I used the Flagging system in Adobe Lightroom to select the best portraits I took. From the flagging system I then edited the portraits in Lightroom and then Photoshop if needed.

I used a before and after view in Lightroom to portray the changes I made to the portraits to make them look more effective

Favourite Portraits taken

These portraits show a before and after image once they have been edited in Lightroom

Diamond Cameo

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On the left is an image created by me, while on the right is Henry Mullins, another photographers example of a diamond cameo. To create my Diamond cameo photo, I took 4 different portraits and loaded them into Adobe Photoshop, where I used the circle tool to paste the portraits into the circles. I then arranged them in this order to create an effective diamond cameo similar to Henry Mullins diamond cameo.

Henry Mullins set up a studio in jersey in 1848, known as the Royal Saloon, at 7 Royal Square. Initially he was in partnership with a Mr Millward, about whom very little is known. By the following year he was working alone and he continued to work out of the same studio for another 26 years. Henry Mullins called the Diamond Cameo technique Multi-Portraits, and it was used under licence by him in the 1800s in his studio in Jersey. Mullins used the Daguerrotype photography technique to create his portraits

Double/Multi Exposure

Some of the first double exposure photos emerged during the 1860s as another source of revenue for photographers. To give their business a boost, they discovered how to make a portrait subject appear twice in a frame, as if they had an identical twin. In each of the pictures, the person was striking a different pose. The double exposure technique has been used throughout the 20th and 21st century and has remained popular as a photography technique up until the modern day.

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Historic examples of the double exposure technique

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modern examples of the double exposure technique

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These are two examples of a multi exposure photo effect which were created in photoshop, to mimic the exposure technique which photographers use. To create the effect, I placed the same image on top of the other and changed the opacity to 50%, and then slightly moved the image to the right to create the effect.

Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is an act or technique of placing two elements or photos close together or side by side. This is often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences of the photos. Juxtaposition is mostly used by photographers to add more interest to the viewers into their work. Juxtapositions can be used by photographers to show the contrast or difference of certain subjects such as, Rich Vs Poor, Healthy Vs Sick, Attractive Vs Ugly and Men Vs Women.

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Rembrandt lighting –

lighting positioned to the side of the face but slightly in front so that there is a little triangle under one side of the persons eye.

The term Rembrandt lighting is relatively new. Originally, it was coined by 20th century filmmaker, Cecile B.DeMille, when he produced a film called, Warrens of Virginia. As the story goes, he borrowed some spot lights to recreate a lighting scheme that had the actors’ faces half lit. Rembrandt lighting actually precedes the Dutch artist Rembrandt van Rijn, who it is named after.  The Italians were the first to experiment with various lighting schemes in the 1500s.  As art emerged from the Gothic period, the Renaissance artists brought perspective and lighting to painting.

Butterfly lighting

Butterfly lighting is a lighting pattern used in portrait photography where the key light is placed above and pointing down on the subject’s face. This creates a dramatic shadow under the nose and chin that looks like a butterfly. It’s also called ‘Paramount lighting,’ named for the Hollywood studio and how they lit their most glamorous and beautiful actresses.

Butterfly lighting dates back to some of the earliest glamour shots. Specifically, Marlene Dietrich, a German silent film actress, who became a Hollywood star in the 1930s, was presented on film in a way that gave this look its name.She came to California with director Josef von Sternberg, who lit her in his films with what is known today as butterfly lighting. He would position the key light above her, where a butterfly-shaped shadow would appear just below her nose. With this lighting, her cheekbones and facial structure became more prominent. It soon became a Hollywood-must for lighting.

side lighting –  Artists such as Rembrandt and Caravaggio painted using the chiaroscuro technique, which is a method that uses shadows and a single light source to create depth and drama. Still life scenes, for instance, were painted in dark rooms lit by a single window while faces in portraits were illuminated with a golden, candle-lit glow.

In both of these examples, you can identify Rembrandt lighting which is where there is a shadow on the side of the face, a standard lighting technique that is used in studio portrait photography and cinematography. It can be achieved using one light and a reflector, or two lights, and is popular because it is capable of producing images which appear both natural and compelling with a minimum of equipment.

this image has a Rembrandt light using the triangle of light under the right eye and is a full portrait cropped from above the knee.

this image has is a shadowed profile against a lighter background to create contrast. I turned down the vibrance to create a colder darker.

the use of the prop umbrella and I used another person to woft her hear to creat a windy effect.

this image is of luca i like the way the light shadows the inside of his ear and gives a silhouette to his face.

