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AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Tableaux&Staged Reality 2

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EXPLORING TABLEAUX/STAGED REALITY PART 2

In this part of the project I focused mainly on staged reality, as I was re creating these paintings

These 3 images are the ones we chose as a class to explore as they were some of our favorites. We chose these images due to the different angles of lighting within the images and the angle the photo has been taken from. The meaning behind these images is strong.

Image result for Eugene Delacroix ‘Leading the PeopleEugene Delacroix ‘Leading the People’

Image result for Caravaggio ‘Deposition’Carravagio ‘Deposition’

David La Chapelle ‘The Last Supper’

MY RESPONSE; 

When taking these photos, we had an allocated director, photographer and lighting person, along with the cast of the image. The director was there to order the photo, in order to get out image as close to the one we were copying. It took many tries to get a good image because there was many people to order and the lighting had to be perfect, along with the photographer getting their settings correct to make sure the photo looked sharp and clean.

This photo is my favorite response from experimenting with Caravaggio’s photo ‘Deposition’. As I feel that the characters are in the right place and the image is sharp. We added our own twist on this image, by dressing the person being held in a gorilla suit, just to make it more creative and give it our own feel. 

When photographing the ‘Leading the People’ by Eugene Delacriox, we struggled getting the lighting in the right places to highlight the right parts of the image. I chose to show these two images from this shoot, because the first one has the lighting in the right place, but the whole frame wasn’t shot. Whereas in the second photo you can see the whole frame with acceptance of the flooring slighting in the photo, but that could easily be edited out. 

The final shoot we did was to reenact the image by David La Chapelle, ‘The Last Supper’. When photographing this image I was in charge of the lighting, I had to have a light in front of the set up and also one from behind to create the type of lighting that was created in the original.

EVALUATION

During this second part of investigating tableaux/staged reality we had to set up the people as they photo had theirs set up, we also had to get the correct lighting to make the photo look something like the original. I found staged reality very difficult because, I like being able to have freedom to change things and set things how I want, whereas in this part we had to follow an image. In staged reality and tableaux there isn’t room for you to do what you like and have the ability to be creative. It was frustrating as it took a while to get characters in the right place and then along with the lighting, it was too boring.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 2 Portrait

Tableaux Vivants and Staged Reality

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Tableaux:  A group of models or motionless figures representing a scene from a story or from history; a tableau vivant.

A tableau vivant is French for ‘living picture’, is a static scene containing one or more actors or models. They are stationary and silent, usually in costume, carefully posed, with props and/or scenery, and may be theatrically lit. It thus combines aspects of theatre and the visual arts.

A tableau may either be ‘performed’ live, or depicted in painting, photography and sculpture, such as in many works of the Romantic, Aesthetic, Symbolist, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau movements.

Image result for tableaux photography caravaggio
Ludovica Rambelli Teatro recreate paintings by Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio

Above shows a tableaux photograph by the theatre company Ludovica Rambelli Teatro recreating one of Caravaggio’s paintings that would have been drawn from live actors.  Many tableaux photographs are responded to and from paintings.

Below shows a different tableaux photography by Ryan Shude, his work is not so much recreated from paintings but is still set up and staged.

Image result for tableaux photography
Ryan Schude

Class Response

As a class we produced a response to the painting ‘The Raft Of Medusa’.  This is an example of tableaux photography, with the resources we had we tried to recreate this in a well way.

Image result for raft of medusa
The Raft of Medusa
Own Response
AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 2 Portrait

Studio Photography – Image Manipulation

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As far as editing goes I decided to be subtle with this image mainly focusing on adjusting levels and color balance. I mainly tried to emphasize the Rembrandt lighting and the slight orange reflection the the sleeve of the white tee shirt. I did this in order to avoid a tacky looking image while still incorporating a sense of drama into the image. Due to the composition of the image i decided to slightly de-saturate the image as I believe the less vibrant tones better compliment the metallic chains.

