Your Book- Sharpening Knife Shoot 4 14th March 2022
After my shoot with the tattoo artist the plan for my next shoot was to do something more basic with hands but have them do something interesting. As I had my uncle staying and he's a cook, I thought it would be interesting to get him sharpening a knife. Since I haven't got any men yet in my series I thought this would be a good opportunity to use a male model.
What makes this a good image is that the lighting has an even exposure which results in the hands being well lit and not too over exposed, with the lighting balanced it also helps to highlight the knife and the sharpener in his hands clearly, which shows the viewer what he's doing. Despite this it's quite a plain boring shot, what would make this photo more effective is to have a reflection or a spark from the knife to see the force it takes to sharpen it.
This isn't a great photo, by changing the positioning of the hands slightly it has made them look slightly darker. The angle of the hands also has an impact on the knife as it doesn't have a clear outline against his shirt, by having it flat it makes it difficult to see that it is a knife. Despite having a reflection of his hand in the knife, it's quite distracting in the image and it's not obvious that its a reflection of the hand.
As an experiment I asked my model to change position slightly by turning sideways compared to straight on like the other shots. By having him angled this way, it shows only the left hand in focus whilst the right hand is blurred. Also with the angle he is standing at you can see all of his right arm which is out of focus too which is also distracting. Despite this it does help the light highlight the knife and sharpener so you can see exactly what it is.
Like in the other shoots I wanted to convert one of the photos from this shoot, to see what it would look like in black & white and whether I need to adjust the lighting. After I converted it the hands look like they are well lit despite one creating a dark shadow behind. Having the hands not too overexposed helps to showcase the knife he has in his hand, by having the reflection of the light in it, it helps to brighten the knife and makes it stand out against his dark t'shirt. Which as a result makes it eye catching to the viewer.
Overall I am happy with how this shoot has gone and think I got a portrait that can work in my series. My next move is to check my model list and see who is next.
