Visual Influence – Projector Portraits

Below are some images that I found interesting and wish to work in the style of.

Projection photography has become increasingly more popular over the years as photographers and artists have discovered this fantastically adaptable resource to produce art and photography.

Most famously, photographer John French used projection art photography in the 1960s – he photographed models with floral patterns projected onto their bodies instead of clothes.

John French

Born in Edmonton (London) John French originally trained and worked as a commercial artist, becoming a photographic director in an advertising studio just before World War II.

He worked for many editorial magazines and newspapers(like the Daily Express). He worked on a new form of fashion photography (which included bouncing light from reflector boards to create aesthetically pleasing, low-contract images that would reproduce well on newsprint).French is known for his clear, stylish, uncluttered black and white photographs taken against clean backgrounds.  He preferred to work closely with his models, devoting much attention to their posing and his sets.

Source

Contact Sheets

Editing

Evaluation

 This was my first and, by far, favourite image. I like the immense focus and the chilling stare of the subject. Adobe Photoshop helped me position the model in the center of the image with a large amount of black filling the frame. I aimed for this effect with all of my images, I wanted the dark to almost swallow my models – I think that this gave my images a more sinister feel and created a more mysterious atmosphere that surrounded my images. Due to this, the photographs also have a more minimalistic feel about them, thanks to the projection aspect the photographs are much more complex and interesting to look at. If I were to do this whole photo shoot again I think I’d try to take some photos with multiple models- with each of them having different projections and experiment with the different effects. I would also try to mix some images together via overlay and such.

This is my second final image for this subunit, unlike in the other two photographs, this image fully obscures the model’s face and features, This is because she’s looking away from the light source and into the shadow. It follows the general theme and what I was going for, the projection of the stars is very sharp and crisp in this image which makes it more pleasing to look at. This is the last image, for this image I chose to use an image of a tree with stars behind it. This way I was able to achieve different colours and play around with the placement of the trees in regards to the subject’s posture and such.