Research: studio Portraiture
Steve Pyke

Pyke's early work was sold to magazines and the music press and exhibited from 1982. This helped him to define the growing visual signature icons in 1980s magazine, 'The Face'. I have chosen this photographer as my influence to help towards ideas of my final prints as he has focused on Rembrandt lighting and the posing is quite similar as in way they look chilled to show their personality through emotion and hand gestures.  The only difference is that I didn't do close ups as I wanted to show clothing and accessories to show full character and get what the person is about and into like the clothing can show their interests and activities etc.  Pyke using a black backdrop is to create  the effect that these subjects are blending into the shadows made from the position of lighting. His independent mind attracted a film director Peter Greenaway where Pyke created photographic work used in Peter's films, stills and the poster shots for A Zed and Two Noughts. Pyke established his trademark portrait style on the close-lenses that is placed on his Rolleiflex camera that allowed him to make incisive and direct images within a 6x6cm negative.

Research: Studio Portraiture
Hasselblad History

The first Hasselblad camera was made a rather unique product development. During the second world war, Victor Hasselblad was asked by  the Swedish air force if he could produce a copy of a surveillance camera found on a downed German spy plane.  The first hasselblad, the HK-7 was the first aerial camera.  In 1969 the hasselblad space shooting film continued with Apollo 11, and the first images of man on the moon and of earth from the moon captured by Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin Jr with a hasselblad 500EL/70. 

Hasselblad had selected its suppliers and collaborative partners, forming long-term relationships with companies such as Kodak. This unique system was developed and produced by Hasselblad in close co-operation with Fuji. In 2002, another camera system was launched. This time it was a 6x4.5 medium format camer incorporating the latest technological developments including autofocus and electronic chip control. In 1978, at the age of 72, Victor Hasselblad passed away. In his will he left his fortune to the Erna and Victor Hasselblad foundation. The purpose of the foundation is to promote research and academic teaching in the natural sciences and photography.

Research: studio portraiture
Printing Lab

Three recommended print labs given:
Printspace- London- theprintspace.co.uk
Digilab- Newcastle- www.digilab.co.uk
Sprectrum- Brighton- ww.sprectrumphoto.co.uk

I decided to upload my TIFF files to Printspace to produce my portraits, in class the tutor had a sample paper pack to guide us on what quality is needed for our finals. Digital Lab did not allow me to upload TIFF files to their website which wouldn't give my portrait a high quality print. I had chosen C-type Fuji Matt, this gives a less shine so that my eyes will be drawn to detail and not get distracted by the shine that gloss print will do. Overall with the paper I had chosen will have subtle colours and slight shine bringing the picture to life. The size I made to image was 12x16 and made a border in photoshop so that I did not lose most of my image by cropping into A3 size.

There are two different techniques in printing:

Chromogenic prints or know as C-type that are produced by sensitive paper. Professional chromogenic are kodak and fujifilm. Chromogenic are made by a reaction between two chemicals to create the colour dyes that make up a photographic image. Chromogenic colour images are composed of three main dye layer- cyan, magenta, and yellow that all form a full colour image.

Inkjet or known as giclee prints. It is a digital image printer that is made by droplets of ink onto paper, plastic or other substrates. This method is used commercially for marking and coding of products and packages.