All That Glitters
Research and Development
I had noticed a trending blurred effect in makeup marketing, in print or social media. Understanding this effect can be achieved either through movement or staying out of focus, I wanted to try the technique myself and reap the benefits of enhancing the capture of light reflected from glitter or gloss, creating further dimension.
To name one inspiration; Pat McGrath. Her marketing content adopts these blurred aspects; with a range of her products relying on their unique texture and payoff as USP, such as finely milled glitter shadows and opaque glosses, it makes perfect sense to produce marketing content that enhance and display this.
With this, I aimed to employ movement to achieve a blurred subject matter and create dynamism throughout the image. I planned to paint the eyes and lips then top them with a fine glitter and use a targeted light source to give off reflections for the camera to capture in motion.
The shoot had a good few stages, starting with a low f-stop of 5.6 and a short exposure time of 1/25th second. This didn’t allow enough time to capture the reflections’ movements. Through experimentation, I came to a great balance, choosing an aperture that didn’t flood the lens with too much light during a 0.3 second exposure.
During this exposure time I experimented with the range of motion. Resulting in moving my face slightly, but not fully out of frame; this movement created a trail of light which highlighted the abundance of glitter on the skin.
I chose final images with a range of composition and form, bringing full cohesion by desaturating each image fully and intensifying highlights and shadows.
A final touch to the image set is my addition of handwriting overlays. Wondering how I could bring the works together further, I began to mindmap, which became a mess on the page. Fawning over the shapes and forms of small paragraphs, written in waves and bending around each other, I took quite literal inspiration from this. I thought of other creatives, putting pen to paper in the ideation of a project, jotting down ideas as if a stream of consciousness and decided to use terms, brands and techniques associated with the makeup industry as my subject matter for this.
I chose to follow the composition of subjects in my photos as underlying templates for my overlaid words. For example, following the shadow of the orbital bone in an arch or straight parallel lines like those created by the left to right movement of the glittered lips.
A successful set of final images in my eyes. Bringing a sense of glamour with the enhanced light trails against deepened shadows, alongside a chic addition of artist practices to encompass a cohesive project.
Final Images
