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.
Original
Retouched
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.”
Video Link:
His Photos:
Natural Lighting
What is it?
The most basic and important form of light is natural light, generally referring to any light created by sunlight.
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
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.
The white balance setting is that help.
Within my image there are some faults with the composition and some minor photoshop problems, the reason that it didn’t get re-done is because the faults are very small and have only been seen by me because I have been looking at a very large version of it for a long time.
Overall the image is good and the faults are only visible upon close inspection so I am happy with it.
What is 3 point lighting:
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.
Diagram:
Examples:
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.
My final image turned out almost as I intended, one problem is that i could have done more poses sitting or interacting with the pews on the left side of the photo. 
I think that I replicated his work well and also added my slight touch to it. I have the main few subjects in the photo; I also have a few more discrete ones in the backdrop and who will mean that there is something to the image at a glance but the more that it is explored the more is discovered.
A difference that I made without thinking about it is that my images are taken from a bigger distance and this means that my face isn’t as clear and apparent as it could be, where as with Paul’s work he is close to the camera and his face is clear in each image this means that his work has a slightly bigger impact on the viewer because it takes less time to see that every person in the image is him.
But I think by doing some of the weirder poses that I did like the upside down, the shirtless and the reflection of it in the door and having the umbrella open meant that I have en-captured the style of Paul as he often has odd poses in his images.
Here is the final image that I made. The solution to the moving tripod, I feel was successful as you cannot see anything that is not aligned without looking very closely at some parts. Other than the editing that it took to make the images of myself appear there was little else done, this was done because I got the exposure correct in camera and knew that if i changed it for one I would have to change it in the exact same way in the exact same amount for each layer, also leaving it with some parts slightly over exposed and some areas with a bit too much shadow means that the image is more realistic and life like and the exposure isn’t so far to one side that an area draws way too much attention and distracts from the whole 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.
My Personal Favorite of the selected images ^
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:
