Studio photography is used to shoot a wide variety of subjects, including people, animals and wide variety of products, from automobiles to jewelry. A photography studio will usually start out as a blank space, meaning just an empty room. In this case, my theme of portraiture allows the models emotion/expression to become bolder and more intense than an usual everyday background.
In the images that i have picked from particular photographers, they seem to have more character compared to other photos that i have seen. In Lisa Visser’s photos the models look very innocent and the fact that these photos are in black and white make them look even more simple and pure than usual. As well as this, the blank expression on their faces makes it even harder to know what they’re thinking/feeling; this can make the viewer feel slightly unnerving and uncomfortable, especially because they are children and most children are full of energy and would rarely have a blank expression on their face. The studio setting intensifies this unnerving feeling as there is no meaningful background for the viewer to observe to be able to know something about the models life, unlike environmental photography. On the other hand, Mads Perch’s photos express a lot of emotion through colours and contrast. The dark and dramatic black background contrasts immensely with the model that has a lot of colour projected on her. By having a large amount of different colours on the model, her expressions become more meaningful, maybe even more mysterious as the colour is filtering her facial expressions. Her photos are interesting and inspiring as they catch the observers eye as the the lighter colours against the black background make the white shades stand out more and the human eye is automatically drawn to white/lighter colours. Again, the studio setting intensifies this as all you can see in the photo is the model, no background. As for Nicolas Savine, his photos are similar to Lisa Visser’s work, as they are also black and white and a lot of his photos also have the model making a blank expression. Although, he has some models pull a different expression, therefore showing emotion, this can make the viewer even more uncomfortable, especially if they’ve seen the model with no expression, this is because the model can come across a fake; as if they don’t actually have emotion but they are only showing emotion because they are being told to.
Tableaux vivant is French and stands for ‘living picture’, and is a story telling scene containing one or more actors or models. The models are usually told to be: stationary and silent, usually in costume, posing in a certain way, with props and scenery, the setting may also be lit in a certain way in order to make the photo and scene look more dramatic. In order to take good tableaux photography it works well to combine both theatre and the visual arts.
“Tableaux is used to describe a painting or photograph in which characters are arranged for picturesque or dramatic effect and appear absorbed and completely unaware of the existence of the viewer. ” – Sarah Jones
HISTORY OF TABLEAU PHOTOGRAPHY:
French philosopher, Denis Diderot was the first to use ‘Tableau Vivant’ in the eighteenth century to describe paintings with a certain type of composition. Tableau paintings had the effect of walling off the observer from the drama taking place, as well as that they were natural and realistic. In his desire to make paintings that were realistic rather than idealised, Édouard Manet, a French modernist painter, decisively rejected the idea of tableau as suggested by Diderot in the 1860s, but the concept of tableau reached a crisis due to this. He painted his characters facing the viewer with a new vehemence that challenged the beholder. In the 1970s, a group of aspiring young artists such as Jeff Wall and Andreas Gursky began to make large format photographs that resembled paintings, that were designed to hang on a wall. As a result these photographers were obliged to take on the very same issues revealing the continued importance of tableau in contemporary art.
Identity is what makes you, you, whether it be where you are from, what your religion is, what your ethnicity is, where you live, what your social standing is, how wealthy you are and much more. Identity can be influenced by many such as geographics, culture, social aspects, political beliefs and a loss of identity. Identity can also be influenced by how one sees themselves and how you define yourself .
gender identity- the personal sense of one’s own gender
cultural identity- belonging to a group
social identity- persons sense of who they are based on belonging to a group
geographical identity- sense of attachment to a place
political identity- sense of who you are based on your political beliefs
lack/ loss of identity- a sense of losing something that once made you ‘you’
identity mood board
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above i have annotated the photographs with a ‘+’ that i would like to look into more detail as they are interesting and relate to how i am going to explore identity.
for the identity project i am going to look at LACK OF IDENTITY, CHANGE OF IDENTITY and THINGS I IDENTITY WITH.
In this photoshoot I took the photos in St Helier in town whilst it was fairly sunny to be able to capture facial expressions in better lighting. The majority of the people I took photos of were un aware that I was taking photos of them, which is why there are some confused expressions after people realised I was taking a photo of them. I have also chosen to crop some parts of the images to make them more focused on a specific part of the photograph. My best images were the ones where the models were pulling the correct facial expression, such as neutral, I also quite like the ploys where I capture the moment where people realise I’m taking a photo of them and they look directly into the lens.
Unedited Images
I have specifically chosen these photographs as my best images as because they had the best lighting on the models face and in the background/the models had the best facial expressions. These images were also the most in focus due to the camera moving around as I was walking.
