Research- Studio Portraits
Hasselblad

On Friday 22nd November was my first time using the Hasselblad camera in studio which was scary but fun too. I was very nervous in posing at first but when class mate was communicating with me, saying what she wanted I got more confident and tried giving her some attitude, looking natural that would sum up me not looking forced and a made up character.

I was introduced to a software "capture one" that is needed to complete this portrait brief where the images being took from camera transfers to software to judge on if its in focus or not and has captured enough attitude and character. I found difficult is to focus the lens which I think am getting used as it's something to do with a black circle in the middle that is needed to look see through and when image is took it will appear on computer screen where I then had to use a view finder tool and press and hold on the eye to see if its in focus.

Research- Studio Portraits
Platon
http://www.platonphoto.com/index.html


Platon's work consists a range of portrait works from politics, movies, TV, music, sports etc that are eye catching in the way his subjects uses their hands close to the lens making the hands bigger than their figure. His portraits lighting is sharp and highlights their features as his lighting brightens the face giving the face more contrast, shadows and a clean view of his images.

The way positions his subjects, some look not amused, Jim Carrey looks like hes showing who's boss or in a way hes standing as if to say hey who you think your talking to.

Research-Studio Portraits
Richard Lesson



Monday 18th November I had the opportunity to watch Richard working on a shoot and help advertise rock n rolls companies products, creating natural, beautiful feel to his pieces of work that is very welcoming for his viewers.  Richard had given us an insight  of his day to day life and on how he portrays his subject in studio professionally and shows us what the fashion industries are looking for. Watching Richard portraying his subject he creates chilled out atmosphere by playing top hits music, bought food and drinks for gratitude and the making of connections with staff and model to work close with them to get his finals successfully.

  

Richard Lesson works look bright, friendly and colourful, he has focused very well on his models and not the surrounding so that the viewers can see their beauty and characteristics. Focusing on characteristics makes me more intrigued and view more works from him for inspiration.

Richard Lesson is doing well in working with industries and continuing to go far into different industries, working with new members of staff which helps gain confidence in communicating and creating a strong bond. He was an ex student in CCAD (Cleveland College of art and design) this news makes me trust the college's teachings to get work in future and gets me excited on what am going to learn and achieve in life.

Malick Sidibe

His work seems to be set as African culture and in a old modern day style which is fresh as she get both genders of people that looks obvious that they are living in Africa with their skin tones, cultural outfits and having the women wear traditional clothing suitable for the country.  Malick sets a rule for herself when doing studio work as she carefully chooses the positioning that matches to their personality and does not want her subjects look mummified so she gives them a certain position that would make them come out more alive.

As a young boy he had a habit of collecting things like old hunting bullets from planes, he basically loved old items such as old rags and even wear them,crumpled up things and I think he used his young boy inspirations of collecting things in patterns, using it for the ground in the studio and designing own clothing into old rags like he did but blending with studio in a way like the ground.

The way I see these portraits is that they look like some of the subjects are hiding their identities by wearing glasses and not making eye contact to the lens of the camera and just posing normally for a profile picture or a sort of pose you do when with friends not looking forceful.

Jill Greenberg

Jill is both a fine art photographer and a commercial photographer, she love's commercial work as that provides a real showcase to her style and get paid for it which helps pay for bills and helps towards projects. Images above taking portraits of famous actors to capture unusual posers, contrasting to the regular glamorous photo shots they used to.  Greenberg is a well known photographer who likes to add in humour to her works. Jill wanted to photograph comedians such as Sacha Baron and Tom Green's as she thinks that viewers looking at them would remind them of a silly joke they said or movie they seen comedian in, instantly evokes a smile. Jill didn't want her set to be too planned out and come across cheesy as this would be unsuccessful to bring out comedians spontaneity.

