This is my favourite photo by Bruce Gilden; mainly because of the genuine expressions on the women’s faces. The photo also captures textures and motion really well. It being black and white helps focus attention on the facial expressions instead of the background.This is a photo of what Bruce Gilden looks like.
Bruce Gilden is a street photographer who is most known for his up-close photographs of people. He was born in Brooklyn in 1946 and has received many awards including the ‘European publishers award for photography’. The main reason for him starting photography is the film ‘blowup’. Being influenced by this movie, he went and bought his first camera and started attending night school photography classes.
He doesn’t try to be discrete at all when taking photos. He prefers to approach people and take photos of their initial reaction. He also aims to take photos of people who either stand out, or people he can portray as different.
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. He was also one of the founding members of Magnum Photos in 1947.
This idea of capturing the decisive moment can definitely be seen in this photo; if the photo was taken a fraction of a second later the person in the foreground would have stepped in the standing water, which would have caused ripples and ruined the clarity of the reflection on the water.
These two photographers are very different but they have one thing in common, they both focus on the decisive moment. For Henri Carter that is the whole frame (like described in the photo above), and for Bruce Gilden it’s the moment people react to him taking a photo of them.
When taking pictures, being able to determine the intensity, colour and direction of light will help you to know how to position your subject and which camera setting to use.
Intensity of the light
The intensity of light is a measure of its harshness or brightness and determines how much light is present in a scene. It can be referred to as the quantity of light. You can estimate how intense light is based on the balance between shadows and highlights. This distinction between highlight and shadow is called contrast. Light is mostly intense at noon when the sun is directly overhead; This means that the contrast is high. On the other hand, light and contrast are less intense early in the morning or evening. Direct intense light can be harsh. You often find these conditions on bright sunny days. Harsh light intensifies the contrast between light and shadows which can result in unflattering images. When using diffused less intense light, contrast is lower and the light is more flattering. When the sun is shining brightly overhead there are a few things you can do to diffuse the lighting:
Find some cover as shade can be a great diffuser. Photograph your subject under the cover. When working in shade make sure the subject is evenly covered by the shade.
If there is no shade in your area you can diffuse the light with a scrim. You place the scrim between your subject and the light source.
Overcast days are good for natural light portrait photography because the cloud cover acts as a natural diffuser
If you are taking images inside and are relying on a window as your light source, move your subject away from the window to lessen the intensity of the light
Direction of the light
Depending on the time of day, the direction of light changes due to the sun’s movement. Knowing where the light is coming will help you know where to position your subject to get the best images. Try positioning your subject with the sun behind them instead of having the sunlight shine directly into the face to light up their features. The backlight this provides will cast nice highlights around the hair.
Temperature of the light and white balance
Colour temperature is the various shades of colour that are produced by different light sources. It is measured on the kelvin scale, from the cooler blue tinged end of the spectrum to the warmer, reddish coloured end. Colour temperature changes throughout the day, depending on the time and the amount of cloud cover. At dawn the sky appears light blue, at sunset the sky appears orange, and at dusk the sky appears violet blue. Our eyes naturally adjust to changes in the colour of light to keep colours looking the same in various lighting situations. Since our cameras don’t do that white balance is important.
These are my final edited images from another photo shoot in the studio. The main purpose of this shoot was to experiment with different lighting techniques/colours.
This is two photos edited together. The original was two different people staring at each other, but I decided to take another darker photo of myself and edit it into the previous one. This give a bright/dark good/bad side effect.
This photo used two-point lighting. A spotlight with a green tint to the left, as well as a ring light positioned directly in front of the camera. The ring light isn’t visible as the camera was placed in the middle of the ring light. This results in a brighter image, but still keeps the colour lighting.
In both this, and the following photo I have used only one light source, this lights the model in the centre evenly with one colour, it also gives a big clear shadow to one side.
In this photo I used two-point lighting. There was a softbox placed to the right side at a slight angle, and a spotlight with a purple cover placed on the other side. This creates a warm and colourful effect.
