Mood Board

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Analysis

Rineke Dijkstra

Rineke Dijkstra is a dutch portrait photographer, born in 1959, best known for her work capturing small specific groups of people or communities, such as teenagers, mothers and soldiers. Dijkstra has claimed she does this as, “With young people everything is much more on the surface—all the emotions,” whereas as we grow older we tend to know how to conceal them. Usually, Dijkstra accompanies her portraits of these types of people alongside a seaside landscape.

This colour portrait taken by Rineke Dijkstra displays a young girl positioned in the centre of the image among a seaside landscape. This positioning of the subject of the photograph creates an almost symmetrical looking image, which could be said to cause the portrait to look very formal and unnatural, combatting the background. Furthermore, the tone of this image appears to be very cold with blue being the prevailing colour of the photograph, seen in the sea, sky and the girl’s dress. In addition, the lines presented in this photograph seem to all be horizontal, for example the horizon line, the dived between the rocks and the sea, and the lines going across the girl’s dress. These lines lead your eyes across the image, allowing for not only the subject to be focused on but also the background.

Here you can also see that the lighting of this portrait, like most of Dijkstra’s work, is clearly natural, due to the seaside setting. This allows for very few shadows, meaning it was most likely chosen to be taken at midday. This light also means that this image was most likely taken with a low ISO, so that the camera would not be over responsive to the large amount of light flooding the lens, meaning the photograph would not be over exposed. Moreover, the aperture used for this image appears to be low, allowing for a large depth of field, showcasing a defined background behind the subject. It can also be said that the shutter speed used here was fast, also due to the defined and clear photograph.

Photo-shoot

Plan

Contact Sheets

Edited Images

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Final Image

I believe that this is my best photograph from my natural light photo-shoot due to the fact that the subject of the portrait is well centred and displays a seaside landscape in the background, similar to Rineke Dijkstra’s work. Furthermore, it is also one of my sharpest photographs out of my edited images. I do also believe that this image displays my understanding of how to capture a clear portrait with the tool of natural light best.