My first photoshoot will be a simple one to start off with, based simply on environmental portraits. On Saturday I am planning to meet my friend Jacob Smith, an accomplished surfer and free diver, at the beach so that I can take photos of him in his environment. I was originally planning on taking photos of him in the water as he is surfing but this weekend the winds will be too high for him to be able to surf. We may instead be able to try some free diving but I am not sure how this will turn out in underwater photographs because I am not confident with underwater photography. For on land photographs I will be using my Nikon D5200 but as this is not waterproof so I will not be taking it into the water with me. Instead I will be taking my MotorMarine II EX by Sea&Sea.
This is a 35mm film camera that I got for free and had repaired. I have had very little experience with using this camera but I have shot film before so I know what to expect from the limitations of film. Even if all of the photographs that I take with this camera turn out bady I should still have photographs that I will take back on land with my digital camera to use. In the water I am planning to be using ISO 400 film or ISO 200 depending on the lighting that day. If it is overcast or there is not direct sunlight then I will use the 400 but if there is direct sunlight then I will use the 200. For the photos above the water/on dry land I will be trying to emulate the work of Anthony Kurtz that I looked at for my environmental portraiture moodboard. His photographs are not overly set up like Bielaski and Sander’s work, the more natural feel to them is a method that I prefer. However for the photographs just above the water’s surface then I will be trying to emulate the work of Brooks Sterling. He is a lifestyle photographer and art director living in southern California. His work is mostly centered around surfer/skater culture in Southern California and he uses a mix of film and digital. I spoke to him recently and he gave me some tips for shooting in the surf like this so hopefully I will be able to get some nice photos. Link to his website and Instagram.
As a backup for this, I am also planning to go out with some of my other friends into some environments that they are not used to. This will give me a chance to photograph people discovering new environments which is often hard to do in Jersey because it is so small. But we have previously found somewhere that we did not know existed and are going to be going back there to have a proper look around. It is in St. Aubins and is near to the beach, on the south coast like this the lighting should be very good and as I have no idea what the place looks like myself the photos will be a reaction of me experiencing this new environment too.
We were set the task of creating an image inspired by Idris Khan’s work with layering and shifting photographs. He does this by taking multiple images of a single object at slightly different positions and then layering them in Photoshop to create these abstract scenes of seemingly inanimate objects. Often photographing industrial buildings like oil or natural gas containers with wire frames when shifted they have a ghost like appearance to them. Incredibly dramatic they explore the environment in the abstract and unusual. it is an odd method but it works well and creates interest within the images that really helps to get viewers to look more in-depth at the images to try to work out what is gong on.
To try and emulate this to make my own image like this I used a digital technique that produces similar results and only requires one photograph to be taken. The method involves:
Opening the selected image in Photoshop. For my attempt I used a photograph that I had taken on 35mm film so the quality is not too great.
Copying the image a number of times. For my attempt I used 10 additional image layers and a black and white layer later.
Once all of the layers are in, each one should be shifted slightly.
Now different blending options can be used to change the visibility of the different layers. For me this mostly involved changing the opacity but some of the images were brightened and I even made some not visible at all because I did not think that they added anything to the image.
I then changed the position of some layers individually to give the image a more “shifted” look.
the last process that I used was to crop the image so that there was a solid edge around the image.
Original Image
First Edit
Second Edit
The first edit was the result of following that list of processes, it has the obvious shifting that has been done to it and the different angles also really help to give this its shaken effect. The second edit was done to try to better emulate Khan’s work, I simply added a black and white layer to the image, again in Photoshop. This gave the image a much more desirable look to it, it feels more gothic and more reminiscent of Khan’s work. Although it does not have the same feel because it does not have a framework to shift around it certainly looks similar and has the same general feel to it.
This screen shot shows the different layers and how I went through and adjusted them all individually. In this you can see the B&W layer that has not been set visible until I had the image looking good first. Although the images does not have too much distortion or ghosting to it and so is still more visible than Khan’s work I still like the way that it turned out quite a lot.
One of my first ideas that I have held on to for a long time is to create scenes by arranging small figures into their own Tableaux style scenes.
The surreal scenes often use some regular sized object to have the figures interact with. The example above shows one of these concepts. It is an interesting way to create Tableaux images and means that the artist must think about how to represent this environment, and to create it. Unless the artist has the ability to create their own figures they will also be limited by the different positions of the figures that you can use, there is a real need to plan ahead with the shoots. I like the interpretation of environment in these images, looking at full sized scenes and interpreting them in miniature is a really interesting concept. The images can have different meanings and connotations, and can be used to express certain feelings and have underlying tones, often though they are just a bit of fun.
Generally shot with a shallow depth of field there are few main elements, and several extra elements that support the scene. In the two images above the regular sized objects are not in singular, this makes it easier to understand the comparative size of the objects and figures. The surrealism of the images is expressed due to the difference in size between the objects and figures, the idea of being shrunk down to a miniature size, but still carrying on with normal ife is very interesting . I do not know if I will pursue this but the concept is still interesting and if I do not carry on with the water concept then this is something that I could carry on with, however it could be challenging because of the lack of context and amount that I could do.
This was just a simple mood board that I have created looking at environmental portraits. I have looked at a classical example, in the form of August Sander as well as more contemporary studies from Jonathan Bielaski and Anthony Kurtz. The main concept of environmental portraits is to photograph a person in their natural environment, this has the effect of giving a whole volume of information to the viewer other than just the subject and their clothes. You get to build up a much more in-depth relationship with the subject, getting to understand a little more about what makes them who they are. You can often see a relationship between the subject and their environment, there are things in the environment that are represented in the subject and vise versa. This works very well for the keyword of this project, with more structure than simple portraits or landscapes it allows the environment to be studied and linked to a subject.
