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

Image analsis

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Alfried Krupp photographed by Arnold Newman in 1963.

 

Emotional response

I like this image because It looks like a photograph that would have an interesting story or meaning behind it. I feel this way due to the almost sinister feel to the image. Lots of things help to create this atmosphere in the image, like for example how the image is quite dark and also how the man in the image is presented. His pose makes me feel that he may be quite evil, or thinking of something dark.

Visual

This image is really interesting visually too due to lots of aspects. Firstly, the long depth of field means that there is a lot going on in the photo, and it also means there is a lot of detail to notice, which means you are engaged for longer. The lighting also makes this photo successful as it is dark and adds to the mysterious feel of the photo, which also makes the figure look even scarier.

Context

The man in this portrait was Alfried Krupp. He was known for using slave labour to make weapons for the Nazis. Krupp contacted Newman for a portrait but later found out he was Jewish, he no longer wanted Newman  to take his photo. Newman insisted that he take the portraits, and showed Krupp his portfolio of images. After seeing his work, Krupp agreed to let Newman take the images. They both then went to one of Krupp’s factories, where Newman made sure to make Krupp look as evil as he possibly could. When Krupp saw the image he was very angry, and Newman said that as a Jew it was his “own little moment of revenge”.

concept

When I first saw this image, I got the sense that the man being photographed looked quite evil just by the techniques used and without knowing any context. Perhaps Newman was trying to create an underlying concept of trusting your initial feelings about things. I think this because Newman made sure he made Krupp looked sinister so we would all get a gut feeling that something wasn’t right about him, and when finding out the context it turned out to be correct.

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

Environmental portraiture

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As my first experimentation with portraiture didn’t produce many successful outcome I decided to do a 2nd photo shoot in order to get some better photographs. For this photo shoot I plan on taking pictures of my family all out together at a bonfire. I though this would be a good idea as It would be very interesting to capture a family environment dynamic in my images, rather than taking more photographs of people in work environments.

Contact sheet

My most successful outcomes

Analysing my images

Visually, this image is very successful for various reasons. Firstly, both the people are centered in the frame and they’re also both smiling while slightly engaging with the camera. Although they’re not fully looking at the camera, I think the image is still successful as it turned out to be a more candid shot. Another reason why this image is visually pleasing, is because of the emotion in the portrait. It is clear to see that they are both very happy, and their body language shows that they must be very fond of each other.

The technical elements of this image also helped to make It successful. This image was taken with a shutter speed of 1/100 meaning that it wasn’t extremely slow, but still allowing a good enough amount of exposure time for the image not to turn out very dark. I also used flash to take this image as it was dark outside, and I also set the white balance to flash so that the colouring would be accurate. I also used an f/5.6 so that the photo had a shallow depth of field, as I dint want the background to be too distracting.
Visually, I really like this image. In the frame you can see a male and a female with a child on her shoulders. I think that is a successful outcome as all three subjects are engaging well with the camera, and they are all well centered in the frame.

The technical side of the image was a bit more challenging for me as it was difficult to get good quality pictures in the dark while shooting manually. The ISO of this image was quite high, and the shutter speed was quite quick, around 1/250, but i had to be careful not to have it to quick as it would make my image turn out very overexposed. I also made sure to use flash, and to set the white balance to the flash setting also so that colours could be photographed as accurately as possible.

Evaluation

Overall I think this photoshoot was for more successful compared to my last one. This time I made sure to direct people more in order to capture the images I wanted, instead of just photographing them naturally. This meant that I had more images where the models were interacting with the camera, making the photographs more successful. I also think that the quality of the images were far better too. Although at the beginning it was very hard to shoot good quality images in the darkness while using manual settings, through trial and error I was able to find suitable settings to get me good quality images. I made sure to use a flash, and a fairly quick shutter speed of around 1/250, making sure that it wasn’t much slower or quicker so my images wouldn’t be blurry or underexposed, I also had my aperture set at around f/5 as I didn’t wanted to get a fairly long depth of field so that the surrounding environment could be seen in order to give the photos a bit more character and context, as I think that’s what truly makes an image appealing and interesting. However, next time I will experiment using a higher aperture as I think some images would also look nice with a shallow depth of field as it would mean that there would be more focus on the people as they would be the main focus of the photograph.

