Portraits - Shoot 3

When preparing for my 'replicating natural photos' shoot, I had the idea to paint my models face like a dog. Because of this, the model would obviously have to have a cleanly shaved face so the paint is able to look most effective. This was one of the mistakes I had made whilst planning for the shoot as I had completely forgot that the model who I had decided to use had a full grown beard. I was now faced with two outcomes; Find a different model or have the model shave his beard. I had a conversation with him and luckily enough he seemed more than happy to take part and agreed to shave his beard. After speaking to my model for some time, he explained to me how he had had facial hair for about 7 years. This gave me an idea to document the process of my model shaving his beard off. The reason I wanted to document this process is because my models beard has been a large part of what makes him who he is as a person and I thought it would be interesting to see how he would be perceived once he was completely stripped of it. 

Above is my model before shaving any part of his beard. I wanted to take this picture to show to comparison before and after the beard was gone. I instructed my model to be completely topless because I wanted this to portray how he will soon be stripped of his trademark asset and I wanted the viewer to really see him for who he is, not hiding behind clothes to change our perspective of him; Just him by himself, completely open and vulnerable.

I took this photo at the stage of when my model had shaved down to stubble. I wanted to show in this photo how this was the last step before he went into his 'new identity'. Something that really stuck out for me when comparing this image to the first image is the fact that in the first image, the model has his arms by his side, looking very confident in himself, exposing his whole body to the camera. In this photo, the model is holding his arm and is looking quite sheepish and not as confident compared to the first photo.

This is the final image of my model, fully stripped, fully shaven and with a completely new identity. The model is still holding himself which shows he may still not be completely comfortable with his new appearance. Although he is still holding himself, he looks a lot more confident in this photo compared to the other two images. I feel as though the model really shows through his emotions how accepting he is of his new self; You can see this from how he is standing with a straighter back, stronger grip and the stern expression on his face.

Overall I think this shoot went very well, I feel as though the message really showed through  the images as well as the model really showed his emotions too. One thing that I would change about this shoot is possibly using external lighting but at the same time I quite enjoyed using natural lighting as I think it stayed true to the vulnerability of the model.