To me Jill uses her backdrop to blend with actors skin tones or clothing if finds difficult to match skin tone to make all of her portraits natural, clean and professional enough to satisfy the actors overall portrait.

http://www.sickymagazine.com/look-back-in-anger/


  These neon lighting images are found in a magazine "sicky" where her subjects were portraying  the title looking back in anger so the subjects all had their own idea of embracing that feature.

Portraits Research

I have been given  a new assignment which is studio portrait which I am looking forward to as I'll be taught to use lighting professionally, experiencing the digital workflow and to be introduce to the photographic Lab where I can now know how to print out coloured prints as before I was learning black and white due to doing street photography. 

The photographic studio portrait has been used since the 1850s. Portraiture's tradition has followed the artists of the 15th and 16th centuries that has been specially made by privileged paint portraits to display wealth and honour.   Portrait photographers aim to focus on the person's face to reinforce identities, characteristics and mood, tell stories and to convey messages but entire body, props and the background may be included. In the 19th century the camera invention was made and was fairly a low cost of the daguerreotype and reduced sitting time of the subject which led to a rise in the popularity or portrait photography over painted portraits. Photographers style in these early works had challenges with long exposures, they seated their subjects against plain backgrounds and lit them up with soft light of an overhead window and whatever else could be reflected with mirrors. 

Richard Avedon: Studio Portraits

Richard was always interested in how portraiture captures the personality and soul of his subjects. His portraits are easily notable by his unfussy style, where the person is looking squarely in the camera, stood in front of a thin white background. Richard was able to focus on their hidden souls of his subjects by suggesting emotions and reactions and using soft light and props to help bring emotion etc. Richard usually suggest reactions from his subjects by guiding them into uncomfortable areas to discuss or ask curious questions. Through these answered questions would mean he would be able to produce portraits that is revealing sides of his subjects character and personality that are not capture by others.  

Tim Walker: Studio Portraits

http://timwalkerphotography.com/index.php

Tim Walker is a daring fashion photographer with his imaginative props where he displays his models with the props making a theme such as making his images look dreamy, magical and quirky.  Tim's work seems to be influenced by films and songwriters such as model Kirsi Pyrhonen wearing a jello hat reminds me of Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory with it's bright coloured funky clothing with a smirk pose as to say "no one is going to know the secret, they have to pass through me first". The models all have different poses portraying their character, the first image just looks like she's going to start having a major tantrum, giving the spoilt child's eyes and the body language just look persuading to give what she wants. The last image is in the style of Lady Gaga with her fun, mental props, the glasses remind me of the song "paparazzi" where she dressed as a mad mouse wanting revenge with her husband. The second image the guy with the skull smoking, I think this is messaging this is what you are going to end up as, a shortened life turning into a corpse and the guy has got this body language as if to say "do I give a damn, this is me so scram". He plots his models correctly by using the space well, making models feel comfortable and keeps the specific style to his image not looking messy and using lighting effectively making his images look clean and creative.

 

Cara Delevingne, London, UK,2013, W magazine

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN WITH SKULL,
LONDON, UK, 2009
BRITISH VOGUE

SCARLETT JOHANSSON AS BETTE DAVIS,
NEW YORK, USA, 2010
W MAGAZINe


KIRSI PYRHONEN & JELLO HAT,
LONDON, UK, 2011
AMERICAN VOGUE

KIRSI PYRHONEN & JELLO HAT,
LONDON, UK, 2011
AMERICAN VOGUE


TILDA SWINTON,
ICELAND, 2011
W MAGAZINE

         Edward Steichen  

Edward was a American fashion Photographer that was working for the Conde Nast magazines Vogue and Vanity Fair while working with J. Walter Thomas in advertising in 1923. During these years he was highly known to be the highest paid photographer in the world.

During the war Edward's experience aerial reconnaissance photography had given him a new apprecaition of the outstanding and potential realistic manipulated photography, with its expressive detail that is compelling and rich range of tones. 

