John Rankin is a British photographer well known for his work with various celebrities. He specializes in portrait, fashion photography and some work in directing. in 2011 he started Rankin Film in order to direct and produce his own directorial and commercial work. Many consider his work to be rather vain with there being little meaning behind his images as he focuses on composing the most aesthetically pleasing image.
Much of his work uses soft single point lighting however he has experimented with various lighting techniques in the past. he consistently uses soft lighting however to best compliment the subject of his photography, since harsh lighting could produce unwanted shadows on someones face. since he focuses on ‘glamour’ photography it is important that he portrays his subjects at their very best and so soft lighting is used.
Since he often uses single point lighting he will frequently use a reflector in order to cast soft lighting to soften any harsh shadows and create a light glow on parts of the face which aren’t direct lit. this allows him to use other techniques such as combining a low ISO with a long shutter time in order to create high contrast/vibrancy images without the risk of harsh shadows across the face.
Much of the ‘visuals’ of Rankin’s photography is achieved by experimenting with lighting however retouching is still used.
An example of Rankin’s editing, focused on achieving a conventionally ‘beautiful’ piece
Most studio photography typically uses a solid fill background with various lighting techniques. soft lighting will often be used when working with portraiture however different photographers will experiment with various techniques. Such as chiaroscuro lighting which involves only lighting one side of the subjects face, this is similar to Rembrandt lighting however this leaves a triangle on his cheek lit.
For this image I used light-room to lightly retouch the image, below you can see the settings that I changed. the only edit not shown in this screenshot is that I cropped the image slightly. This however can be seen in the comparison between the original and the retouched image. I mainly played with the exposure, black and white levels in order to produce an overall lighter image.
Throughout this photo-shoot I stuck with a large aperture in order to create a strong depth of field in order to give more of a feel of importance to the subjects. This helped to prevent images in which there was a lot going on in the background from looking messy, the softer lines in the background allow the subject to be more pronounced creating a more coherent image.
Of the images taken I have chosen to work further into eight in particular. These are IMG_4511, IMG_4542, IMG_4547, IMG_4548, IMG_4554, IMG_4557, IMG_7553 and IMG_4568
For most of the images I decided to keep very subtle with any retouching, this was in order to accurately capture the feeling of the town environment. I mainly focused on lightly adjusting color temperature, cropping and some changes to brightness/ contrast. On the first image of my selection however I decided to make the image black and white and introduce some light uniform grain. I like the soft lighting in all the images i selected and decided to lightly enhance that in some of the images. I tried to keep contrast and saturation rather low (while still being high enough to not result in an image that looks washed out or overexposed) in place of brightness in order to make the images feel more welcoming.
Who: I will be photographing any interesting townspeople of Jersey.
What: I will be taking candid photos of people throughout town as well as trying to capture the idea of movement and excitement in the town. I will likely stage a few photographs for more aesthetically pleasing shots in areas however the majority of the photos will be candid.
Where: I will be taking photos along king street as well as some of some of the outskirts of the town for some slightly grittier images.
Why: I believe that the best street photography are candid images since they effectively capture the subjects personality and mannerisms.
Street Photography is a form of photography that involves, as the name suggests, photographing interesting scenes in the streets. Photographers such as Bruce Gilden heavily explored street photography with Bruce in particular becoming a very prominent figure in photography due to his work with him becoming a member of an elite group of photographers known as Magnum Photographers. They often employed a more objective approach to their work while still taking artistic liberties. When successfully executed these photos can very effectively portray socio-economic status and can really say a lot about someone as they often capture a candid moment which can show the facade that people will apply when in public in order to not expose any insecurities or appear vulnerable.
While street photography is often considered a form of portrait, not all portraiture necessarily needs to feature a human subject in the frame and there are various examples of creative examples of portraiture of still life subjects with either no human presence or minimal presence in order to push a particular message.
For my tableaux I decided to respond to the work of Paul M. Smith, and so I set up a tripod and used a remote for the camera in order to avoid any movement in the camera in order to allow the merging of the images to be done a lot more easily and convincingly. I decided to avoid my subjects overlapping in the images in order to prevent any unnatural lines around the edges of the subjects. I did allow the subjects to overlap in one area however in order to create a more convincing product. It was important that the lighting remained the same throughout the images which was difficult to do since I was using some natural lighting in parts of the image, in order to avoid issues further down the line, I took the images using natural light first and close together in time in order to prevent interference from cloudy weather.
I placed all of the photos taken into a single Photoshop file and separated them into layers, I then rubbed out everything expect for the subject and some of the background in order to allow for easier blending and interaction with shadows/ reflections. I used rather flat lighting for most of the image in order to allow for ease of hiding any color/ lighting mismatching. Any color differences were adjusted in Photoshop and then hidden using a feathered eraser. The image was slightly color corrected as I found areas such as the chairs to be over-saturated.
What: I will recreate a typical classroom scene featuring myself as the various subjects throughout the photo.
Where: I will be using any available classroom preferably with available natural lighting somewhere in the image.
Why: Since I am only photographing myself, I am able to more accurately create the image I want since I wont have to direct any other subjects, and also if I don’t like how I look in any particular position I only have to retake one image and don’ t have to reset everyone in the image. I also believe that the lighting in the scene will create some interesting challenges such as blending various types of lighting as well as blending shadows from various sources of light and subjects.
Paul M. Smith is a photographer who’s photography mostly consists of an unconventional interpretation of tableaux vivants as his images depict modern scenes with Paul Playing the part of every subject in the photo. A lot of his photography explores the idea of ‘lad culture’. His images feature several frames merged together carefully so it appears that Paul is in several places in the image at once, This is likely done using a tripod and remote in order to avoid any movement to camera, this creates a seamless transition between the images which in some cases, one of his photos will contain as many as 8 frames in a single image. He often pushes the boundaries of what is possible with this type of photography, often featuring interaction between the subjects in the photos, which will often look awkward and it is difficult to be spacially aware of subjects that of course, aren’t actually there however if done correctly can make the images much more convincing. The image below is an example of this, you can see 6 subjects very close together overlapping in different areas, with some of the subjects even touching in areas.
There isn’t much technically special with these images as they are made to look like a typical photo to document a memory etc. This helps to make the image look even more convincing. It is taken using very flat lighting (likely using a flash) to help hide any seems between the images and there are visible drop shadows interacting with the various subjects in the photo likely added in post processing in a program such as photo-shop.
Original
Retouched
My Personal Favorite of the selected images ^