Sander’s work is the real starting point for this type of environmental portraiture, there were similar works to this but this the classic example and where the movement came from. His images are always composed well, he has the subject look directly at the camera and stand in a pose that shows off who they are. Their outfits are an essential part of the images. The Soldier shows the youthfulness of this man who is ready to experience war. Taken in a winter hamlet this is clearly not his home, he shows no connection to the location, he is simply posted there for what ever reason. His other images are in a very high contrast, this gives an amazing amount of detail to the faces, clothes and surrounding of the subjects. The detail gives a fantastic perspective of the subject, you really feel like they are standing right in front of you, staring into your eyes. There is a connection made to these people who are all likely dead now, this is what his photography was excellent at doing, making you feel a connection to these people who you will never meet, and likely will never know the names of.
Bielaski’s work is a more modern take on Sander’s. He travels to locations with his subjects and set up photos using lights and his camera almost as if it was in a studio. He uses a camera that can capture 100MP in a single photograph, this incredible detail has the same effect as Sander’s high contrast. You get to see the details in a subject’s face and clothes making it seem like you are simply looking through a window at them. Bielaski also seems to have used HDR for his images, further increasing the detail and information available to the viewer in the photograph. Almost looking like animations his images are highly manipulated, and although it makes the images look very impressive it draws away from the subject a little, the viewer does not focus on the content as much because they are dazzled with these fantastic colours.
Kurtz’s work in the mood board is kind of a mix between Sander’s and Bielaski’s. He still has high contrast to the images but they are not over the top with excessively vibrant colours, the bright colours that are seen in some of the images are a result of the subject being powder paint which in its self it very vibrant. His images are a mixture of having the subjects look at the camera and not having them look at the camera, this works well depending on the different photographs. The one of the group of people works well despite there being no specific single subject, the mass of people lends itself well to the chaos in this scene. His depictions of his subjects work well because they do not seem forced or over bearing, you see the subject and plenty of the background to give context to the subject.
The environment is something that has always inspired artists and creators throughout time. From the very first examples of art that we have found, art emulates the surrounding environment of the artist. Cave paintings are an obvious reference to this, the earliest cave paintings found are the outlines of hands or drawings of different animals around the artists, for example this link shows the earliest known artwork found in Indonesia. Moving closer to more contemporary artists we begin to look at prominent figures like Tiziano Vecellio (Titian). Even though he mostly did not paint real life things aside from portraits he did paint lots of religious scenes, taking parts of the bible and painting them into life was for him a way to express his environment. In 16th century europe religion was one of the most prominent forces in the continent, it affected all aspects of people’s lives, they went to church often and would spend time praying. Because of this their religion was their environment, everything that they did was caused by Christianity.
Adam and Eve
David and Goliath
His paintings often show a very positive, christian message. He romanticized the scenes to show his faith through his artwork, the opening of the heavens in David and Goliath show the positive message that is being shown, the defeat of evil and bad is praised by the Lord. He is showing his psychological environment as opposed to the people who produced the cave paintings mentioned at the top of this blog post, they are showing simply the physical environment, their immediate surroundings like their hands and arms and the external like the babirusa (pig-deer) drawing that is present next to the hand prints.
This difference between the physical and the mental environments is an area of art and photography that is also worth exploring. Although the physical environment of two people can be the same, they can be in the same environment, their mental environments can be incredibly different. It is easy to stimulate the same external environment in multiple people, what it is difficult to do is then to get them to think the exact same thoughts of this identical scene. Although mental conditioning of people is something that can be achieved it is impossible to get someone to think exactly the same. The human brain is something that can be easily controlled and manipulated to a degree but there is always the ability for the mind to wander off and do its own thing, despite being forced into this small space. Scott Berkun talks about this theory by saying that the “mind is unique in the world for its infinity of ideas, for it can be used to think about almost anything in a million different ways.”[1] Because of this the different interpretations of the same thing can always lead to different end results. In psychology there is a debate over free will Vs determinism, this is a debate over if people are completely free to make their own decisions or if everything that has happened to them in their past or genetic factors has caused them to make these choices. As with most of the debates in psychology it is neither all-or-nothing, in reality some decisions are made based on predetermined factors and some are aided by the free will of the individual. Personally I lean towards the determinism side of the debate more, I believe that although people all think differently it is due to individual experiences. Nevertheless it is still interesting to see the results of different experiences and how they can create unique people and how these unique people can create unique art.
To help me get a better understanding of the concept of “environment” I made a mind map of things that I would just come up with as we were familiarising ourselves with the task.
Although my handwriting can be difficult to read and understand sometimes hopefully this can be read. This was only the most basic mind map, based on this as a class we made several mind maps to allow different people in the class to give their input.
There were lots of different ideas that came out of the discussion sessions, one of the most prevalent was to look at landscapes in some way, to photograph the landscape of a person or group to show their environment that way. This could work very well for some projects, being able to map an environment and get an understanding for what it is really like would help the understanding of the subject greatly. The human (and animal) mind is shaped by our environment, among other things, and so there is always a link between an animal or plant and their environment. This often the physical adaptations that they have to survive, investigating these differences between different species and looking at how they fit to the environment could be a really interesting thing to explore.
One other point that kept coming up was “people”, this is an interesting thing to try and look at, again the photographer could be looking at their own environment based on the people around them. You could look at family or relationships, and how they create a social environment for people, by looking at different families and observing their differences you can get an idea for how families other than your own react to different situations in possibly unexpected ways. In the same vein, by looking at different homes an understanding of the intimate environment in which someone lives can be very interesting, seeing inside this place where they can be themselves. In a bedroom where they do not have any pressure to conform the social norms that they usually will. Inside these spaces they can truly be themselves and even though a photographer will not see this side entirely they will get a glimpse of who this person truly is.