Best Images Edited
On photoshop I adjusted the brightness to allow you to see the mode more clearly as the image came out quite dark. Although I brightened the photo I still tried to have a good contrast of the the darker and lighter tones to get the final image I wanted. As well as this I changed the intensity of the shadows and highlights to ensure certain points were more exposed to the viewer as well as drawing their attention to it particular parts of the photo. I also cropped this image on photoshop to allow the model to be in the centre of the photo.
I have edited the photos in black white because the photographer Eric Kim’s photography is all in black and white and he was my inspiration for this photoshoot. I changed the exposure and contrasts to have more variation in certain tones in the images. There HDR toning also helps to make the photos look more dramatic.
For the weeks leading up to the AS PHOTOGRAPHY MOCK EXAM at the end of January 2020 you will need to refer to this resource pack
“SELF -PORTRAIT and IDENTITY JAC PDF”
(to find it just copy and paste the link below into the top bar of the folder icon on your screen)
M:\Departments\Photography\Students\Resources\Portraiture\TO DO
We have included a mini-unit to help you explore opportunities with self portraiture in photography as this may become essential to your project outcomes. We will spend 1 x lesson looking closely at this and discussing ideas for you…
Remember…your stimulus for the month of January is…
define “identity” and explain how identity can be influenced by “place”, or belonging, your environment or upbringing /gender identity / cultural identity / social identity / geographical identity /political identity lack of / loss of identity
Add a mindmap and moodboard of ideas and trigger points
Choose a range of photographers that you feel explore identity as a theme and create at least 1 x CASE STUDY on a chosen artist (that will have an influence on your final outcomes re : MOCK EXAM)
Organise and carry out your photo-shoots !!! You MUST complete a minimum of 2 PHOTO-SHOOTS in readiness for the mock exam itself
Decide whether or not YOU will become a feature of your work…will you point the camera at yourself? (how important is self-portrait to “identity”?)
Show your experiments and outcomes as a response to chosen artists over the next few weeks…and begin to plan how to finalise and display your ideas.
Some suggestions for you to look at…
Carole Benitah…memories of childhood, loss and belonging
Jessa Fairbrother…mother and daughter relationship
Phillip Toledano…loss, death, memory, grief
Laia Abril…loss and memory, eating disorders and body image
Diana Markosian…cultural, geographical and political identity
Rita Puig Serra Da Costa…death, grief, loss and family identity
Yoshikatsu fuji…relationship breakdown
Nancy Borowick…relationships and support
Julian Germain… people as individuals vs community
Remember…1 image is a statement, 2 images asks a question
The daily grind can be a test of endurance. In Tokyo Compression, Michael Wolf recorded the extreme discomfort of Japanese commuters pressed up against windows dripping with condensation on their journeys to and from work.
In Harlem Trolley Bus, Robert Frank showed the divisions within American society in the mid-20th century. Dryden Goodwin took pictures of exhausted travellers on London night buses and wove a protective cocoon of blood capillaries around them.
Two-Frame / Diptych Arrangements
Connections with film making…
The idea for this project comes from Luke Fowler‘s series of half-frame photographs recently published in the book ‘Two-Frame Films‘. The project is intended to encourage students to concentrate on the editorial aspect of photography, the selection and juxtaposition of photographic images and how this might affect the ways in which a viewer engages with the work. Fowler is better known for his work in film but has used a half-frame camera as part of his practice. This work explores the relationship between two juxtaposed images. A half frame camera exposes two shots on each 35mm frame. A roll of 36 exposures therefore produces 72 images in pairs. The resulting diptychs are still images but reference the theory of montage, first articulated by Russian film makers in the 1920s, specifically Sergei Eisenstein
An example of two frames from Sergei Eisenstein’s film ‘Battleship Potemkin’, 1925
Triptych (3 frame)
Picture Story Layouts
Circular Aperture / alternative framing
Diorama / pop-out book layout
Using projectors / clear acetate and transparencies
Making a Virtual Gallery in Photoshop
Download an empty gallery file…then insert your images and palce them on the walls. Adjust the persepctive, size and shape using CTRL T (free transform) You can also add things like a drop shadow to make the image look more realistic…
Mock Exam : Essentials
Remember to label each JPEG in the print folder with your name
Minimum 1 x file per A3. A4, A5
Ensure that your final images are a direct response to your chosen photographer (s) and show a clear visual link
I used a small camera because the bigger the camera and lens, the more likely you are to be noticed by people. As well as this there is something about smaller cameras that are less threatening.
I found an interesting location where lots of people hangout in my case it was the skate park near the marina and waited for interesting people to appear. The only thing I had to do is wait for “strong characters” to appear.
After I had spent approximately an hour at he skate park i wandered around town and stood on a bench to get a different perspective.
