Peter Devito
Peter DeVito is a New York-based photographer from the United States. He is well-known for his portraiture, particularly for including a diverse range of models. DeVito's work gained attention in 2018 when his acne normalisation photographs went viral for the first time on social media. Several celebrities covered the photos, like Cara Delevingne, and shared them on social media. DeVito has continued to photograph people who he believes are underrepresented in the fashion/beauty business and the media in general since then. He wants to question society's beauty standards with his art, and he hopes that his photos make individuals feel seen.
When I first saw this picture/artist I was very intrigued and amazed as I don’t really see photographers that directly open up about societies’ ‘problems’ and fighting against them. In the picture there is no specific part of the image which is more or less focused probably because it is so close up that it’s better to have it completely focused. He most definitely used artificial lighting this means that the whole thing is even and there are little to no shadows. The only lines present are the lines from the sticker writing however they do not lead the eye to anything apart to itself. The only ‘shapes’ present are the letters and the normal shapes of the person’s facial features. All of them appear 3D and none of it seems flat, this is thanks to the macro definition of his lens and the little shadows around the person’s facial features. What makes his images ‘different’ is his composition, most of his images are a close up shot only including the side of the face which has the sticker. He uses a macro lens (shows all of the skin texture making it most of the times more relatable to what is written on the skin), a very high aperture/narrow lens (makes all of the pictures in focus), a very quick shutter speed ( this makes it so there is no movement and no blurry parts) and a low ISO (this makes it be smooth and clear and not grainy at all).
Photoshoot plan
This is my photoshoot plan, for my peter devito photoshoot. I have created this to guide myself during my photoshoot, where I am going to be sticking small letter stickers on mine or someone else's face and taking pictures very close up with flash. I am most probably going to be creating this photoshoot at home with maybe some help at school. This photoshoot will help me in case i need to refresh more technical aspects of this photoshoot or in case i need to change something.
Contact Sheet
my photoshoot turned out mainly successful. my plan did not help that much, but not because of the information it was mainly because i did not need to rely on it. i did not change anything from my photoshoot plan. in the end i have created multiple pictures inspired by peter DeVito. on the contact sheet i have also placed circles and crosses, this is to separate the images. the crosses show the images i do not want to use and the circles are for the most successful images overall. some images might be better than others because of the composition, or how the stickers were photographed, or the background was better or maybe i just prefer some images compared to others and i am more proud about displaying some images than others. from this photoshoot i have learnt about capturing skin smoother and developing more technical aspects. this photoshoot could improve by framing the writing with hands or smoothing the background even more or i could improve the lighting. with these images i am going to develop this idea by; projecting words onto the face and neck or somehow stitch words onto the skin. my initial photos relate to the artist because they are simply pictures of skin with sticker writing on it with a lot of skin texture showing.
Initial edits
Highlighting Success
i have created initial edits for my peter DeVito photoshoot. for this project i tried to use as little photoshop as possible to begin with as i wanted my images to be similar to his. so all i did was heighten the brightness with levels and then, when needed, cropped it a little bit. this helped keep the texture of the skin visible. they link to the artist very clearly in the sense that they are close up shots of people's skin with sticker writing. i don't know if they are/aren't more successful than the artist because there are a number of differences which both help me and don't. to improve these edits i could try to get rid of the shadow even more and also maybe get more of the face, finally i could take more of them with the hand framing the writing. from this photoshoot i have learnt how much the flash helps to display the skin and the eyes. for my further development i will try to project words or letters onto the face and then i will try to make it so there is stitching on the face.
these are my favorite/ most successful images. this is because i really like how the skin looks and how the words are captured, i also quite like these as they are the most similar to the artist's work. in general this was the easiest editing process however the actual part of taking pictures i found it hard and could not get it right in the beginning but after a few tries i managed to at least get a stage where i was okay with my images.
Second Development
Contact sheet
This is my second development. i think that these edits are quite successful. i have made 34 double exposure edits. i have made these by putting two of the same or different images on top of the other and then i chose a blending option which worked the best for the images. this made my pictures better as it added something extra and different from the initial edits. i think that this concept is more successful than his, however this was not executed to the best of my ability. from creating these images i learnt the technique of double exposure and how it helps a lot of the times to elevate my images.
These are my second developments. I made some double exposure edits but taking the images I initially did and putting one above the other. However I made the second picture a bit bigger so the words mainly would be repeated. I then used the color lookup to have some difference from my initial edits. In some of them I made it so the first picture was black and white and the one on top still had its natural colors and for some of them I did the opposite. I really like these more than my original ones as there is more opportunity for me to be creative. In my opinion they still relate to the reader as they portray the skin texture with motivational words on it.
Highlighting Success
These are my favourite pictures because these are the ones with the best placement of the words and I really like the final product of the colour lookup filter on top. I also love on these pictures how all of the skin texture is still very visible which makes them still relate to the artist. In future if I was to do this photoshoot again I would have a more wide variety of phrases as I did not this time which kind of made it harder for me to edit them differently and well enough.
Third development
For my third development I have decided to do something physical. I created this by firstly taking normal pictures of just the skin, then I printed them and stitched a phrase or word onto the picture. I did this so that there could be some difference from the artists work to mine. they are inspired by Peter DeVito. They still link to the artist as they have the same basis as the artist original pictures. I feel like These are more successful in the creative sense but in some way they are less as they kind of are more messy. From this I learnt that not all of my work has to be digital and some of it is better as physical. This is going to be the last development I complete for this artist.
Highlighting success
these are my personal favourites and the ones i found to be most successful. this is because i find the writing to be very neat and they all are the very to the artist's. i also really like that i gave my own twist on his images and made is very different to his but also with the same base.
AO4
