Express Yourself: "A matter of taste"
Course 224453 Visual Language and Photodesign, summer semester 2025
Lecturers:
Prof. Gabriele Kille, Thomas Weccard, Kristof Lange, Jörg Rohrbacher
In this course, students are first taught the necessary basic knowledge of camera and lighting technology, shooting and image editing. Building on this, the photo shoot is created at the end, in which the individual components then flow together.
In "Express Yourself", the students themselves are at the centre of the task. Within a team of four, they are asked to create a picture of themselves in a freely selectable common context. Once the concept is agreed and realisable, the subtleties of each individual shot are then worked out. This involves atmosphere, lighting mood, but also props, styling, outfits and make-up.
Idea and approach
Under the motto "A matter of taste", we captured our reactions to the flavours sweet, sour, salty and spicy in photographs. These represent the respective favourite flavours of the actresses. To underline this, we assigned stylings and colours to each flavour. These were expressed in the background, nail varnish, eye make-up and hairstyles. As props, we chose suitable foods to represent the respective flavours: a colourful doughnut for sweet, a green apple for sour, crispy crisps for salty and a red chilli pepper for hot.
Each flavour was to have its own emotional impact - playful, cheeky, cool or fiery - to show the diversity of human expression. The aim was to visually convey the essence of each flavour without the need for words.
Visual concept
Cropping: Portrait photography in beauty style, focus on the face and expression, placement of the prop in the image section.
Perspective: Frontal from a normal perspective at the model's eye level.
Background: Colour-coordinated, smooth studio backgrounds to match the respective flavour, deliberately kept simple to draw attention to the model.
Image composition: Symmetrical composition, the face in the centre of the image, with props alternately held on the left and right to create a coherent overall picture of the four portraits.
Image editing: Slight colour correction to enhance the colour intensity as well as targeted retouching of individual aspects such as flying hair and creases in the background.
Studio Setup
Canon Mark V; 24-70 mm, wide-dispersion flash behind the model aimed at the canvas, light with square softbox aimed at the model's face from the side and above, light bouncer on the model's left side.
Student team:
Anna Barsch, Leonie Herrmann, Maria Menzel, Natalie Huber