Here I decided to experiment with the dodge/burn tool and as a result of this I decided to make the image black and white in order to hide any undesirable changes to color caused by this. I also used the channel mixer in conjunction with the saturation tool to create a softer looking image while still maintaining a reasonable amount of contrast. I also cropped the Image to better fit the Fibonacci curve in order to lead the viewers eye through the image.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Album cover responses

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This photo is my recreation of the ‘Lil Boat’ album cover by Lil Yachty. In the original the artist’s clothing, boat, and frame are all very similar shades of red. Whereas in my version all of those elements are yellow, this is because I used a yellow raincoat in the shoot which meant i had to make every previously red element yellow. The original photo was taken in front of a green screen, then edited into the backdrop of the original album cover. I used the content aware brush to remove the artist from the picture and placed a picture of my friend. I used the colour range function to select the boat along with its shadow and change it to yellow. To change the colour of the frame I created a yellow layer the size of the whole cover, then moved it so that it was in front of the original red frame, but behind the image in the centre. I then applied some colour filters to the image of my friend and slightly blurred the edges to make him seem more authentic as part of the photo.

This is what the original cover looked like.
The green screen in the background is a bit creased towards the bottom, but luckily there is a lot of contrast between it and the trousers so it was easy to edit out the background.
This is the photo of my friend after I had removed the green screen, this is before any colour correction or editing was done so it there is a feint green outline and some green reflections.
This is the original album cover with the artist removed from where he was standing on the boat. I left his shadow in the water is it was easier to give it a yellow tint instead of erasing it all together and replacing it with a feint image of my friend.
This is the album cover with my friend placed in.
Here the frame has been coloured yellow, I used the eye drop tool to match the colour of it to the coat, this makes the photo more relaxing to look at because there is less variety of tones.

This is my take on the ‘starboy’ album cover. I had to change the colours as the blue colour scheme wouldn’t work as well as in the original because of my friend’s ethnicity. I also had to change the positioning of his hands because he has a different hairstyle and colour to the artist. If his hands were in the same pose they would stand out a lot more against his hair; which wouldn’t have the same effect. Also, due to his hair being longer his fingers would be covered up by his hair if he slid them up his head; which would also be less effective than the original album cover.

The original album cover, it has a much different colour scheme to my version, but these colours work well only in the original because of the artist’s and my model’s ethnicity. The theme of blue-lit black is possible here due to his dark skin tone. There is also a parental advisory tag in the bottom right due to the contents of the album, I didn’t include this in my version because I had already used that tag in previous covers in this project and i didn’t want to repeatedly use them.

This is a work-in-progress edit of the photo which I decided to abandon because it looked too __ and didn’t fit the theme of the cover. My idea behind it was to make everything light colours apart from the eyes and cross (this is the opposite of what they did in the original album cover; everything dark apart from eyes and cross), I edited the eyes first and realised that the idea didn’t really work out so I didn’t bother editing the rest of it.

 

This is my take on the cover of ‘Falacy’ By Raheem Bakare. I have kept the basic composition very similar. However, I have changed around the angles, colours, and used different layers in the photo. I changed the overlays to purple as it complements the brighter skin tone more than red. I have overlayed images of crumpled paper, sound amplifiers, and strip lights, and there is a torn corner with autumn leaves behind it. I also took the photos in front of a subway background to match the urban look of the original cover.

This is the original album cover for ‘Fallacy’. It has a lot of layers placed on top of each other; which fills in the empty space which the main photo would otherwise have. There are plenty gray/dull coloured layers and red elements to highlight the artist’s head, title of the album, as well as leaves in the bottom left corner.

This is the original photo, it doesn’t have the same effect as the finished product as there is too much empty space in the background, the person is standing in the middle, in addition to there only being one layer present, which is the photo itself.

