Category Archives: Unit 2 Portrait

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What is street photography?

December 10, 2018 Eren G Leave a comment

What is Street Photography?

Street photography also known as candid photography, is images conducted and taken ‘by accident’ . to get the best of street photography you can’t be timid, the most common tactic is to take yourself and your camera on the streets and start taking photos, get up close and persona with the public. However street photography does not necessarily have to be in the presence of a street or even the urban environment. A lot of photographers look at the idea of street photography and focus on people and their behaviors in public. The expressions on someones face or the emotion portrays in their body language is what makes a photograph have meaning; it is what creates the relationship that makes a photo speak to you. To capture feelings in a photograph that cause the same emotional reactions in its viewer is the goal of any photographer. Street photography is said to be one of the best ways to express and capture the natural emotions people are feeling at the time, as photographers are taking pictures of people of guard, unaware and has an element of surprise.

Mood board:

Ideas:

What might you want to achieve with this street photography photo shoot
Where would be a good place
Specific locations or walking around
Will the whether effect the mood of people in you photos
How close are you going to photograph people- close up / faraway
Who will you be photographing?
What type of people?

Best over all portraits using different lighting

December 9, 2018 Lucy L Leave a comment

Now that I have experimented with using lots of different types of lighting and lighting effects, I will present my best outcomes from my photo shoots. During these photo shoots I learnt how all the technical camera settings should be set in order to make the images look good.

Spot light

Chiaroscuro

soft lighting

Natural lighting

Flash

AO2 Explore Ideas, AO3 Record Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Studio Experimentation #1

December 9, 2018 Aimee L Leave a comment

Studio Experimentation #1

For this shoot we as a class experimented with different lighting, clothing and backgrounds to create a story centered around the London Underground and with a stereotypical ‘thug’ like model. The model is wearing a hooded puffer jacket, has minimal makeup and is in a slouched position in order to create this atmosphere.

This is a gallery of the photos I took; you can see each adaptation of the lighting, position and facial expressions throughout.

I began the shoot with using a key light quite brightly in front of the model and I think this looked good and illuminated it in a way that resembled the underground but I wanted the temperature to be warmer and darker so it looked more like a ‘grotty’ atmosphere. I also experimented with angles and closeness, e.g for most photo I was a good distance away and her hood was up so I didn’t get a lot of the model’s features in the photos, it was concentrated more on the background and her clothing. After this she took her hood down and I positioned myself closer up to capture more detail. Some of these photos also have more hard lighting to show the shadows and relate it to the location. For the last part I stood further away but got still a more portrait type photo which included the background.

Best outcomes for each stage of the shoot:

In my opinion the photo above looks the most realistic due to the harsh above lighting which only shows some facial aspects so the gender of the model isn’t necessarily clear. I also like the shadow which has been created by the light and how the background looks like it could be genuinely taken in the underground.

Unit 2 Portrait

Studio – Experimenting with Chiarascuro and Rembrandt Lighting

December 9, 2018 Aimee L Leave a comment

Experimenting in the studio with different lighting techniques.

Chiaroscuro and Rembrandt Lighting

Chiaroscuro is an Italian term which translates as light-dark, and refers to the balance and pattern of light and shade in a painting or drawing, it creates the illusion of light from a specific source shining on the figures and objects in the painting. The word chiaroscuro is Italian for light and shadow. Classic artists such as Leonardo DiVinci and Caravagio have also used this technique. It creates a high high contrast light/dark style used in Renaissance painting and later in cinema.

Joseph Wright of Derby, An Iron Forge 1772, Tate

Rembrandt lighting is a lighting technique that is used in studio portrait photography. It can be achieved using one light and a reflector, or two lights, and is popular because it is capable of producing images which appear both natural and compelling with a minimum of equipment.

My examples of Chiaroscuro and Rembrandt Lighting:

I also experimented with different white balances as you can tell some photos are warm due to using tungsten light, and others are more cooler toned due to using the white fluorescent light setting and some are in between. The model is centered in the center of the frame and the only light is one just one side to create the shadow effect on his/her face.

Unit 2 Portrait

Tableaux Vivants – Collaborative Responses

December 8, 2018 Aimee L Leave a comment

Collaborative Responses

As a class we decided to re-create some famous tableaux vivants photographs and paintings. We chose to use the three below to re-create: Eugene Delacroix ‘Leading the People’, Carravagio ‘Deposition’ and David La Chapelle ‘The Last Supper’.

Eugene Delacroix ‘Leading the People’

Carravagio ‘Deposition’

David La Chapelle ‘The Last Supper’

Our Responses:

These are our responses to the photos. In each different shoot we had a cameraman, director and a lighting person to organize each aspect and make sure it all went smoothly; as well as models, we also switched up the roles for each shoot.

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

portraits- Using flash

December 8, 2018 Lucy L Leave a comment

Flash

You can use flash in portraiture in a range of dark and light places. It is stereo typically used in places where it is dark, but you can also create interesting effects in light ares using it. There are many types of flashes and techniques that can be used:

Bounce flash

This is when you point the flash in a different direction, rather than directly at your subject, in order for the light to soften before it hits your subject. It’s typically bounced at an angle, at something like a wall or a ceiling.

