Creating THE look

[baumatt]

Hi There!

so a friend and i shot different persons for our magazine (design students)
i am toying arround with different looks and came up with two versions.
the very artsy and elegant looking b/w version and a version which i tried to push into a certain look. what do you think?
i'll also upload a tiff if ppl are interessted in trying different looks themself.

best regards
matthew

[LydiaRachael]

Hi Matthew,

I really like the artsy effect. Think it's kinda retro looking.

The black and white the skin is a bit blotchy, I find it a bit distracting.

The pose looks a bit like a mug shot, but is that what you were going for?

[baumatt]

i agree...the pose looks like a mugshot...but we tried to get to the personality without a distracting pose. once i have found a look i like, we will propably only show the face, with maybe some hair/surrounding.
to the coloring. i think ill stick to the color version...but with a bit warmer skin tones.
here is the version i am currently sticking with

[maryjane]

who is your reader/audience? What is the vibe of the magazine?
I prefer the color version, kinda kookey is a great way. The background looks like its the same color as the model's skin. I love that. Looks more like an art piece rather than a boring thing.

[CiciLamb]

Hey Matthew!
I like the colour version much better, not mugshot-ish at all! (kind of awkward in a lovely way) I find that the black and white looks a bit portrait-y in a bad way. But then again maryjane is right it is all dependent on the audience.

[baumatt]

i'm a designstudent, but my mainfield is more on creating ideas and concepts for advertising.
designing "stuff" is more of a neglected field and i mainly want to create the magazine to fill that gap in my portfolio.
i haven't layouted much of it yet (just tests). but i want to really use much whitespace, use a bigger format than the normal magazine size, crazier crops and a more experimental approach to typography.

do you think it's a good thing to have that tone in tone look for face and background? i dialed so much with the colors that i didn't even realize that =(

the b/w pics always have a artistic look to me..thats why i liked it...as a friend said..it's so much more difficult to recreate the artistic look of bw with color.

we shot the portraits with a large format sinar camera...if you switch to fullscreen on the original pictures and blend out the menues in photoshop you really get a chill from all the details and the resulting "closeness" of the person =)
thats 50 years of life afterall..every bump or minor scar tells a story. =)