The Mayor had agreed to me taking some pictures of her in the Mayor’s Parlour in the Guildhall, where her formal garments are stored. She brought the chain of office with her as that was kept separately at her home. My idea was that I would take photographs of her putting on the formal robes of office. When I had been in the Parlour previously I had seen the layout of the room and pictures of previous mayors and thought it might be possible to incorporate them into the final picture to show the continuity of the role of mayor. In the end it proved to be rather difficult as the pictures were away from direct light and high up on the wall and I couldn’t combine them effectively (see right). They were also highly reflective and these reflections would have been impossible to remove.
At first Michaela was quite nervous but we talked about herself and how her term of office was about to end. As we talked she relaxed and in the end seemed to enjoy the session. When I mentioned that I would give her a CD of all the images, she was pleased as she could add these to her mayoral memory book.
The images I chose to represent her in her role as town mayor seemed slightly formal but also gave a strong insight into her bubbly personality. The image itself was quite strongly contrasted as there was strong light, but not sunlight, coming from the right and because of the angle she was standing, her face and the right side of her body was in shadow.
I used Photoshop Image/Adjust/Shadow-Highlights to adjust the imbalance and you can see the settings I used to make it more acceptable below. I checked that the pillars of the window frame were upright and, after studying the shape of the stone window frame itself, thought it would be better cropped out. It looked a bit messy combined with the curtain so I removed the cross bar, see below for my final choice.
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