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Autochrome Photography

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The first practicable and reliable method of colour photography was the autochrome process, invented in France by Auguste and Louis Lumière. They began the commercial sale of autochrome plates in the early 20th century.

Autochrome plates are covered in microscopic red, green and blue coloured potato starch grains. When the photograph is taken, light passes through these colour filters to the photographic emulsion. The plate is processed to produce a positive transparency. Light, passing through the coloured starch grains, combines to recreate a full colour image of the original subject.

The manufacture of autochrome plates was undertaken at the Lumière factory in Lyon, and was a complex industrial process. First, transparent starch grains were passed through a series of sieves to isolate grains between ten and fifteen microns in diameter. These microscopic starch grains were separated into batches, dyed red, green and violet, mixed together and then spread over a glass plate coated with a sticky varnish. Next, carbon black was spread over the plate to fill in any gaps between the coloured starch grains. A roller submitted the plate to a pressure of five tons per square centimetre in order to spread the grains and flatten them out. Finally, the plate was coated with a panchromatic photographic emulsion.

All credit: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/autochromes-the-dawn-of-colour-photography/

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Portrait artist REFERENCES

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Historical Context – Societe Jersiaise

Henry Mullins wasa portrait photographer in the mid 1800’s who was based in Jersey, most of his work was doing family or solo portraits of the wealthy people who were in Jersey at the time.

Mullins started working at 230 Regent Street in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in July 1848, setting up a studio known as the Royal Saloon, at 7 Royal Square. Initially he was in partnership with a Mr Millward, about whom very little is known. By the following year he was working alone and he continued to work out of the same studio for another 26 years. After his death in 1883 20,000 images were collected and given to SJ.

Mr de Quetteville

This above image is a standard example of the style of images that Mullins would take with the subject in the front and a blank background, there is also heavy vignetting due to the technology he had and the equipment he was forced to use for the time. The subject is framed in the center of the image with the subject filling the frame and their head at the top. There is no context that I can find for this image but it is probably just a portrait that he had taken of him.

Contemporary approach – Archisle

About

Michelle Sank was born in Cape Town, South Africa. She left there in 1978 and has been living in England since 1987. Her images reflect a preoccupation with the human condition and to this end can be viewed as social documentary. Her work encompasses issues around social and cultural diversity.

Michelle’s project that was based on life in Jersey was called ‘insula’ which is latin for island, she wanted to photograph a range of things, including the economy, politics, community, work, leisure and environment.

The above image was taken at the Jersey premiere for a superman movie in 2013, there was large amounts of excitement within Jersey as the main actor was Jersey born. The image is set to have a full range of people within it ranging from old people to school children (joe) there is even another photographer within it.

AO1 Develop Ideas

Still life

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Still life (nature morte) is a pictorial form of art that depicts inanimate objects. Normally set on a table and depicting things like flowers, food or household items. Still life emerged to allow artists to express things that were taboo at the time like class, mortality and sexuality, they did this by adding subtle things like gold, expensive food and skulls. Below are some examples.

A good still life artist that I found is called Pieter Claesz, who was a Dutch golden age painter of still lifes in the early to mid 1600’s. He is renowned for his use of lighting and attention to detail. He also often used household items that were more upper class for his time. He also featured lots of expensive and exotic foods like lobster, crab and grapes. In some of his work he also featured a skull which he used to serve as a reminder of mortality which was a bigger thought in those ages as the lifespan was significantly lower.

This image is called Stillleben mit brennender Kerze (Still Life with Burning Candle) within it, it has the candle burning down which could be a reference to mortality as he often had in his work. The candle Snub also has a similar image I believe because it is open and placed close to the candle. There is also the open book with the glasses on which suggests that the person who was reading it has decided to stop reading. The glass goblet which features in many of his paintings is half full of water and it could be to provoke the optimistic/pessimistic thought of half full or half empty. The two books in the back could be referencing wealth as they look expensive and high-class.

AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 2 Portrait

Bob Le Sueur (Photos)

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For the photos of Bob I knew that we would be in the studio this means that the environment is heavily controlled. The rule of thumb for studio flash light is to have your camera at 100 ISO, 1/125 and at f/16. The reason for this is that the flashes are used to simulate the daylight and this group of settings will always be roughly right for daylight. Using studio lights with a shutter speed of over 1/200 will not work as the shutter will block out part of the light and will be too fast for the flash of light that the lights will give off.