 

AO1 Develop Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Henri cartier-bresson

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Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography. 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. Working in black and white, his photographs seem to distill the chaos life into something pure. His refusal to either crop or manipulate his image feel provocative and refreshing and allows the modern viewer to see things exactly as they were.

In early 1947, Cartier Bresson, with Robert Capa, David Seymour, William Vandivert and George Rodger founded Magnum photos. Magnum was a cooperative picture agency owned by its members. The team split photo assignments among the members. Cartier-Bresson would be assigned to cover India and China. He achieved international recognition for his coverage of Gandhi’s  funeral in India in 1948 and the last stage of the Chinese Civil War in 1949.

Children playing in ruins, Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1933

This photograph was taken in Sevilla a couple of years before the Spanish civil war. The image depicts young children socialising in ruins. The children are clearly in poverty judging by their clothing, dirt on their bodies and footwear. The fact that children are playing  in times of war (1930), it could be the photographer trying to convey war as just children playing games, which as a former soldier he is entitled to believe. Almost all of the children seem to be looking at the camera in a rather suspicious and disturbed manner which may be because of the unsafe environment they live in. Tension can be seen through the children’s faces which could also be what he is trying to convey to the rest of the world. He is showing what effect violence is having on innocent children through this photograph.

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

Tableux Vivants – Action Plan

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Who: I will be photographing myself.

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.

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

Street photography

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Last week I went into town and did an urban photo shoot, these are my best images which I have slightly edited (added filters,cropped etc.).

The sunlight in this photo creates a bold outline around the people in the photo. This creates strong shapes and therefore makes the photo as a whole pop more. The bright part of the photo is down the middle, the rest is predominantly shadows and dark areas. This gives the photo a focus point (the middle). The photo is also split into thirds (left, middle, right), the structure prompts the viewer to focus on the man on the left, down the road in the middle, and the tree trunk on the right.

I particularily like the strong shadows and ligh highlights of this photo. Because it was taken near the ‘golden hour’ the sun was low which created these elongated shadows. It also gave a nice outline/shine to people on the street as there wasn’t any cloud cover.

This is a photo of a market trader, I have chosen it because of the contrast between the man and the products for sale behind him. I have cropped it so that the strongest points of the photo (in terms of structure) are visible. It’s just a pleasant photo to look at because: the bright colours which the photo is composed of are naturally attractive to the human eye. The products are stacked symmetrically, this both pleases the eye as well as gives the photo structure. Finally, the trader is smiling and appears very open to conversation, this makes the photo pleasing to look at because seeing other people smiling has been proven to lift your mood and change brain chemistry.

I like this photo because its very simple, it shows the daily commute of people whilst keeping their anonymity. Although it is a simple photo it isn’t boring, this is due to the shadows caused by the sunset, which give the photo structure, the angle at which the photo was taken, and the texture/shapes of the trousers near the centre of the photo. Another aspect of this photo that I like is that both people in the photo are only visible from waist down, it gives a different perspective to the world as it differs from standard photos of whole people taken at head-height.

This is a very similar image to one further back in this post. It doesn’t have the same effect as there are more elements without strong shapes but I have kept it in because it captures the work environment and daily tasks of these market traders.

This is my favourite image out of the whole shoot, it has the right exposure, vibrance, structure, and it captures the work environment as a whole. This photo has a warm white balance, this makes it more relaxing to look at as warm lighting as it feels more natural than cold lighting. The photo also has a variety if colours thanks to the products on display out front. There is also a lot of structure and symetry throughout the photo, the bottles on display and crisp packet boxes for example.

 

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

Henri Cartier-Bresson

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He was a French humanist photographer who worked within street photography and it well known for his ‘decisive moment’ technique.

 Decisive Moment-In 1952 Henri Cartier-Bresson, a founder of modern photojournalism, proposed one of the most fascinating and highly debated concepts in the history of photography: “the decisive moment.” This moment occurs when the visual and psychological elements of people in a real life scene spontaneously and briefly come together in perfect resonance to express the essence of that situation. Some people believe that the unique purpose of photography, as compared to other visual arts, is to capture this fleeting, quintessential, and holistic instant in the flow of life. For this reason, many photographers often mention the decisive moment, or similar ideas about capturing the essence of a transitory moment, when they describe their work.