Early Pioneers

Louis Daguerre

Was a French artist photographer who invented the daguerreotype which was one of the first practical processes of photography named after Louis himself.

the daguerreotype is a direct positive process that creates a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative.

Henry William Fox-Talbot

Was an English scientist, inventor and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes. The Calotype was a photographic technique that involved using a sheet of paper coated in silver chloride and then exposed to the light of the camera obscura. the areas hit by light become dark in tone which creates a negative image.

Julia Margaret Cameron

A British photographer best known for taking soft-focus images close up of famous Victorian men. These images often had a dream like constructed quality to them.

20th and 21st century approaches: Rankin

Rankin is a British photographer and director who’s a cofounder of Dazed and confused magazine. He’s known for photographing models such as Kate Moss and Heidi Klum and many celebrities such as David Bowie and Madonna.

Oliver Doran

Oliver Doran is a Jersey based photographer who has travelled the world he specialises in shooting portraits and fashion photographs he has photographed many famous personnel such as Robert De Niro.

Studio Lighting exploring techniques

Rembrandt lighting is a standard lighting technique that is used in studio portrait photography and cinematography. It can be achieved using one light and a reflector, or two lights, and is popular because it is capable of producing images which appear both natural and compelling with a minimum of equipment. You can tell that an image has been taken in Rembrandt lighting as there should be a triangle under the models eye and next to the nose.

butterfly light is when the key light is placed directly in front and slightly angled down onto the model this creates a shadow under the nose and chin which looks like a butterfly.

side lighting /chiaroscuro is where half of the face is half illuminated by a side on light which creates a crisp definition due to the shadows from the subjects prominent facial features.

One-point lighting

One-point lighting creates a very natural, sometimes dramatic look that will draw people’s attention to the single lighted person or surface. It is coming from one source and can be placed anywhere around the studio or camera. One-point lighting can also create harsh shadows if the angle is right which can completely cover one half of the face if that’s what the photographer wants.

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Chiaroscuro– is an Italian term that refers to the intense contrast of light (chiar) and dark (oscuro) in art, famously used in the paintings of Rembrandt or Caravaggio to create a strong and dramatic mood. Chiaroscuro is also a good example of one-point lighting as it has harsh and intense shadowing.

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For still life or food photography, it can be used to add shadow to make an object rise off the page, or side lighting to create a painterly effect. For landscape, it can create a sense of foreboding or danger. Use broken sunlight through clouds to add a sense of mystery or brooding. And for portraiture, it can add intrigue and mystery, enhance beauty, highlight and sculpt, or even add characteristics such as untrustworthiness.

My examples of one-point lighting

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I have picked three of the portraits that show me using one-point lighting, as you can see in each photo they all have strong shadowing on one side of the face. I like that the shadowing covers the face but doesn’t completely block out all the features of the face. I also like how the dark black contrasts with the lighter background and with the highlighted sides of the faces.

Two-point lighting

Two-point lighting is when there are two sources of light that point directly towards each other and the subject is placed between the two. On plan, there is a straight line between light source 1, the subject and light source 2.

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In two-point lighting, they use a fill light so that the shadows are behind the person and not to one side of them. Fill light is responsible for exposing the details of a subject that fall in the shadows of the key light and to fill in shadows around the subject.

My examples of two-point lighting

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I have picked three of my portraits that show two-point lighting, in each of the images you can either see no shadow like the left phot or you can see a very soft and minimal shadow on one side of the background. This could have been due to the strength and brightness of the two different lights or the angle of the camera. I really like how two-point lighting highlights that whole face and shows all the features making and more captivating image.

High-key lighting

High key photography is a style of photography that uses unusually bright lighting to reduce or completely blow out dark shadows in the image. High key shots usually lack dark tones and the high key look is generally thought of as positive and upbeat. High-key lighting also reduces the lighting ratio in the scene, meaning there’s less contrast between the darker tones and the brighter areas. 

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High-key lighting is often used in commercials for food and beauty products. The brightly lit scenes often suggest an upbeat mood and positive message. This look can also imply truth and openness, making it effective for video interviews or training videos.

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Portraiture is a very old art form going back at least to ancient Egypt, where it flourished from about 5,000 years ago. Before the invention of photography, a painted, sculpted, or drawn portrait was the only way to record the appearance of someone.

Portrait photography, or portraiture, is a type of photography aimed toward capturing the personality of a person or group of people by using effective lighting, backdrops and poses.

Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer who is considered one of the most important portraitists of the 19th century. She is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature. She also produced sensitive portraits of women and children.