For this photo I had Bob facing side on to me and then gave him a point to look at which was down to my right, I then focused on his eyes and framed him in the center of the image, I was using a 50mm zoom so I could get a top torso shot with space over his head. For the editing I boosted the texture and and the clarity, also making the contrast larger to show the mall wrinkles and features on his face.


For the left image I thought that I would focus on Bob’s nose as it is a prominent feature of his face to do this best I thought that a profile would work. I made it black and white because it shows well the contrast in his hair and it shows the lines and contours of his face well. I also gave him a high point to look at to show his jawline more. The image on the right was similar to the first in composition but I changed it to black and white and had him look up.

This image was taken to show his walking stick which is something that he has with him all the time and it has scratches, chips and dents which give it its own character, I had Bob lay his hands on top of eachother so that there wasn’t a big empty space that there would be if his hands were side by side. The focal point was the ring finger of his left hand as it has a chip in the nail. I put this image in black and white so that there is a big contrast between the darker wrinkles and the highlights and his nails.
AO1 Develop Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 2 Portrait

Bob Le Sueur (Stories)

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Robert (Bob) Le Sueur is an occupation survivor from Jersey who has been credited for his role the escape and survival of multiple Russian prisoners who were held in Jersey. For this and other Humanitarian work he did during the occupation he was awarded an MBE, and was on the Queen’s birthday honours list in 2013. When Bob came in he had some great stories to tell about life in the occupation here are some of my favorites:

A Porky interruption: This story starts on the morning of July 1st Bob was awoken to the sound of German planes flying overhead and went to look out at them to see if they had doped bombs again, as they did a few days prior, but they hadn’t they dropped 2 parachutes which at first could be soldiers but were too small. They ended up being containers that held a message to the leader of the military of the island. The message said that if the island wasn’t to surrender within 24 hours it would be carpet bombed which would have almost wiped out the population of Jersey. The states were unsure of the best cause of action as they had heard false propaganda showing the germans as rapists and evil people. The only words of advice that would be given by the crown and the uk government was to ‘do the best for the population’. There was a crowd growing in the royal square in front of the states. To control the crowd a man named Capt. Bentley, who was an affluent businessman within the islands, went out to address the crowd and then started barking orders at them. Telling them to get into line and quiet down. In this moment of great tension as Bob described it a bird flew over top and then relieved itself all over the captains pork pie hat, the crowd then erupted with laughter. Bob says this was a heaven sent message to relax the people and break the tension.

The Slavic Soiree: For this story bob talked about a party that he was involved in. He didn’t say what it was specifically for but he said that they had them for everything from the last day of having a gas supply to people’s birthdays. Bob then enlightened us on the best way to make sure that everyone that comes to your party has a good time. He said “invite guests that haven’t eaten properly in months, cook a rabbit and then serve them calvados” which is a sort of distilled cider that had a higher proof than vodka. At this party there was one man who lived with them who was a Russian escapee. Before the party however this man had gotten into the calvados which meant that his Slavic side came out and then he started doing ‘Gopak’ dancing and singing slavic folk songs at the top of his lungs in the middle of town. As he was doing this a German patrol passed by but luckily they were singing their own chants so the Russian couldn’t be heard.

Bullet Bike: This story took place on liberation day. Bob, the Russian from the previous story, one of the people the Russian lived with and two girls were all together when they got the news that there was an American destroyer that had been spotted passing Normint point and at this point they all knew that there had been an armistice signed for the western war (Japan was still going at it). When they got this news they all got on their bikes and then went to cycle out to the end of Victoria pier. On the way however, some misfortune befell Bob, when he was going past the German tunnel entrance that was filled with weapons and guarded by two soldiers, which is located opposite the old lifeboat station or the rowing club, his bike tyre which was made of a hose pipe as there were no more tyres the clasp that held it together snapped. This sound was comparable to that of a gunshot which made the German guards anxious and could have almost gotten Bob killed but they saw what had happened and was ok. When he looked up to see if his friends had stopped for him they were almost gone already, he said this was fine though as they saved him a good spot to watch the destroyer come in to St Aubins bay.

‘Bob collecting his MBE’
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portrait historical artist REFERENCE

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Leonardo da Vinci is arguably the most famous painter to ever live, most of his work was painting portraiture he painted standard and formal portraits mainly this is when the main focus is the model in the frame, they have nice clothes on. The framing was normally done by thirds for lots of his work with the shoulders and upper torso taking up one third and then the head and the empty space above the head taking up the rest. He has the subject doing different poses and facial positioning in most of his paintings, some are looking straight then others to the side some are looking forward with different body positions and have their shoulders facing off to the side.

