An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings.
By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.
I chose this piece because it shows my editing, cropping and photography skills. Although it seems to have a lot going on, with multiple different shaped clouds, with the right presentation I can turn it into something abstract. I will most likely cut up the images into rectangles and to switch them around, or I will put a black boarder on top of it, only revealing the parts I want revealed. This work was inspired by Alfred Stieglitz and his cloud works, where he filtered them into black and white and made the contrast between light and dark apparent.
A4 piece:
I chose these two pictures because it shows my skills when using slow shutter speed on a camera, and I liked how it came out. It also reminds me of the photographer Ralph Eugene Meatyard and his blurry black and white figures works. I chose to present them together because they were taken of the same person, using the same settings on the camera, and they hold similarities but are also different. I also believe that the simpleness of these images give it a nice tone, and comply with the abstract unit.
A5 piece:
I chose this image because it shows my photography skills when it comes to using a long lens camera. You can see the details on the leaves, and the editing I did on it made it appear more vibrant and colourful. It also appears to be abstract, which goes well with the unit.
To start my over-exposure piece, I first chose the two images I wanted to use. I looked for two images which might go well together, and at least one that had texture and was considered abstract. I had to make them the same size, so since one was smaller than the other I had to make the smaller one bigger so it covered the entire picture.
I then went and copied my textured one onto my other photo, and lowered the opacity so the bottom layer was visible through the top layer. I adjusted it until I was satisfied with my outcome.
To start with, I went and chose a picture which was abstract, and one I thought was interesting. I then went to layer, went down to new layer, and then chose solid colour and changed it to whatever colour I wanted.
After I got the layer with the colour, I went to opacity and brought it down so I could now see the picture through the top layer. I then went and got the rubber tool, adjusted the edge to what I wanted and used the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ button to change the size of the circle, and then and started to erase parts of the top layer.
Finally, I went and changed the opacity back to 100% and got my finished image.
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form. In addition to his photography, Stieglitz was known for the New York art galleries that he ran in the early part of the 20th century, where he introduced many avant-garde European artists to the U.S.
Examples of his cloud works :
In his work, he takes pictures of instructing and unique forms of clouds, with the light and darks clashing.
Contact sheets:
To take photos with inspiration from Stieglitz’s work, I will be aiming to take pictures of clouds, ones with unique textures and where the sun is trying to break through from behind. I’m also looking for pictures where the lights and darks contrast considerably, and ones which I can turn into an abstract photo.
My chosen photos:
Edited photos:
To edit these photos, I went and put a black and white filter on, and then went and played around with the contrast, exposure and light. I brought the light and exposure down, and increased the contrast to try and replicate Alfred’s works.
My final choices :
I chose these three as my final photographs for this task because I believe they relate the most to Stieglitz’s work. It shows contrast between the lights and darks of the clouds and continues on with his black and white style.
I’ve chosen this image for my mirror effect piece because it includes multiple lines which I can use to create an interesting abstract piece.
To start, I went and doubled the canvas size to make space for the mirror image. I went to image, and then to canvas size. I then went and changed it from centimeters to inches, and then doubled the size of one of the lengths.
I then went and pressed control + j, which copies the image and pastes it as another layer. I then used the select tool to select the top layer, and then pressed control + t, which selects the image and allows you to adjust the size and orientation. I picked the point on the far side to the right, and pulled it across to the left, creating the mirror image.
I could have stopped there, but I decided to develop it further and mirror the image the other way. I repeated the process but did it so it was being flipped upwards instead, and this is one of my finished results.
Ralph Eugene Meatyard lived in Lexington, Kentucky, where he made his living as an optician while creating an impressive and enigmatic body of photographs. Meatyard’s work spanned many genres and experimented with new means of expression, from dreamlike portraits—often set in abandoned places—to multiple exposures, motion-blur, and other methods of photographic abstraction. He also collaborated with his friend Wendell Berry on the book The Unforeseen Wilderness , for which Meatyard contributed photographs of Kentucky’s Red River Gorge.
