HENRY CARTIER-BRESSON

Henri Cartier-Bresson was born 1908 in France, however died at the impressive age of 95 in 2004 after having contributed immensely to the worldwide photography community and to The Magnum Photography Company. He was a French humanist photographer who was and still is seen as a great of truthful and important photography. He contributed massively to the development of the genre of street photography, and he viewed photography as a way of capturing the ''decisive moment.'' His parents helped him financially so that Henri was able to carry out photography more freely without the need to source finance himself. Henri was also an interested artist who enjoyed sketching and painting. While traveling around the world, Bresson became inspired by different forms of art, people and the environment that he was surrounded by. At one point in his life he was also captured by German soldiers which further inspired his work that explored the suffering and pain of war.

Here is a link to Magnum Photos (the company which Bresson contributed to hugely) – https://www.magnumphotos.com/

And here is a link to the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation website – http://www.henricartierbresson.org/en/

Here is some of the work produced by Henri Cartier-Bresson…

In my personal opinion I love the way that Henri Cartier-Bresson was able to make emotionally and physically horrible things and events appear so aesthetically beautiful through the composure and camera skills. This would assist Bresson in creating something that would stand 2 main purposes, one being the aesthetics of his work and the other being the important and meaningful documentary of his work.

 

What’s Street Photography?

Street photography is about documenting and or finding and capturing the beauty or horror within everyday life and the society who live within it. However although it may seem this way street photography does not have to be taken in the ‘streets’, like in town. You can carry out street photography in other populated areas, however the streets are an interesting place to carry out photo shoots due to their highly populated space.

Here are some examples of street photography from other photographers…

Here is a link to a website which shows tips, tricks and thought provoking ideas on how to execute street photography – http://erickimphotography.com/blog/the-ultimate-beginners-guide-for-street-photography/

 

ENVIRONMENTAL PORTRAIT

Photo shoot Plan

Environmental Portrait Photographer (Arnold Newman)

Here is a link to an archive of Arnold Newman’s works…http://www.arnoldnewmanarchive.com/

Environmental Portraiture Shoots

Favourite Edits

 

Black & White Edits

The work of Arnold Newman

Arnold Newman was best known for his environmental portraiture of all kinds of people from everyday strangers to big industry names. His collections of black and white photography captured these individuals in their natural environment in order to display how each individual’s environment is so diverse from another.

“For five decades Arnold Newman stood behind his camera, facing individuals and egos that have shaped the realities of twentieth century life. Emperors, poets, dancers, composers, presidents,
painters and shoemakers have all collaborated with him, placing themselves in his trust to be properly portrayed.”

Here is some of his work showing how he went about his portraiture photography…

His work showed the emotions, the surroundings and the spaces in which these people are situated in everyday life.

Work Analysis

This photograph taken by Arnold Newman, is of Igor Stravinsky, an influential Russian composer. The image simply displays the basic context of Stravinsky’s everyday life as a composer, through the association of the grand piano which represents and symbolizes his musical career that has made him who he is. In a way Stravinsky has been subtly framed in this photograph by the lines and open angle of the piano, in which he is within the angle, therefore drawing the viewers eye to his and the tonal split in the wall behind. The dark tones of the piano and the composer stand out to the lighter tones of the wall behind them. This emphasizes the the parts of the photograph that could be considered most important and contextual. The image its self appears to be of an only slightly under exposed with a high contrast as the dark tones in the image stand out considerably. The expression of Stravinsky in this image captures the feelings that he would experience on a day to day basis with the constant feeling of needing to compose songs, with most days not coming up with anything new making his time monotonous, hence his tiresome expression.

Environmental portraiture is portraiture which is executed in the subject’s normal environment, this emphasizes the subject’s life through their surroundings. Environmental portraits give context to the subject being photographed. Environmental portraits lie between quite strict studio portraits and candid portraits; the subject is relaxed however is aware they are being photographed.

Here are some examples found online of how environmental portraiture can be executed…

When executing an environmental portrait it is most effective for the subject of the piece to be facing and if possible looking into the lens of the camera which creates an emotional eye contact, which depending on the expression of the subject could imply further context to the image.

The purpose of environmental portraiture could be to document or display the everyday life of a certain individual, whilst they are in their usual environment.

My Final Piece

For my final piece I have chosen to go with a composition of 9 images (3 groups of 3.) This is because I believe that rules of 3 look very aesthetically pleasing to a viewer.

I believe that the images strongly portray a sense of abstraction through the use of color, minimalism, PhotoShop, composition and structure.

Original Images

Here are the 9 images that I have chosen to use as my final piece…

All of these images have been edited using PhotoShop, some more than others. I would have considered all of the images to have been abstract before editing them however I believe that the PhotoShop editing that I have done has increased how abstract the images are.

Originals & Edits

Here are the original images against the edited images that I have produced…

Edits (LEFT) Originals (RIGHT)

Grouping

For my final composition of photographs I have decided to group them into 3 groups of 3 (9 all together.) This is because I believe that visual threes work very well visually therefore 3 groups consisting of 3 images would hopefully work very well.

I wanted the organisation between portrait and landscape images to be symmetrical therefore I composed the portrait images in a cross (X) and the landscape images on each ends of the across sections (+). I believe that this gave a very visually pleasing result.

Here is my original basic composition of images (3×3)…

Further Improvements (inspiration)

I was happy with how this appeared, but I wanted my final piece to be slightly more interesting to the eye.

One of my favorite abstract artists, Keith Haring‘s bold, minimalist and colorful work is what inspired me to group of the 3 groups of images using colorful polygons. The 3 groups that I sectioned my images off into were: Visually Melting, Visually Minimalist and Visual Text.

Here is some of the work of Keith Haring to give an idea of how it is reflected in my final piece…

Here is what my piece looked like after adding the colored sections…

However I was still not 100% satisfied with the full aesthetic of the piece. I wanted to add titles/names to the 3 groups of images. I wanted to do this without the writing distracting the viewer from the images themselves, so I decided to go with a basic ‘typewriter’ style font called ‘Rod Regular’.

So all together with all final improvements and edits here is my final piece on the work of abstraction…

FINAL PIECE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LIQUIFY TOOL

Here is how I used Photoshop’s liquify tool in order to turn this image…

Into this image…

Step 1)

Open the image in Photoshop, select the full image and open it in the liquify tool..

Step 2)

After liquifying the image I used ‘curves’ in order to alter the contrast, shadows and exposure of the image..

Step 3)

I then finally used the ‘lasso’ tool to section off one of the central boats and then used curves again to darken it to add to the abstraction of the image.

COLOUR

Photographer 1

Photographer 2

Photo Shoot Plan

Photo Shoot Contact Sheets