This is my recreation of the ‘Nice For What’ cover by Drake, I posterized it to create blocks of light/dark. I then applied a pink colour block to all the white areas of the photo to match the original again. However, I applied a much darker shade of pink to make the cover pop more as a whole, it also makes the writing in front of it easier to read.  I then cropped the photo to show a close up of two faces like the original cover. The writing is in two different fonts, with a lot of spacing added between the letters so that they fill out more of the box and appear more bold. The final step was adding the parental advisory stamp in the bottom right corner to match the original.

This is the original ‘Nice For What’ album cover, it’s edited so that you can’t really tell what’s going on but it’s possible to make out the main shapes and the title in the middle.

 

This is the original photo, I chose to take it in front an urban background in hope to achieve some distortion in the background after I applied the filters.

This is the image after I had edited it, but before cropping and adding and lettering. As you can see there is distortion in the background due to its texture, however its only present around the outer edges, so it wasn’t visible in the final cover after I had cropped it.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Uncategorized, Unit 2 Portrait

Response to TOM HUNTER

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The Image we were Imitating

Contextual Reasons: Tom and his neighbours were receiving letters addressed to “Persons Unknown” saying they are non longer welcome to live in semi-derelict squats from the local council. Tom therefore wanted to capture “the dignity of squatter life” in order to show the council that these were real people they were putting in danger and that they would be greatly impacting their lives.

In the end his famous image ” Woman Reading a Possession Order,”  got a dialogue going with the council – and they infact managed to save the houses.

References:

The book we found the image we were studying and re-enacting is called “Tom Hunter”. It is a collection of images from different projects of his which includes work from, Tom Hunter and the modern world, Persons Unknown, Traveller Series and Life and Death in Hackney.

Here is a link to an article written about Tom and his Persons Unknown project which gives deeper contextual reasons and some background behind the photos.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/04/photography-tom-hunter-best-shot

Action Plan

We first gathered props such as the headphones, water bottle, chairs, table and cloth and bottle cap. These props were all intended to give our image the likened look to the real picture captured by Hunter.

We then sat each other in the correct positions in order to have each of the three people sat in exactly the same position as the models in the photograph and they posed with similar facial expressions.

Technical Features – We then set the camera to an ISO of 800 and made the shutter speed faster to 1/10 second. There was a slightly higher shutter speed so the image was sharp incase any of the models moved slightly.

Contact Sheet

Final Image Response:

Visual Features – These include a fairly plain range of colours being mostly greys, whites and creams with a lighter tone due to the side lighting and a strong contrast between the shaded and non-shaded areas . There is quite a large depth of field and 3D effect created due to the fact that the 3 models in the photo are all sat at different distances from the camera, meaning that their shadows create a visual element of distance when the shadows are overlapped.

AO1 Develop Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Street Photography- Bruce Gilden and Robert Frank

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About Bruce Gilden: 

Bruce Gilden was born in 1946 in Brooklyn, America. In 1968  during his early stages of work life he began studying sociology at Penn State, he went and watched one of Michelangelo Antonioni’s film coming out of the film extremely inspired and bought his first camera and started to take photography classes during the evening at the School of Visual Arts of New York City. This is where Gilden turned his career in to a photography career. Gilden originally worked with flash photography and initially used only black and white colors soon to be introduced to he world of color when he had his first look at the Leica S camera as part of Magnum’s Postcards From America project. Gilden has now been a member of the Magnum Photos since 1998.

Bruce Gilden’s first major job with photography was of people at Coney Islands. This is where he found his true love for photography  and the type of photography he most enjoys. He was assigned to take photos of normal people walking down the streets of New York City for example, homeless people, gang members anyone really who was there at the time.