My photos :
My edited work:
I took some of the photos which I thought could be used in inspiration of Eugene, and put a black and white filter on them. I then used the blur option until I got my desired look.
Keld Helmer-Petersen is a photographer, using various formats, shows in his photographs “a strong leaning towards extreme simplicity and graphic clarity in carefully composed compositions, often silhouetted, but more often than not containing subtle greys in contrast to pure black and white.” He leans more towards simplicity, wanting there to be obvious contrast between the black and whites of the photo.
I went and created my own photos by taking pictures and editing them using the threshold adjustment option, which will change the photos to black and white and will make it look like they’ve been inspired by Peterson’s works.
Original images:
These are the original photos which I chose to use for this assignment. I chose these because they are something I can turn into an abstract photo, and I also think that they would suit with Peterson and his work.
Edited final outcomes:
With these pictures all I used was the threshold adjustment option, and played around with it until I liked them. I like how they came out, however I don’t think they would be something that Kelm would produce. Most of them seem a bit too dark and don’t have near to equal black to white balance.
Albert Renger-Patzsch was a German photographer born on June 22nd, 1897, and was associated with the New Objectivity.
Renger-Patzsch experimented with photography as a teenager. After serving in World War I, he studied chemistry at Dresden Technical College. In 1920 he became director of the picture archive at the Folkwang publishing house in Hagen.
In 1925 Renger-Patzsch began to pursue photography as a full-time career as a freelance documentary and press photographer. He rejected both Pictorialism, which was in imitation of painting, and the experimentation of photographers who relied on startling techniques. In his photographs, he recorded the exact, detailed appearance of objects, reflecting his early pursuit of science. He felt that the underlying structure of his subjects did not require any enhancement by the photographer. In his book Die Welt ist schön, he showed images from both nature and industry, all treated in his clear, transparent style. Such images were closely related to the paintings of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement of painters, who created detached and literal renderings of reality that were so extreme that they produced an eerie effect.
In the early 1930s, Renger-Patzsch taught photography. From the 1940s until his death in 1966, he focused on his own projects, working as a freelance photographer and publishing his photographs. His later subjects included natural landscapes, industrial landscapes, trees, and stones.
The New Objectivity was a movement in German art that arose during the 1920s as a reaction against expressionism. The term was coined by Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub who used it as the title of an art exhibition staged in 1925 to showcase artists who were working in a post-expressionist spirit. As these artists—who included Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, and Jeanne Mammen—rejected the self-involvement and romantic longings of the expressionists, Weimar intellectuals in general made a call to arms for public collaboration, engagement, and rejection of romantic idealism.
Although principally describing a tendency in German painting, the term took a life of its own and came to characterize the attitude of public life in Weimar Germany as well as the art, literature, music, and architecture created to adapt to it. Rather than some goal of philosophical objectivity, it was meant to imply a turn towards practical engagement with the world—an all-business attitude, understood by Germans as intrinsically American.
The movement essentially ended in 1933 with the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis to power.
Albert Renger-Patzsch
This is my favourite photography by Albert Renger-Patzsch. It shows a snake coiled up with an intense stare. I love the details on each individual scale of the snake is visible and clear for us to see, and the dark tone of the picture gives the snake more of a menacing look. The contrasting light and darks of the image makes it look dramatic, and the fact that it’s been cropped to only view its head makes us focus in the detail of its expression and it’s pose.
To produce pictures inspired by his work, I’ll be taking 150+ pictures of objects which might relate to nature, or anything that’s been man made. To copy his effect, after I take my images i’ll be editing them to have a black and white tone, and cropping them to focus on the small details, and to give them as much as a dramatic effect as possible.
I then went and got the rubber tool, adjusted the edge to what I wanted and used the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ button to change the size of the circle, and then and started to erase parts of the top layer.