Born in Chanteloup-en-Brie, Seine-et-Marne, Henri Cartier-Bresson developed a strong fascination with painting early on, and particularly with Surrealism. In 1932, after spending a year in the Ivory Coast, he discovered the Leica – his camera of choice after that moment – and began a life-long passion for photography. In 1933, he had his first exhibition at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. He later made films with Jean Renoir.
Taken prisoner of war in 1940, he escaped on his third attempt in 1943 and subsequently joined an underground organization to assist prisoners and escapees. In 1945, he photographed the liberation of Paris with a group of professional journalists and then filmed the documentary Le Retour (The Return).
In 1947, with Robert Capa, George Rodger, David ‘Chim’ Seymour and William Vandivert, he founded Magnum Photos. After three years he had spent travelling in the East, in 1952, he returned to Europe, where he published his first book, Images à la Sauvette (published in English as The Decisive Moment). He explained his approach to photography in these terms, ‘”For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.”
From 1968, he began to curtail his photographic activities, preferring to concentrate on drawing and painting. In 2003, with his wife and daughter, he created the Foundation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris for the preservation of his work. Cartier-Bresson received an extraordinary number of prizes, awards, and honorary doctorates. He died at his home in Provence on 3 August 2004, a few weeks short of his 96th birthday.

Behind the Gare St. Lazare 1932

Image result for Place de l'Europe Gare Saint Lazare (1932)

 Technical

This photo was purely natural lighting, no flash, it appears to me it was bright day due to the definite shadows. The contrast is prominent between the light and dark areas created by the black and white filter. Due to Henri’s use of the decisive moment approach he doesn’t appear to have huge amounts of control over the positioning of the the people in this shoot and what they are doing. On the other hand he could control the lens which was 35 mm, also he positioned himself in a way in which the mans reflection was captured. He had a relatively slow shutter speed as the man appears to be  slightly blurry as hes running, but at the same time it’s not too low as the ripples in the puddles are clear. The colour cast is dark, creating a cold tone to the photo. In some areas its slightly over exposed but the black and white makes its hardly noticeable. The focal point for me is the man running as Henri only took this photo at that decisive moment in which the man was running otherwise it would be bare. The blurriness of the mans silhouette works well in contrast with the sharp detailed surrounding.

Visual

The texture in this photo varies throughout, for instance the water ripples, the pile of rubble, the wall plastered in photos and the metal railing. Although there are many different textures in this one image they work well, there doesn’t appear to be any tensions between them, as well as the background and foreground there is harmony between them and they merge into one  another effectively. There is a clear black and white filter on this photo, as well as that there is a rule of thirds which creates an element of structure and timing to the photo. I wouldn’t say there is a leading eye but the first thing that attracts me to this image is the blurred mans so there is an area of interest in the photo.

Contextual

The Gare Saint-Lazare  (St Lazarus Station), officially Paris-Saint-Lazare, is one of the six large terminus railway stations of Paris. It is the second busiest station in Paris, after the Gare du Nord. It handles 275,000 passengers each day. The station was designed by architect Juste Lisch, and the maître de l’oeuvre (general contractor) was Eugene Flachat. 

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Environmental portrait — Shoot Plan

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For my photo shoot I plan on going into the market in town as there are many vendors who have big displays and who show their products and things. Something that will make my images different, as others will likely have a similar approach, I will be using a 35mm film camera and the roll of film that I will be using has been expired for about 15 years, this means that there will likely be imperfections in the images like black spots and the grain will be much more apparent. I plan to go to places like butchers, florists and green grocers as they will likely have the most aesthetic displays.

AO1 Develop Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Environmental portraits — mood board

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Environmental Portrait is a kind of portrait that shows a person in the place that they are most comfortable or spend the most time. the subject isn’t normally interacting with the camera in any other way than looking at it. This is often called a “stages photograph” this is when the subject is aware and sets up the photograph and they can be sometimes made to look like candid photos and they sometimes can be and a candid photo is one where the subject had little to no knowledge of the photograph and didn’t prepare for it.