Rankin Studio Inspired Portraits

I took inspiration for my studio portraits from Rankin, I really liked his style mainly using a simple background and clothes and minimal props for his portrait work. I really liked the lighting he uses, creating shadows on the face making it look more interesting. His images also say something about the model in them. I wanted to achieve something similar by keeping my image simple and effective.

This was my final image of my Rankin project, I was really pleased with the lighting, although it was quite natural it still created some strong shadows that lifted the image up. The plain white/grey background also helps with this and makes the dark clothes the model and his dark hair look bolder and make a bigger impact. I like the composition, how he is leaning to the left with his head tilted in the same direction too. The photo wasn't carefully planned so you get the movement and the candid quality in it with a genuine facial expression, I think this makes the whole thing more natural and interesting. I didn't want to edit my image too much I cropped down the image so it was more compact and didn't take your attention away from his 'gesture'. I was pleased with the lighting, so I slightly touched the image and edited the curves to bring out some of the colours. I also wanted the image to be quite dark and contrasting with the background so i tries to make the models hair and jumper as dark as I could without making it look edited. I also didn't want to loose the shine in the hair that the lighting had created. I also wanted to avoid making his white shirt too bright and loosing the texture and the creases in it that made it look natural.
My image is different from Rankin's as most of his images are only of the face and a bit of their shoulders. But mine was a mid-shot which I felt worked well with my image. I also kept my image in bright colour rather than in dark lighting/colour or black and white.