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Cameron’s work was contentious in her own time. Critics lambasted her softly focused and unrefined images and considered her illustrative photographs amateurish and hammy. However, her portraits of respected men (such as Henry Taylor, Charles Darwin and Sir John Herschel) have been consistently praised, both in her own life and in reviews of her work since. Her images have been described as “extraordinarily powerful” and “wholly original”, and she has been credited with producing the first close-ups in the history of the medium.

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Cameron’s compositions and use of light have been connected to Raphael, Rembrandt and Titian.

John Herschel, who relayed to Cameron the news of the inventions of photography by Talbot and Daguerre, was an important influence on technique and the practicalities of the medium, as indicated in a letter Cameron wrote to the astronomer, “You were my first teacher and to you, I owe all the first experience and insights.”

The most important photographer to influence Cameron’s work was David Wilkie Wynfield. Cameron’s style of close-up portraits resembling Titian may well have been learned from Wynfield since she took a lesson from him and later wrote “I consult him in correspondence whenever I am in difficulty”. The press compared their photographic work and noted the similarities in style and their consideration of the medium as fine art. She later wrote that “to my feeling about his beautiful photography I owed all my attempts and indeed consequently all my success”.

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Oliver Doran

Oliver is a commercial, editorial and portrait photographer who often finds himself at a crossroads of cinematic and theatrical explorations of human conditions, as he photographs some of the most recognisable faces on the planet.

Oliver creates vibrant, cinematic images using both flash, natural light and a mixture of both. He is comfortable in and out of the studio with complex lighting setups as well as working with ambient light in any location; day or night.

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Celebrating personality and amplifying uniqueness while always striving to be real and relatable is Oliver’s calling card. Being a strong advocate of organic creativity, he has quite the reputation for his skilful use of light and mood to create striking visual breakthroughs that also strike the right chords and achieve diverse briefs and business goals.

Exploring Technique/Lighting

Natural Light: In most cases, we can make use of natural or available light but we must be aware of different kinds of natural light and learn how to exploit it thoughtfully and creatively. Natural light photography uses the sun as a light source. The available light from the sun varies with the time of day, shortly after sunrise and before sunset is known as ‘golden hour’ due to the warm light which is different from the sun at midday which is a harsh light. While using natural light we have to think about different things such as the intensity and direction of the light or if we need to use a reflector (silver or gold). There’s also the temperature of the light and if we have to change the white balance on the camera.

High key and low key lighting can also be used, high key lighting is when the photo is overexposed, low contrast, shadowless, ambient and soft, whereas low key lighting is high contrast, dark, harsh and direct.

Studio Lighting: It is essential to most photographers and helps them create natural lighting effects in many situations. There are also many different types of studio lighting with many different accessories to help photographers get the perfect shot. For example strobe and continuous lighting, strobe lighting is more commonly known as flash lighting, as the light will ‘flash’ each time the camera is fired, and then recycle its power and continuous lighting is light that’s on all the time, so it doesn’t flash.

Using Flash: Flash units offer a range of possibilities in both low and high lighting scenarios, for example, flash bouncing fill-in flash, speedlight flash, etc. A major purpose of a flash is to illuminate a dark scene. Other uses are capturing quickly moving objects or changing the quality of light. In many professional studios, they will have big flash units that are synchronized with the camera.

Why do we use studio lighting?

Studio lighting is essential to photographers, it helps them create different types of lighting and lets them move shadows to where ever they would like.

Studio Lighting

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I have chosen three of my portraits which were taken in the studio with different lighting, for example 1 and 2 point lighting. The first photo on the left and the last photo is an example on 1 point lighting and you can see this by the shadowing on their faces, where as the photo in the middle is an example of 2 point lighting which is where 2 lights were used while taking the photo.

Lighting is an important part of photography as it can change the way a photo looks through the smallest movement and is one of the key components of taking a good photo. There’s a variety of light combinations that can be used in order to change how bright/dark a photo looks, the black/white balance, the exposure, the warmth/coolness of the image and a lot more.

Natural lighting is one of the most common forms of lighting, using no artificial lights and instead relying on the amount of light outside. Although it’s commonly used, it’s difficult to control as it can leave photos dark/dingy if there isn’t enough light out, being especially hard to use in winter due to the lack of sunlight, however, natural lighting can still create incredible photos but photographers need to be aware of more variables such as:

• Light Direction -> Throughout the day, the sun changes position, moving shadows and can brighten the photo if it’s shining directly onto the subject.
• Light Intensity -> In the early mornings, the light is less intense and will give the photo a softer look as it’s not shining as brightly as it would in midday when it’s the light is at its highest point.
• Temperature -> As the sun sets [specifically in summer], it creates a golden look, giving photos a warm, orangey tint [this is often referred to as ‘golden hour’] whilst winter mornings are darker and will give the photo a colder bluish tone.
• Weather -> Rainy days are more likely to give photos a darker/grey look whilst sunny days could leave photos overexposed due to the light intensity.

