David Bailey Recreation

I wanted to recreate some of David Bailey's work for my project. I wanted to choose a quite iconic image, and I think this photo of Jack Nicholson is very recognisable and interesting. There was also a lot I could do with it, as it has lots of contrasting light that make interesting shapes. I wanted to try and achieve the shadows and highlights. But I also liked the fact that it wasn't a serious photo, his facial expression was funny and made the picture look strange and serious at the same time, this was another thing that I wanted to do in recreating this image. I also wanted to keep the plain background although I planned to use black so to make it varied, because I wanted to make my own image and not just completely copy this one, David Bailey's image was just my primary inspiration and I would expand with my own image.

This was the image that was closest to the original that I took, I didn't use it for this reason. I wanted to create something original and that would stand out against David Bailey's image rather than just being a vague copy of it. I also decided not to put the majority of my in black and white as I really liked the colours that were created in this photo shoot. But I found that most of the light was too bright on the left side of the face, so I was able to decrease the light in photo shop using curves. I didn't edit this one as I knew I would not want to use it so the lighting is very harsh on this one and makes the whole thing look a bit strange.

I choose this as my final image as it was fun and interesting like the original. It was also quite similar but not too similar that it would look the same as David Bailey's. I like the shadows i created with the lighting and it gives the skin a smooth look, then the scrunched up eyes make a contrast around the eyes. It also gives a modern twist on the image, as my model is female and is wearing quite an interesting patterned top which makes it feel more young. Also the fact that the image is in colour makes it more modern, I did originally put all my images in black and white so they would create the same effect as the original but I found that i didn't like them as much as I did in colour. I used curves and levels to edit my end image, as i wanted to decrease the very harsh lighting on the left side of the face that appeared in all my photos.