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It Was All I Had Left

Location: My living room

Camera and Lens: Nikon D80, 50mm f/1.8 lens

Creative Process: For this image, I wanted to capture a kind of class ‘lipstick on the cheek’ look. I decided upon a bright red color lipstick. I wanted the expression to really stand out through my eyes, so I put on some eyeliner. I then wanted to simulate that I had been crying recently, so I smeared the makeup around, put water on my face, and worked the makeup into a look that I wanted. It turns out that achieving focus on the eyes in a self portrait situation is much easier when using eyeliner. I wanted the photo to have a really grainy almost filthy raw look to it.

Post Production: This image is fairly straight from the camera. In Lightroom I upped the exposure and black levels just a bit and then bumped up the clarity for extra grit. In Photoshop I edited out some blemishes and burned in some areas of makeup around the eye to make it stick out just a bit more.

Note: I’m using the format from another blog that I really really admire. The Still Image with Cash Taylor. If you are a photographer and not reading this blog, you should it rocks.

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