Below is a diagram that explains how the ‘bounce flash’ technique is used compared to direct flash:

fill-in flash

This is a technique that’s used to brighten up shadowed areas. This is usually used when the background is a lot brighter that the actual subject, and using this will make your subject appear well lit and not underexposed compared to the background.

To use fill flash, the aperture and the shutter speed should be correctly adjusted to expose the background, and the flash is then fired to lighten the foreground (usually the subject)

Below is an example of how using fill flash can make your images look good. The image on the left has the background perfectly exposed, and the image on the right is how the image looked when you took it with flash. As you can see, the image on the right is very successful as you can see the sky in the background, and the subject is also perfectly exposed due to the use of the flash.

Below is also a video that shows a range of techniques and tips on how to use fill flash:

Speedlight flash

This is also known as a hot shoe flash. This is a flash that is inserted onto the top part of the camera and is triggered then the cameras shutter takes an image

Contact sheets

For this photo shoot I pictured my model while she was wearing makeup on her face. This demonstrated how, by using a flash, many details can be noticed in the dark.

Best outcome

AO4 Present Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Annie Leibovitz Images

December 8, 2018 Gabrielle L Leave a comment

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

Studio Photography – Mood-board

December 8, 2018 Maksymilian K Leave a comment

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.

Image result for rembrandt lighting

Example of Rembrandt lighting

Image result for studio lighting Image result for john rankin photographer Image result for chiaroscuro lighting

Image result for studio lighting

Unit 2 Portrait

Comparing Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bruce Gilden

December 7, 2018 Aimee L Leave a comment

Comparing Street Photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bruce Gilden

“I’m known for taking pictures very close, and the older I get, the closer I get”- Bruce Gilden

Bruce Gilden – Mini Biography

Gilden is well known for his unique portraiture style. Gilden was born in 1946 and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, he went on to study at Pennsylvania State University but then later dropped out after finding it too boring. He then later went onto dabbling into being an actor and then settled on the idea of becoming a photographer after buying a camera. Bruce Gilden attended some lessons on Photography, however he is generally considered a self-taught Photographer.

Comparing Henri Cartier-Bresson and Bruce Gilden

Earlier Inclinations

Both Bruce Gilden’s and Cartier-Bresson’s earlier inclinations toward painting and acting influenced their later careers in Photography. After seeing Three Boys at Lake Tanganiyka (c. 1929) by Hungarian Photographer Martin Munkacsi, Cartier-Bresson was inspired to pursue photography with a seriousness that had been absent in his previous dabbling with the medium. He remembered the experience, saying, “I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. ” Bruce Gilden began his photography career as a bored ‘college dropout’ who was lacking inspiration after leaving University. He was fascinated with people on the street and the idea of visual spontaneity, Gilden turned to a career in photography.

Magnum Photos

Along with other influential Photographers, Henri Cartier-Bresson founded the Magnum Photo Cooperative in 1947. The agency helped protect the interests of the photographers, the rightful owners of their negatives and all reproduction rights. The founding members of Magnum divided and travelled the world with Cartier-Bresson documenting Asia. Bruce Gilden later became a member of Magnum Photos in 1998.

Examples of Bruce Gilden’s Photos

Examples of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Photos

AO1 Develop Ideas, AO2 Explore Ideas, Unit 2 Portrait

Tom Hunter – Case Study

December 7, 2018 Aimee L Leave a comment

Tom Hunter – Case Study

Tom Hunter is a renowned British Photographer who is currently based in East London. Hunter was born in Dorset in 1965. In 1980 when he was 15 years old, he left school and began to work on a farm for a year and later moved onto work for the Forestry Commission in Dorset. In 1986 Tom Hunter moved to Hackney and began work as a Tree Surgeon. 4 years later in 1990, he attended A-Level Photography evening classes at Kingsway College in London.

Hunter is best known for his re-staging of historical tableaux portraits and making them more contemporary and fitting his narratives. Below is an example of this. Tom Hunter draws inspiration from Victorian paintings and Dutch Renaissance and Pre-Raphaelite master painters. His re-creation of the Ophelia painting shows a young girl on her walk home coming back from a rave and falling into a slippery canal area in an desolate industrialized area.The Walk Home – Tom Hunter

Unheralded Stories

Unheralded Stories by Tom Hunter is a series of photographs which depict the folklore and myths that were built up around his community and surroundings in Hackney over the past twenty-five years. The photographs reference historical tableaux paintings to create striking mythical images which celebrate life by transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. There are 10 photos in this series, these are the ones I am drawn to the most.

In Anchor and Hope, 2009. It is clear to see the reference from Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World, 1948 it depicts a memory of pitched battles with the council as squatters organized a self-supporting community in a Clapton estate bordering Springfield Park.

Christina’s World , Andrew Wyeth, 1938