The same lighting was used for this photo as the previous one. Only in this photo the camera is positioned nearer the purple tinted spotlight, which gives it a bigger overall impact on the face.
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.
The art of destruction: Exploring manipulated studio portraits with Rankin and his collaborators.
Who is Rankin?
“Rankin made his name in publishing, founding the seminal monthly magazine Dazed & Confused with Jefferson Hack in 1992. It provided a platform for emerging stylists, designers, photographers and writers. The magazine went on to forge a distinctive mark in the arts and publishing spheres, and developed a cult status forming and moulding trends. It is responsible for bringing some of the biggest names in fashion to the foreground. Today, Dazed Media is a leading online fashion and cultural brand.
As both a photographer and director, Rankin has created landmark advertising and editorial campaigns. His body of work features some of the biggest and most celebrated publications, brands and charities, including Nike, L’Oreal, Dove, Pantene, Diageo, and Woman’s Aid. He has shot covers for the likes of Elle, Vogue, Esquire, GQ, Rolling Stone and Wonderland.”
What the project is about:
Words from his website –
“This short project formed part of a unit of work entitled Photographic Techniques & Applications with my Year 10 class and took the form of a Controlled Assessment. To celebrate Youth Music’s 10th Birthday, celebrated photographer Rankin asked 70 musicians and visual artists to ‘destroy’ their own portraits. The participants included Joe Strummer, Ian Brown, Marianne Faithfull, Andre 3000, Michael Stipe and Kylie Minogue as well as bands like Pete and the Pirates, The Enemy and The View. For example, Florence Welch drew over her portrait with a metallic pen, inspired by her school days of decorating photos from magazines and Debbie Harry burnt, masked out, painted and stitched-up her picture to make a series of six ‘destroyed’ portraits. Damien Hirst painted over the portrait of Joe Strummer. Asked about this approach he said,“I tried to keep it about him as a person. I kept looking at the thing on the hand, where it said ‘Joe’. Joe Strummer was a great guy who I met, who was much more of a hero in real life. You don’t meet many people like that,”
I was keen to encourage my students to create proficient studio portraits, considering a range of technical issues, before destroying them, thinking about the particular strategies they might use to add other layers of meaning.”
The most basic and important form of light is natural light, generally referring to any light created by sunlight.
Photo by Filipe Costa
In other instances, ambient light (meaning the available light in an environment) can be considered as natural because it isn’t directly influenced by the photographer’s lighting equipment. This usually indicates natural lighting from outside that lights up a room through a window.
BENEFITS OF NATURAL LIGHT:
Natural light is a part of nature. It’s always around even if it’s a cloudy afternoon natural light is always readily available. There’s no equipment you have to buy or set up in order to do an outdoor photo shoot. Artificial light, on the other hand, takes time to set up and can cost the photographer a lot of money should a bulb break or burn out. If you are just beginning your career as a photographer, you are going to want to save money where you can.
NATURAL LIGHT IS EVERYWHERE
Natural light allows the photographer to have fun with locations without movie equipment everywhere. You can use reflectors if you chose, but they aren’t necessary if you don’t want them. Everywhere you go there is always going to be some form of natural light, so photographers don’t have to confine themselves to a studio.
NATURAL LIGHT IS CONSTANT
When you work in a studio, you have to spend time adjusting the lights to match the pose of your subject. Natural light doesn’t have to be adjusted; you will just need to find locations with the best lighting. Of course, the sun is going to set throughout the day so you have to plan around that. However, the setting sun is going to give a chance to create different atmospheres for the photos–depending on what the client wants.
NATURAL LIGHT CREATES ADDS AN AIRY QUALITY
When natural light comes through doors and windows, it can create an airy, romantic feeling to the picture the photographer takes. This effect isn’t as easy to achieve when artificial lights are used.
