Photography and Text by Chi Aguwa, Copyright 2016
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LIPSTICK SERIES
My inspiration for this series of pictures was to depict beautiful women of color, while wearing various shades of lipstick. The first thought that came to mind when I was given the assignment was what could I do to make my headshots unique from everyone else’s, seeing as I seemed to have the least amount of photo experience in the class. I wanted these photos to stand out more for aesthetics and vision; rather than the action of taking the picture. I also tried to adopt techniques that I learned from my days as a model to create interesting angles and viewpoints for these headshots. While I was taking the pictures, I found myself naturally directing the models through demonstration, and I created a scenario in which the subjects were able to place themselves to attain a certain look. One of these scenarios was to imagine oneself fighting to get through a jungle full of trees while taking a beauty shot with your hair tangled in the branches above. At times, I would even push my models to shift their body weight or even sit on the floor. I wanted to show that a beauty shot does not need to be the typical straight on “smizing” shot as Tyra Banks used to say.
I originally intended to utilize a ring flash to get tighter images of each models face. The equipment that I intended to use from the universities equipment room was not available on shooting day. So I was forced to make do with tungsten lights, but I found that the images came out dark; without a tripod all of my images would be underexposed because of a very slow shutter speed. I added flash to these pictures and this was where the magic began to take place. After editing the photos, I really like how the series turned out. I will continue editing the rest of the pictures, as I found that editing in photoshop takes a significant amount of time just to edit one picture. Hopefully, I was able to make my vision come to life in order to illustrate that no one can truly wear the brightest, and boldest shades of lipstick like a woman of color.
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About The Author: Chi Aguwa is a junior enrolled in the College of the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2018.