Artificial/studio Lighting is often used in portraiture due to how controllable it is. It can be moved in any direction and can produce both soft and hard lighting with the use of flash or continuous light which allows a bigger variety of lighting choices/combinations. Along with that, the colour of the lights can be manipulated in order to get warmer or cooler toned photos depending on what lights are used. Some examples of artificial lights are:

• Flash head lights -> They connect to the camera via a Bluetooth adapter that sits on top of the camera. This causes the lights to flash whenever a photo is taken and creates harsh lighting. They often have softboxes or umbrellas attached to them in order to diffuse the light and get softer photos.
• Ring Light -> A circular, continuous light that’s mostly used for portraits. The camera typically sits in the centre of the ring light which erases most of the shadows as the light surrounds the subject.
• Studio Lamp -> A small light that creates soft lighting and are usually too small to light up an entire image by itself. Usually, they’re equipped with ‘barn doors’ which allows the light to be redirected subtly. They can create both warm and cold lighting and are typically used alongside a bigger light.

With artificial lighting, there are certain techniques that are used in order to create specific effects:

I have picked this photo of Noel Flood from my environmental portraits to be one of my final images because I think it shows what he does and what type of place he worked in. I have turned this photo to black and white because I wanted Noel to be the main focus and I thought that the powerful colours of the bottles behind him would take that away. I like the harsher and darker blacks in it and how the brighter whites contrast with them, I also like how you can see all the bottles in the background with noel still being in the centre of the photo.

This is one of my environmental portraits of the owner of the Quayside cafe down by the harbour. I like how the background has a yellow tint which contrasts nicely with the blue in the foreground from the reflection on the screen. I also like how you can see many of the products that they sell on the shelves behind her. The lady is also in the middle of the image so it makes her the main focal point even though there are many other elements to the photo.

This is one of my still life images and I have chosen it to be one of my final images because I think that it is eyecatching and has nice shadowing behind the objects. I also think the bright white sits nicely on top of the darker metal of the candle holder. I wanted the shadows and the reflection to be prominent without taking away from the main object, so I haven’t made the shadows too dark, as well as cut off most of the reflection beneath the objects.

This is one of my experimentations, I have put together my coloured image of the white bottle and the candle holder and the three yoghurt pots stacked on top of each other. I did this photoshop and like how they look together, I also like how they lined up together to make it look like one object altogether.

I have picked this from my Hamptonne objects because I like how it shows how people use to live and what they used or wore. I also like how the hat has vibrant reds next to two darker objects because it allows the hat to be the focus of the image but it still doesn’t take all of the attention away from the lantern or the knitted bag. The darker brown in the wooden hangers also contrasts nicely with the bolder reds as well as the greys and greens in the other objects.

This is another one of my Hamptonne objects and I have chosen this to be one of my final images because I like how it is a bright photo with no dark tones, I also really like how both the brown in the shoes and the wood complement the creamy white of the wall. In the is the image you can also see the ageing of the floorboards which tells the story of those who used to live there.

I have chosen this to be a part of my final images because I like how the foreground is blurry and highlights the different antique plates and tea sets. While editing I wanted to give it a more vintage feel to the photo so the blues and red on the plates and teacups are less bright but are still the main focus of the photo. Also, I like how the gold of the cadel holder is shiny and highlighted which is a big difference from the dull and worn out lock on the cabinet.

This is one of my portraits from Hamptonne and I have chosen it to be one of my final images because I think that it has good lighting which shows the Goodwyfs features and what she would have worn during that time. I like how that she isn’t looked into the camera because it draws our attention to her surroundings and the shadows that are created from the window in front of her.

Vanitas Still Life

A Vanitas is often a symbolic work of art with connections to concepts like the inevitability of death, being consumed by greed and vanity, and how one’s life is being spent. They were most popular in the 1600’s and were mostly done by Dutch painters.

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Sharon Core

Sharon Core is an American Artist and Photographer, born in Louisiana (1965) she studied painting at the University of Georgia and Photography at Yale University of Art. She has won numerous awards and has many exhibitions for her work. In this work she recreates the style of vanitas paintings but using a camera. It is incredibly recognisable and unique and her history as a painter helped fuel her to edit and create photos like this.

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My Images-

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I attempted to edit mine in a similar style to make them seem less realistic, making them seem softer and a more pleasant colour scheme.