CLIENTS OFTEN PREFER NATURAL LIGHT
Clients will always have their own ideas of what lighting works best for them, and sometimes they’re right. Wedding photography, for example, is often done outside because natural light is really going to bring out the natural beauty of the bride and the groom. You’re also going to be able to get amazing shots during the final hours of daytime because those rays will really bring out the natural tones in someone’s skin.
Natural light is everywhere so any location can become a photographer’s studio. It’s a free light source so you will never have to worry about buying new bulbs. Natural light will bring out the natural beauty of the subjects, and they will fall in love with your photography. So, for your next photo shoot don’t be afraid to step outside the studio and see what nature has to offer.
Artificial Lighting
What is it?
Lighting or illumination is the deliberate use of light to achieve a practical or aesthetic effect. Lighting includes the use of both artificial light sources like lamps and light fixtures, as well as natural illumination by capturing daylight.
There are four common types of artificial light sources used for photography today
Incandescent
Fluorescent
LED
Studio strobe
The challenges of using natural light are quite similar to those faced when shooting in artificial light. You must still understand how various light sources act upon a subject and how to produce the desired effect. Different sources of light can produce soft or hard light when shooting in a studio, but in this case, the photographer has direct control over elements such as hardness, distance, intensity, and angle. Furthermore, artificial light from different sources yields different color heat signatures. For instance, halogen bulbs are colder and produce a light that is blue in color, while tungsten bulbs, being hotter, produce light with a reddish hue.
Keep in mind that when you use different sources of artificial light, these must produce the same color heat signature. The only exception to this is if you’re shooting in black and white.
Photo by M.G.N. – Marcel
When it comes down to controlling and manipulating light, there are many options within photography, whether you’re dealing with artificial, natural, soft, or hard light. It comes down to understanding how images are affected by different lighting conditions, setting up the desired lighting environment, adjusting your camera settings (e.g., the white balance), and post-processing your picture in programs such as Gimp or Photoshop.
Definitions:
Intensity of the light – Light intensity refers to the strength or amount of light produced by a specific lamp source. It is the measure of the wavelength-weighted power emitted by a light source.
Direction of the light – Direction of light affects shadow placement and where darker/lighter spots are.
Temperature of the light and white balance –
The color of an object is affected by the lighting conditions under which it is viewed. Our eyes and our brain compensate for different types of light—that’s why a white object appears white to us whether it’s viewed in sunlight, under overcast skies or indoors under incandescent or fluorescent light. But digital cameras need help to emulate this process, to compensate for different types of lighting and render a white object white.
Three-point lighting is a standard method used in visual media such as theatre, video, film, still photography and computer-generated imagery. By using three separate positions, the photographer can illuminate the shot’s subject (such as a person) however desired, while also controlling (or eliminating entirely) the shading and shadows produced by direct lighting.
A portrait with three-point lighting: a 300 watt key light, a 150 watt back light, and fill light from a bounce board.
My own aim, action plan and technical features:
The aim for my 3 point lighting shoot was to use 3 different lights to capture a selection of images that demonstrate I can use the technique correctly whilst also trying to create images that are clear, in focus, and presentable. The lights were placed in 3 positions for some, with one in-front, one to the side and one on he other side. In a lot of the other photos there are a light in-front and behind the model and then a light slightly to the left. The technical features of these images included a wider aperture to allow a lot of light into the lens with a quicker shutter speed to keep the images harp incase the models move.
Contact Sheet:
Final Image Outcome:
Visual elements of this image include:
Visual elements of this image include a very simplistic array of colours which mainly consist of whites and yellows. The tone is fairly light and the texture, very smooth. There is a fair depth of field due to the shadows on and around the model which also creates a 3D object effect.
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.
In most cases we can make use of natural or available / ambient light…but we must be aware of different kinds of natural light and learn how to exploit it thoughtfully and creatively.
uses of:
intensity of the light – creates brighter exposures and means that the shadows will be harder.
direction of the light – changing light direction will define the direction of the shadows, as well as create different moods and adds depth to the picture.
temperature of the light and white balance – makes an image warmer (orange) or cooler (blue) to convey different atmosphere.