Robert Frank

Robert Frank born on 9th November 1924 in Switzerland. His mother called Rose Franks and Father called Hermann Franks. Robert Franks started photography in 1941, and followed this up with spending the next several years working for  commercial photography and graphic design studio in Zurich, Geneva and Basel. After returning back to Switzerland he headed straight off to America in 1947, where he was spotted by a man called  Alexey Brodovitch who offered him a job as a fashion photographer at Harper’s Bazaar. In 1949, the new editor of camera magazine, Walter Laubli , published a substantial portfolio of Jakob Tuggener pictures made at upper-class entertainments and in factories, alongside the work of much younger Frank who had just returned to  Switzerland after two years abroad, with pages including some of his first pictures from New York. He soon left to travel in South America and Europe. He created another hand-made book of photographs that he shot in Peru, and returned to the U.S. in the 1950s. In 1953, he returned to New York and continued to work as a freelance photojournalist for magazines including McCall’s, Vogue and Fortune. Associating with other photographers like Saul Leiter and Diane Arbus. During the 1940s and 1950s he helped form what Jane Livingston has termed The New York School of photographers.

Some of Robert Franks work:

 

 

 

 

 

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Unit 2 Portrait

Tableaux Vivants

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What is tableaux vivants?

The phrase itself is a French phrase which translates to ‘living picture’. A tableaux vivant is a static scene where there is a singular or multiple models telling some sort of story. These paintings and images are usually well thought out, not only in terms of lighting and camera settings but also in terms of costume, positioning, background as all these factors contribute to the message being sent across to the receiver of the image. This type of imagery combines aspects of theatre and photography to create a staged reality.

The Entombment of Christ (Deposizione) (1601-3)

In this Tableaux we can see these two men lifting up another man, who seems to be dead. You then have two woman who are in the background, almost caring for the man. The woman in the top right corner seems like she is praying or calling for god in order to make sure the dead man is safe. The other woman seems as if she is taking in the fact the man is dead and is morning over his death. The clothes worn by the models tell us that the scene is set in the olden day. The background is completely black which allows the viewers attention to be solely focused on the scene being portrayed in the foreground. It also portrays the idea that the dead man is in an empty void, as that is the general consent with death now a days. The most lit up area of the tableaux is the dead man who is located in the center of the frame, the other people then get less lit the further away they are from the man. This lighting technique implies that the man is the main focus point, and that he was someone who may have been considered important at that time. The lighting also seems to be creating a chiaroscuro effect on some of the models allowing a contrast of tonal regions to be presented in the image. The prominent formal elements found in this image is tone, shape and texture which is shown throughout the bodies found in the foreground in the image. Due to this being a painting no photography techniques have been applied. However, analysis it as if it was a photograph the ISO is low as there is no intended  noise within the image. Moreover, the shutter speed is likely to be quick and the aperture is small as not much light is being let into the image. Finally, the depth of field is large as it is all in focus. Contextually, the image was painted for a church not long after the death of Saint Peter. Saint Peter was said to be cruicified Moreover, the people surrounding him are religious people who are lowering him into his tomb.

The traditional feast days of Saint Peter are:

  • January 18, Feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Rome
  • March 19, Feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Antioch
  • June 29, Feast of Saints Peter and Paul
  • August 1, St. Peter in Chains
  • November 18, Feast of the Dedication of the Basilicas of Saints Peter and Paul

Taken from: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Saint_Peter

I can now see an emotional attachment and story which is being presented within this oil painting. Viewers who are more religious may find this image more meaningful and empowering than I do. However, after researching this image I understand that a successful Tableaux needs to tell a story and create an emotional attachment with the receiver of the image

As a class we decided to do a group photo shoot based on ‘Entombment of Christ (Deposizione) (1601-3) ‘. This allowed me to understand the thought process that I need to use when going on to create my Tableaux image. I learnt that all aspects play a massive role within making the image. The photographs where taken in the studio with artificial lighting.