David Bailey- Celebrity Portraits                         

The person who is closing eyes I feel like that is portraying that he is a dreamer, dreaming of ideas, he is a calm and relaxed character

Doing portraits it's important to look at the portrait and see who it is off and see how it relates to the person and matches to their personality and how they should be represented. I think David Bailey has chosen Jack Nicholson to do a portrait shoot is to capture how people can have a dark side to their soul, achieved this by selected a lighting at an angle of his face to emphasize his side of face. He chose this famous actor known in Hollywood who played different roles such as cynical and menacing characters such as the joker in batman film to portray a dark psychotic character to image to show that it's hard to notice a psychopath as everyone can be naturally crazy. Jack Nicholson is well known in a film "The shining" where he is depicted to be a murderous psychopath, I believe that David has chosen this actor to portray anger, fustration just as a psychopath would feel and wanted his image to look kind of comedic in the way his mouth is perched into a square leading people to think its not spontaneous and wanting to give out a message across that everybody has a dark side by making half the actors face lit dark which I find it interesting.

Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art

SUNDERLAND

The current exhibition in Sunderland was titled 'You Are The Company In Which You Keep' where the group were experiencing different collections of film, digital photography and collages from various artists. In the gallery there were a good range of interesting styles and ideas to help me in future.

http://www.ngca.co.uk/exhibs/default.asp?id=191&prnt=18

'burn' is a horrendous creation: a dream-like sequence which leads to self-destruction and tragedy. The main characters are seemingly unaware of the destruction all around them- indeed the disaster speedily all around them and quickly enclosing. The characters ignore the fact that their house and belongings  being destroyed with no concern for the future. 

Evaluation

First time I got this assignment I thought that the film camera will be challenging as it's new to me but learning something new can be fun and interesting. I hardly know anything about street photography or any photographers who do this topic so started to research on the definition to grasp what is behind of it and a way to tell a story if needed. Street photography overall was hard to figure out the right settings as I'm too used to looking onto screen after taking shot and just improve on it but the film camera you can't and  can't redo the shot which hurts as that day and moment has gone. I have been unlucky with films as they been getting fogged, scratched and dusty so I had to wash them but then ended up have streaks across the negatives and half an developed negative. Starting shooting the rolls of six films I was hoping that this old film camera actually works and not break on me sometimes it does as the camera takes time to get power from the battery as I was getting freezes when shooting saying BC which I guessed meant battery change even though the battery is fine so that stopped me from chilling around the streets noticing shapes, shadows, facial expressions, as I seen moody, stressed, worried emotions which is interesting and spotting the tones and creases on clothes when passing a variations of lighting example dim light which made me focus on Fstop to constantly quickly change before the shot I want vanished.  The most exciting part of this project is seeing the processed film from the drier seeing if my story of travelling around the streets has come to picture successfully.


For my theme of this assignment is that I looked at how people lives their lives on the streets such as cafe's as in the way they communicate with others showing different gestures, facial expressions and postures and looked at how architecture around us but finding it in window reflections making my images looking all abstract. I find that window reflections can help the image have more things to look out for such as shops that's near, old victorian buildings so that the viewers can get the feel of my surrounding I was taking place on shooting film. I found people looking in different directions intriguing as the light hits on side of face showing light to dark and making creases in clothing a nice texture. Photographing people on the streets has shown relationships on the way they walk in a group, partners or single such as the cafe shot where theres like two on left and right and a women alone in the middle just breaks up the image to me, not looking too much of people so you can get the feel of atmosphere of that place which gives a calm, relaxing sensation.

Street photography has given me experience to view the world differently and take in to thought and look out for the architecture and the view of people living their daily lives. Through this project I think I have gained great social skills and more confidents in going out shooting on my own. Overall I think this was new to me and a big push for me to stick in and stay interested. For my finals of themes I had linked my images with Jakub Ostrowski, Martin Parr, polly Braden and Vivian Marier as they all helped with ideas on how to portray the human interaction and bearings on what to look for in the streets and show the views visually what I see and feel that is an eye catching pass by moments in the streets.