Deadpan simply is described as a portrait of the shoulders up. The face central, eyes directly looking into the camera, and background plain and empty. No shadow just either a white, grey or plain colour to fill the image. The words dead and pan is a slang word for a face. Deadpan photography is a cool, detached, and unemotional presentation and, when used in a series, usually follows a pre-defined set of compositional and lighting rules. Its another image word to use for a passport image. Passport images have a lot of rules compared to a lot of portraits. But some deadpan images will be allowed to use if the right size and colour.

Examples

My Experiments of deadpan images and passport images

• 

• 

Evaluation-

These two images are a good example of a deadpan image as for the dead facial expression and how central the face and shoulders are to the camera. The white background clearly outstands the portrait itself. The image on the right has a better background as all of it is white and no shadow or greyness is seen. The shadow created on the left side of the faces in both images by the spot light in front creates a cool, natural portrait. But this would not be acceptable for a passport photo or a successful perfect deadpan photo. If I was to do this photoshoot again I would direct the light either straight in front of the model, or place another spotlight/main light on the shadow side of the face to cancel out the shadow formed.

Satoshi Fujiwara

 Satoshi is a photographer and artist based in Berlin. The portraiture she bases her work on mostly is up close images of human faces. These images are taken as street photography, with the models not knowing that they are being photographed. Some examples are seen below…

My experiments

• 

• 

• 

These images i tried to get as close up as I could to the face but my camera would not focus if too close. There are two colorful images as for Satoshi’s work seems to have a lot of color to it. These images are not street photography images but have similarities to Satoshi’s work in the sense that the portrait taken is up close and cuts out the edges of the face. If i was to do this shoot again i would take some photos in town that way i could capture people in the moment and get some better images that linked to Satoshi’s work.

For this image i used two images and one of those i duplicated to create a double exposure image. With the smaller portrait in the corner i simply used the lasue tool to cut around the head and copied the head on top the main image. Using the magic wand tool i cropped out any white or standing out parts of the cut and paste image to make the image merge together better. One of the images of the duplicated image i changed into black and white to create a more contrasting and interesting image to look at. This montage is simple and diverse. It has a sense of darkness to it as for the red glow effect on the face and the black background. This black background fades in with the right side of the face. This makes the contrast between the left side of the face being red and the right side being black strong and effective to the overall image.

• 

• 

By selecting two images of the same portrait, i have merged them together by changing the opacity of the image that is on top of the original image to make a double exposure portrait. This portraits are interesting to look at as your eyes try and focus on tow portraits at the same time. To get the best outcome for each image, I have chosen two portraits, the first one of a face facing the camera and then the other face facing s different way. This way we can still see both images. These photographs were taken in the studio using a spot light for a main light and the same light directing on the wall behind the model to get rid of the shadow. This creates a white background.