Contact Sheets

Final Outcome

This final outcome was successful as it looks very similar to the original painting. The lighting is similar as well as the poses and postures. However, the costumes used are not the same which sort of ruins the old day effect. To edit these images I decided the level the images and adjust to make the image darker allowing the background of this image like the painting

 

 

Eugene Delecroix ‘Leading the people’

We also decided to re create Eugene Delecroix ‘Leading the people’ as another example of Tableaux photography. This is another painting taken from what seems to be the french accomplishing something, almost like the war which is suggested by the guns and dead people. The reason for doing another tableaux with the class was to ensure that I knew exactly what I was doing for my own tableaux.

Contact Sheets

Final Outcome

This was the best outcome taken from this photo shoot. There is a clear spotlight on the model in the center to ensure she is the main focus point, like she is in the original painting. I ensured the background was black, as we did not have the background of the original image. The main difference between the original and my image is that the props and clothes are different which somewhat ruins the overall effect. To edit these images I just adjusted the levels and curves to ensure the sharpness was accurate.

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Hannah Starkey

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Hannah Starkey is a contemporary British photographer who is best known for her images of women in staged settings. Starkey says that her own photographs are 'explorations of everyday experiences and observations of inner city life from a female perspective'. The women featured in them are either actresses or anonymous strangers who she asks to pose. Hannah Starkey's photographs reconstruct scenes from everyday life with the concentrated stylisation of film. Her images picture women engaged in regular routines such as loitering the streets, sitting in cafes or shopping. She captures in between moments of daily life with a sense of relational detachment. Starkey often uses composition to intensify this sense of personal and emotional disconnection, with arrangements of lone figures.
My Response

To respond to Hannah Starkey's photography style, I decided to recreate some of  her tableaux photographs. Before capturing an image, I would show the subject the photo I wanted to recreate so she could pose in a similar way. To replicate her style and create a sense of relational detachment through the image, I (as the photographer) captured the subject from a distance to create a disconnection.
Photo shoot #1

 
Photo Shoot #2

  
Photo Shoot #3

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, AO4 Present Ideas, Component 1 Personal Investigation, Uncategorized, Unit 2 Portrait

Tableaux Vivants Recreation

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THE RAFT OF MEDUSA: 

WORK STRATEGY: 

WHO – for this  photo shoot, there were multiple models in order to recreate the raft of medusa.

WHAT – the main objective of this photo shoot was to try and stage the raft of medusa, adopting similar mannerisms as the people depicted in the painting.

WHEN – the images were taken during school time, indoors where artificial lighting as used ti light the room.

WHERE -the images were captured inside a classroom.

WHY – to understand the ways in which to direct people and think about aspects such as mannerisms, lighting, facial expressions and positioning.

HOW – I used my regular DSLR camera for this photo shoot, using the artificial lighting provided.

IMAGE ANALYSIS:

VISUAL: 

The recreation of our image includes a lot of similar aspects as the original, trying to recreate similar facial expressions and positions as the subjects in the painting. Central in the image is main subject, holding up and waving a cloth to try and get attention, it is the first thing that the eye is drawn to due to the height at which the subject is at, towering above almost everyone else in the image. There is a sort of power play going on in the image, with two of the subjects being above everyone. This positioning is trying to convey the different states of the people on the raft, some healthier than others, whilst some are on the brink of death. We used a few extra props and stood on the table to symbolize the raft, and used a coat to symbolize the sail.

TECHNICAL: 

The classroom environment we were in made it difficult to capture a similar lighting as in the image. There were direct lights which were pointing from up above, to try and correct this and create chiaroscuro lighting, we only kept one light in the room on .In order to have a very crisp and sharp image, a tripod was used to stabilize the camera whilst the image was being taken. The limited lighting in the room meant that the ISO had to be fairly high, being set to 6400 to avoid being under exposed, furthermore the f/stop used for this shoot was also quite large at f/3.4.

CONCEPTUAL: The Raft of the Medusa (French: Le Radeau de la Méduse) is an oil painting of 1818–19 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791–1824). Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. At 491 cm × 716 cm it is an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today’s Mauritania on 2 July 1816. On 5 July 1816, at least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practised cannibalism. The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain.

