
Here you can see the model I used wearing a mask, i decided that i will incorporate this into my images, to help bring an artistic feel to the image, that also ties in with my theories behind masking the face. As it stands I dont believe the mask makes a big enough impact for my ambitions. But i do think its a good starting point and that it can be developed further.

Here you can see my first attempt at an artistic shot, taking influences from the masking theories and the design ideas of Emma Jones, I decided to try and add to the characteristics of the mask by shinig blue light upon the model.
I have chosen to crop the image quite tightly to the models face, this is because I wanted to have the eye showing through, as I am trying to show that a persons, personality or feelings can be seen within the eyes and not just through full facial features.
I was not happy with this first effort, i thought it was to dark, and this blocked out alot of the detail and shape of the mask.I also think that despite the blue fitting in well with some of the colours of the mask, the image does look a little cold.

This is a later image from the same shoot, to combat the darkness wittnessed in the previous image, I decided to increase the brightness on the studio lights, this helped to cast a brighter light upon the face creating highlighted areas and a well lit face with good contrasts from dark to light. It has done this without blanking out the eyes, which is something i felt was very important at this time. Although i am fairly happy with the image i do think it can be improved upon, i think blue is too much of a cold colour an this comes off in the image. I may decide to change to a warmer colour in future images.

Here i decided to change the colour completely, as i thought working with blue lights gave ogff too much of a cold feeling within the image. I feel that the red is quite successful but gives off a completely different feeling compaired to the blue image, the red lighting makes the image seem alot more sinister and almost scary. I believe the red is a little too dark and blanks out some of the detail of the mask. I would like to retain some of these features and also draw more emphasis towards the eyes. Also i beleive as it stands, despite the red lighting and the mask, it still is'nt strong enough as a stand alone peice of photgraphic art. I may include another prop, or get the model to arange her hands in a certain fashion that is similar to one of my reasearched images by Jerry Avenaim.

Keeping in mind that i thought my last image was a bit dull visually, i asked the model to start placing her hands in different poses, here she placed her hand on the top of her head, I like this effect here, i like how it seems as if the hand comes out of the darkness and grabs her, I deliberately cropped the image to the right so that it includes alot of the darkness that adds to the ominus feel of the image. Sadly to do this shot meant it had to be quite dark, and this made me loose the detail that i wanted to capture in the eye's.

Here on the left I tried a similar shaot to before as I like the idea of using the hands to add shape and increase the contours within the composition. I cropped this image alot closer to the face in the hope that it would cast a little more light upon the eyes, but because of the dark nature of the red light this didnt work. At this point i have still onlt been working in a low-key setup, I think that i may include a fill light to help brighten up certain areas of the image. When looking at these images i dont really see much comercial value for them, they are too dark and creepy for anyone to use on a comercial or artistic basis.

This is my first image were i decided to use a fill lightinconjustion with the existing light, i decided to use blue as this would give a strong contrast of colours and was also keen on attempting to capture some purples in the image due to the mixing of the red and blue light.
I positioned the red light directly at the face and positioned the blue light so that it just touched the mask at certain areas, when looking closely this has created nice blue highlights on certain areas of the mask such as around the right eye. I think this is working well towards my idea of an artistic peice, it helps add a little extra visual stimulation on an otherwise dull image. I feel the brightness of the image is good, i have now managed to get the eyes included in the shot, something that is importnat for my final peice. Despite this i am still a little undecided on the amount of red within the image, but it is a simple problem to overcome, if i simply ask the model to turn her head the other way, it should expose that side of her face to more of this blue tint.

Here is an image were the model has turned her head towards the blue light, i feel the blue brings out the detail of the mask a little better than the red and also makes the eyes seem to glow a little more. I am not over keen on the cropping here, I do like how the whole of the mask is included within the image but i feel this takes away some of the emphasis that is supposed to be on the focal point which in this case is the eye's. Maybe closer cropping right upto the face, so that your only seeing the eye's could work better here.

The image on the right is my most favored of the selection, i feel i have managed to get a good contrast of colours, and perticulaly like how the blue and red bring out highlights within the mask. I am happy i managed to capture the eye in the image and i feel the inclusion of the hand creates an nice personal touch that also reminds you that there is a person behind the mask. I am very happy with the way i have cropped the image, i feel that as it stands it is the best for allowing detail to come out in the mask, but it isn't too close so that you cannot recognise it as a face mask. I feel this image could appeal to people of all ages, but in particular people that are interested in art works would like this, personally i think that this image is strong enough to stand alone as a peice of art. I think it coould also be used in advertising, maybe for perfume or even an up and coming event that is related to masking the face.

This is my final image from the session, I decided to swap the red light for an orange light, to see the effect of the two contrasting colours (blue/orange) against one another. I feel it works very well, but i think it loses some of the dramatic effect that the red gives off, i think the orange makes it more of a sombre image. Although i do like how the orange works with the gold of the mask. I chose to crop the image a little differently to previous shots by prefering to include more of the dark background, i think this makes the mask stand out more and the colours seem more vivid.