card. We're going to be doing a reshoot next weekend.

Pictures from the shoot:

My favorite shot; It's one of the most fixable from the shoot

One of the only usable shots and another personal favorite.