Image result for Leonardo da Vinci portrait paintings

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas

War Tunnels Visit

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Background information: During world war 2 the crown and the british government demilitarized the channel islands leaving it defenceless. The war tunnels were made by the nazis as a field hospital. The tunnel was carved in the hill by over 5,000 slaves and other forced labour workers. There are over 1,000 of tunnels and they go more than 50m deep underground. The tunnel is now a tourist attraction telling the stories of the people who lived in Jersey during the occupation both civilian and German. There are also other attractions on the site like an escape room and a cafe.

Planning: For this shoot I will need to be prepared for how dark it will be, if it was a private area and I had a large amount of time I would bring a lighting rig or atleast a speedlight but as it is a busy day and is open to the public I will just have to try my best to fix any lighting problems in camera. I am fortunate as I have a camera that is able to go to a high iso as a maximum and then the lower iso grades will be sharper where as other cameras may struggle more in the low light.

Editing:

From 116 images I then narrowed it down to this selection of 15 by looking at things like lighting, composition and other fine details.
Then out of those 16 i selected my 6 final images. Was based on factors like if the subject was the same in two images which looked the best.
I then edited those six coming out with 6 final images that are all in colour as I thought that they were already too dark and I didn’t want them to be mostly black.

For my final images they all have quite warm lighting, i think this fits the aesthetic I was going for because everything I photographed is quite old or is made to look old and then the older style of lighting is tungsten which gives off a very warm light.

This image shows the warm aesthetic that is synonymous with the wartime. It is also composed as a top down and was taken from just next to the light source, it also has the typewriter framed slightly to the bottom to show the details on the desk. There is also a natural vignette because of the way the light was shaped.
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Photomontage

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To make my edits I first chose some of my images and then converted them to black and white then I selected the background ares, so the sections that aren’t in the foreground and then I found an archival image that matched the theme of my image. So if the image was looking over the land it would be an archival image of a battlefield.

This image was taken of a large bunker then I superimposed it onto a image of some U.S troops landing on a beach. The reason was is that the image I took was overlooking the sea and beach.
This image offered some problems, when I went down into the bunker there was a lot of details that I wanted in the photo but it was a small space so I put on a fisheye lense, which gave me a wider field of view and showed more detail.
AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas

Batterie Lothringen Photoshoot

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When at Batterie Lothringen I found that the sky in that day was very dramatic with large clouds that have breaks in them and have light shining through them, for this reason I made an effort to get large amounts of sky in most of my images and took most outside. Also the lighting inside of the museum wasn’t very good.

Here are the unedited images that I thought could be taken to editing.

After selecting these images I then used colours to select further some final images.

The green images are the ones that I Believe that I could take into editing as they have good composition and potential.

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Occupation Family history

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The history of my family is massively based around the occupation, there were six people from my direct family that were alive during the occupation, this was my grandmother and great grandmother and her husband, and my grand father and great grandfather and his wife. There is a plethora of stories about things about my grandfather during the occupation a she lived very actively and hated the Germans ans wasn’t afraid to act upon that hatred.

This is my grandfathers registration card (Denis John Hairon)

The first was when he was about 15 him and his friends got wind of a Pig that a group of high ranking Jersey officials and a few of the high up Nazis within the island were fattening up to have a feast, once they had confirmed this they all (about 8 of them) all marched up to Queens valley woods where the pig was being kept. Going up there a few of them including my grandfather had their rifles with them, this is significant as if the Germans had seen them with their guns they would have been shot on sight, but they took them with them anyways as they thought the Germans might have tried to kill them to get the cow as they were just as hungry. Once they had the pig they took it back to Gory and it butchered then shared out the meat between as many people as they could.

Another story from my Grandfathers time in the occupation was that he was a fisherman the whole time with his dad, he used to row the boat out into Gory bay. He had been doing it for years before the occupation but because of the rationing and the hard conditions within the final year of the occupation he had to stop as he didn’t have the energy to do it any more.

The final main story is the one about the relationship between my grandparents as they had both known each other for years before as her mother was the fishmonger that my granddad and his dad brought their catch to. During the occupation they started seeing each other and their relationship became official on liberation day at the end Albert pier when they could see the american warship coming in to liberate them.