CONTEXTUAL:

Géricault chose to depict this event in order to launch his career with a large-scale uncommissioned work on a subject that had already generated great public interest. The event fascinated him, and before he began work on the final painting, he undertook extensive research and produced many preparatory sketches. He interviewed two of the survivors and constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. He visited hospitals and morgues where he could view, first-hand, the colour and texture of the flesh of the dying and dead. As he had anticipated, the painting proved highly controversial at its first appearance in the 1819 Paris Salon, attracting passionate praise and condemnation in equal measure. However, it established his international reputation, and today is widely seen as seminal in the early history of the Romantic movement in French painting.

TOM HUNTER: 

IMAGE ANALYSIS: 

VISUAL:

The image below holds a lot of emotional attachment. The baby on the bottom left corner is only noticed after really looking at the image for an extended period of time as the mother is the focal point of the image. The eye is first drawn to her rather than the surroundings. The color in this image is also very bright and saturated. The overall feeling of the image is bright and colorful with the light coming in from the window and the bright lemon colored wall in the background of the image. There is a lot of natural light hitting the front of the model’s face, giving the image a very natural and organic look, as if somebody was simply documenting the woman’s day. The baby in the bottom left corner of the image adds a lot of emotion, yet at the same time blends in with the environment, almost as if it has been forgotten. The subject in the image is not making eye contact with the camera and does not have any clear facial expression suggesting that possibly a sense of shock has hit her, and she is frozen in time. The image almost feels like an invasion of privacy from the angle from which it is taken and the lack of contact made with the camera.

TECHNICAL: 

 The exposure of this image is very balanced, with the highlights and shadows working together to create a very harmonious image. The way in which the natural lighting hits the subject from the left hand side of the image suggests that no additional lighting equipment has been used in this photo shoot. Again making this type of photography seem more documentary style. The colors in this image are also well balanced, possibly being more on the over saturated side as the orange clothing on the baby is very visible and bright. There is a clear foreground, mid-ground and background, with the baby being in the foreground, the woman reading the letter in the mid-ground and the shelf and wall in the background.

CONCEPTUAL: 

Filipa had just had her first baby. We spent the whole day trying things out: we had a bowl of fruit, then we tried some curtains, then incorporated the baby. The light was perfect, a late winter sun coming through the window, really low, like the northern European light.

I used a large-format camera, which really captures that light. And I used the Supachrome process to print it – old-fashioned even then. The exposure was about a second, so it was like sitting for a painting: she had to stand still. I was waiting for the light to pour into the lens, rather than snapping at something.

I phoned her up last week and she’s still happy with the picture. It’s a record of her, her child and her home at the time. The great thing is, the picture got a dialogue going with the council – and we managed to save the houses.

CONTEXTUAL:  

I was living in Hackney in London, in a whole street of squats, having spent two years travelling around Europe in a doubledecker bus. Everyone got a letter addressed to “persons unknown”. The council wanted to knock down the street and build warehouses. The Tories had brought in the Criminal Justice Act, which was designed to stop parties. Every time you saw a picture of a squatter or a traveler, it was to go with a story about how antisocial they were. I just wanted to take a picture showing the dignity of squatter life – a piece of propaganda to save my neighborhood.

I took this in 1997, for my master’s degree show at the Royal College of Art. The 17th-century golden age of Dutch painting had had a massive impact on me: the way they dealt with ordinary people, not kings, queens and generals. I thought if I could borrow their style for squatters and travellers, it would elevate their status. In this shot, inspired by Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, my next-door neighbour is reading the possession order.

RULE OF 3RD’S:  

This image follows the rule of 3rd s, as can be seen when we divide the image into blocks. The woman is sectioned mostly in the last third of the image, yet the letter she is holding positions itself in the very center of the image, becoming a very clear focal point of the image.