Using reflectors (silver / gold) – redirects existing light to help the photographer manipulate light.
Using diffusers , tissue paper, colored gels, tracing paper etc – determines the intensity of light in your image as well as the intensity of the shadows.
Front / side / back lighting – frontal lighting will illuminate everything in your image, side lighting means that only one side of your image will be illuminated (this adds atmosphere and depth to the picture), back lighting can be used to make a subject a silhouette as your subject will be obscuring the light.
High Key / low key lighting – high key lighting has a low contrast, very few shadows, high exposure and soft front light. Low key lighting uses high contrast, hard and direct lighting,
Shadows / silhouettes – to show depth or create an atmosphere within the image.
I have been mainly experimenting with artificial lighting during the portrait unit, and have decided to further develop of using natural lighting from the first photo shoot I conducted.
For this photo shoot I decided to conducted outside when the sun had began to come out after a down pour of rain. It was slightly windy as well. I used a silver and a gold reflector to reflect the sunlight onto darker areas of my model, getting rid of the contrast in tones. Due to different areas being lighter and darker my white balance I used varied. I mainly has it on sunny or cloudy. My ISO was low as it stayed of 400 so that no noise was presented on my final images. Moreover, the shutter speed varied again to how lit up the area was. Within this photo shoot I experimented with using different depths of field to have my model in focus and the background slightly out of focus. I also mainly captured head shots of my model, but occasionally took a full body portrait of the modal.
Case Study
Unknown Photographers Work
When I first look at this image my eyes are immediately drawn to the woman who is smiling and staring straight down at the lens of the camera. They then move around the slightly blurred out background which shows that she is exploring some woodlands. Putting the two together I can understand that she is enjoying what she is doing. This is also supported by her straight body posture. The artificial lighting, the sun, is warm which also creates a happy tone towards the image. This photograph shown above has many technical elements which I believe makes it a good photograph. As mentioned before the girl is in focus and the background is out of focus, which means that a narrow depth of field has been created. The shutter speed must have been quick as the image is perfectly focused. This also means that the aperture is likely to be around f/5.6. Moreover, no noise is found within the image meaning that the ISO used is also likely to be low. The lighting is found behind the modal, as that is where the sun is at that time, which means no shadow of the modal is created. However, shadows of the background can be found on the grass. This helps makes the model stand out from the background. In addition, the photograph is presented in black and white which shows us all the color and allows the viewer to appreciate the scenery. From this case study, I have learnt that a good outdoor portrait should be in color, but I may experiment in black and white, it would be nice to use a narrow depth of field and the facial expressions and posture of the model is important.
Contact Sheets
Edits
Within these edits I just adjusted the levels and curves to ensure the photographs where sharp. I believe that these images have been one of the most successful photographs that I have taken so far as they clearly show good camera control, due to the different techniques I have used. In the three edits you are able to see a narrow depth of field as the modal is in focus leaving the background slightly blurred. This ensures that the viewers attention will be focused on. Moreover, the photographs clearly show no intended noise and clearly shows the correct white balance, shutter speed and aperture
This is two photos edited together. The original was two different people staring at each other, but I decided to take another darker photo of myself and edit it into the previous one. This give a bright/dark good/bad side effect.
This photo used two-point lighting. A spotlight with a green tint to the left, as well as a ring light positioned directly in front of the camera. The ring light isn’t visible as the camera was placed in the middle of the ring light. This results in a brighter image, but still keeps the colour lighting.
In both this, and the following photo I have used only one light source, this lights the model in the centre evenly with one colour, it also gives a big clear shadow to one side.
In this photo I used two-point lighting. There was a softbox placed to the right side at a slight angle, and a spotlight with a purple cover placed on the other side. This creates a warm and colourful effect.
The same lighting was used for this photo as the previous one. Only in this photo the camera is positioned nearer the purple tinted spotlight, which gives it a bigger overall impact on the face.
Original
Retouched
My Personal Favorite of the selected images ^
