Authenticity in Photography - 1980's House Party

After I done my photo shoot on the 1980s party with my model, I organised anther house party candid photo shoot but n a wider scale. I invited 35 of my friends to get dressed up in 1980s clothes authentically styled and come and take part. I made  flyer and handed it to them to make it seem that much more real and authentic!

I used Photoscape, a handy tool if you want to create easy effects and add frames to photos, to create my flyer. I used photos of famous hip hop rappers of the time and dancers to create a buzz.

This is the produced flyer. It was given to 35 people and was effective in its purpose t create a buzz. I used a paper overlay from cgtextures.com and multiplied it to create the crinkled effect.  On the actual day of the photo shoot, all the guests came to my house, some were already dressed, some planned on changing at my house! But all in all, it was a fun shoot and everybody had fun. These are the photos taken on the day: 

As you can see, everybody really put a lot of effort into their outfits and accessories. I was happy with the initial photos. The next step was process of elimination. I had to choose my best 10 photos from the shoot and develop them in some way.  The best photos would consist of those with the best composition, story and facial expressions (because it is all about authenticity).

This photo is my favourite because of the action and expressions in the photo by the two party goers. The girl on the right is doing 'the running man' which was one of the most popular dances of the decade and it seems so real and authentic.

This photo is the best in terms of the content in the scene. You can see the party goer wearing a polka dot jumpsuit and holding a red plastic cup (which are the official party cups in America and are VERY hard to find).

The set of best photos are all fit the task I set for myself and all show real expression and authenticity in the clothing. In terms of the development, I think I will opt for polaroids. I want to change these photos into polaroids whilst applying the right colour for the time in which they are portraying.

I took the photos on to Photoscape once again and altered every single adjustment setting from hue/saturation to levels & curves to colour balance. I finished them off with adding noise to the photos to create a grainy effect and blurring them. I then created a polaroid style template for them to be placed in... and voila!