Mads Perch is a London based photographer who works mainly within music, editorial and advertising photography. 

Over the last ten years his photography has been centered around projections, double exposures and other creative techniques which all helps him create his unique style. 

Mads Perch’s photography has allowed him to work with a wide range of advertising agencies. Over the last few years he has been lucky enough to work exclusively with artists such as MIA, Robert plant, Alt J, and many other great bands and photographing them in this unique way.

I think that his use of photography is very unique and is inspiring for the kind of photo shoots that I want to do e.g. colourful in contrast a dull background to make the portrait stand out more.

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Photo Analysis

Technical

Lighting – Lighting from the studio with a projector to get the high contrast of colour of the models face. In the foreground there seems a lot of shaded areas that look under exposed in comparison to the light on the model. The lighting reflects off the models skin which allows there to be some tonal range and the lighting also brightens the back drop behind him.

Aperture – The depth of field in this image seems to be quite shallow as the most sharpened part of the image is the model.

ISO – The light sensitivity is fairly low on this photo because the image doesn’t look grainy.

White Balance – There is a variety of cold and warm tones in this photograph.

Visual

There are some very vibrant and saturated colours in this photo. There are also a lot of different tones in this photo which contrast with each other, especially because the darker tones are right next to the bright vibrant colours being projected onto the subjects face. There doesn’t to seem to be much texture in this photo other than on the models face and especially in the background as the photo is set in the studio. In this photo the background may be considered as 2D which makes the models look more 3D and makes the viewer focus on the model more.

Contextual/Conceptual

This photo is meant to represent the model embracing their colour and they have no shirt on to show that they are fully absorbing the colour with nothing getting in their way.

A candid photograph is a photograph captured without creating a posed appearance. The candid nature of a photograph is unrelated to the subject’s knowledge about or consent to the fact that photographs are being taken, and unrelated to the subject’s permission for further usage and distribution.

Taking photos of people when they have no idea that you’re doing it is considered candid photography. One of the beauties of photography is being able to catch someone in the act. It adds life to your pictures.

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings.

By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features.

It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.

The surroundings or background is a key element in environmental portraiture, and is used to convey further information about the person being photographed.

Where it is common in studio portraiture and even in location candid photography to shoot using a shallow depth of field, thereby throwing the background out of focus, the background in environmental portraiture is an integral part of the image. Small apertures and great depth of field are commonly used in this type of photography.

Examples of some photographers

Anthony Kurtz

Born in California, USA in 1979, there is a rich,cinematic and painterly quality to Anthony´s photography which not only drew the attention of the advertising industry but has also been honored with some of the world’s top photography awards. Anthony Kurtz currently lives in Berlin, Germany

This image is of a model standing in front of a famous Berlin monument called the ‘Brandenburg Gate’which was located in no-man’s land between East and West Germany during the Cold War, this famous monument, built during the 18th-century this monument has long been a defining symbol of Berlin and both the city’s division and unification. The name of the photograph is ‘Bundestag’. Definition of Bundestag : an assembly of representatives of a bund (such as the assembly of the German Confederacy of 1815 or the lower house of parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany)

Identity is defined as what a person or thing is, and can be separated into several different categories. It can be influenced by where you were born, where you grew up, how you identify as a gender, your past experiences, the political history of where you live or simply how society expects you to act.

Gender Identity is a person’s perception of their gender, possibly different to their birth sex, which can be influenced by the societal roles of their gender in whichever country they come from or are living in. This can be explored through the study of drag queens or the traditional gender roles in other countries, such as in the Middle East.

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Cultural Identity is defined as the feeling of belonging to a particular nationality or ethnicity, but it can also relate to groups defined by language, religion or generation.

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Geographical Identity is the attachment and belonging one feels with their country, region, city of birth, or where they are living at the moment. Often this type of photography involves people wearing their traditional dress, emphasising their geographical roots.

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Loss of Identity is also a prominent feature when discussing identity photography, as it is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s modern world, for many reasons. One may be the freedom that technology gives us to explore different ways of life, changing them from our original ones, or perhaps mass immigration has given people a sense of lost identity, as their connection to their place of birth has been severed, or maybe even age and diseases like dementia and Alzheimer’s can cause elderly people to feel as though they have lost their identity.

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Final Photos

In this photoshoot I took the photos in the studio using one point lighting to get the brightness and exposure that I wanted in the images below as the light exposes part of the face rather than all of it whilst leaving a dark background with hardly any light hitting the backdrop. The model I used was asked to move and tilt their head at different angles to get different outcomes that were similar to the some of models facial in other chiaroscuro photographers work, such as Clair Obscur. I wanted to use another spotlight for a different part of my shoot in order to experiment with the one point, two point and three point lighting but unfortunately only one light was working during this photoshoot. I have chosen not use some of my photographs as the model was not always pulling the right facial expressions or didn’t have their head tilted at a good angle. I have also chosen to crop some parts of the images to make them more symmetrical. My best images were the ones where the model was pulling the correct facial expression and had their head titled at the right position as well as the photos being in focus. Overall I think I prefer the majority of the photos with the black background over the photographs where you could see the backdrop more clearly.

Contact Sheet

My Best Photos

I have specifically chosen these photographs as my best images because they had the best lighting on the model’s face and in the background/the model had the best facial expressions. These images were also the most in focus due to the camera being on a tripod keeping the camera steady.

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Editing My Best Image

I have edited one of my best images from this photoshoot to look more like Clair Obscur’s work. I have made the photo black and white and I have intensified this by lowering the red and yellow tones do allow more contrast to be seen. This image was one of the most successful as it was the most in focus and you can see minute details such as the freckles on the models face, similarly to some of Clair Obscur’s models.

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Final Outcome:

Chiaroscuro in art and in this case photography, is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. In the words of photography Chiaroscuro is a popular technique used in studio photography as the lighting equipment and backdrops available allow photographer to complete the technique accurately. Chiaroscuro usually consists of a 1 point lighting system in a dark room with a back backdrop, so there is only one source and direction of light It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians for the use of contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modelling three-dimensional objects and figures.

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The technique was vey popular during the Renaissance, where the term originated from. It involved drawing/painting on coloured paper and then the artist would work from the paper’s base tone toward light using white “gouache” and would do this using dark ink, body-colour or watercolour.

Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci is said to have invented chiaroscuro, discovering that he could portray depth through slow gradations of light and shadow. Now, rather than using this technique in just painting many photographers, such as the ones below, use the chiaroscuro technique to have a dramatic contrast between the model/object and the background.

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The definition of identity is who you are, how you think of yourself and how you are viewed by the world. Identity can be a make up of social, gender, cultural or place identity, and can therefore result in a lack of identity.

Typical ways of expressing identity is through the choice of clothing, makeup, hairstyles to more permanent things like tattoos and piercings; which often stretch to aspects of cultural identity

Examples of Identity photographers include:

Jessa Fairbrother: She frequently appears in her own images, piercing and embroidering them to employ process as action. Needle perforations and thread puncture the skin of the photograph, extending image-objects beyond a single time and space.

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Phillip Tolendano: One of his projects ‘A new kind of beauty, shows portraits of people who have re-created themselves through plastic surgery. He believes that we are at a turning point in history where we are beginning to define not only our own concept of beauty, but of physicality itself.

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Diana Markosian: known for her experimental approach to storytelling, She uses photography and video to explore peoples personal journeys. Her work is both conceptual and documentary

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the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.

Gender identity

personal sense of one’s own gender. Gender identity can correlate with assigned sex at birth or can differ from it.

Social identity

a person’s sense of who they are based on different groups such as social class, family, friends or even groups like sports teams.

Cultural identity

feeling of belonging to certain groups such as nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture.

Geographical identity

An individual or group’s sense of attachment to the country, region, city, or village in which they live.

Political identity

Race and economic class can effect political identity. For many people supporting a political party isn’t simply a voting decision.

Mood-board

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Yoshikatsu fuji

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Nancy Borowick

Kensuke Koike