For my first photoshoot, I wanted to start off with the photo ideas where I’m dressed as a male in a suit, female in a dress, mirror reflection photograph and finally the photo of me with the top surgery scars. I took all these photos of myself and most of them were from my waist upwards or shoulders up photographs.
Contact sheets
These are my flagged images. First I pressed p (keep images) for the ones I preferred out of my entire selection then I pressed x (reject images) for the ones I didn’t want to use for my final images
I then ranked each photos with a star rating
Finally I colour coded my images with green (definitely use), yellow (maybe use) and red (don’t use)
Best images to edit:
These are my best images that I have taken but they are all clearly unedited and haven’t been taken with filters because I wanted to see how they would turn out normally and in their original, raw state. Some of them are quite wonky and awkward looking but after I edit them, they’ll look a lot more interesting.
I chose this image I took on a trip to Hampton Farm Museum for my analysis as I think that it is a good example of a portrait. I captured one of the actors at the farm straight on while she was preparing yarn for the spinning wheel and telling us the history of the trade. It was a good use of natural lighting as she was set up in the corner of a courtyard in the shade so only a few beams of light came through visible in the image which creates a nice contrast between light and dark. The colours in this image are pretty bland and feature mainly greys, browns and a small amount of green and blue. I didn’t feel like I needed to edit the photo so I levelled the colours and left it as it is.
Cyanotype is a photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print. Engineers used the process well into the 20th century as a simple and low-cost process to produce copies of drawings, referred to as blueprints. The process uses two chemicals: ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide.
Cyanotypes in photography
Cyanotype photographs can be made in two ways: by using a photo negative, or by placing an object directly on the paper that is being exposed to the sun. Wherever the object blocks out the light the paper will remain white, and wherever the light hits around that object will react and turn blue.
The cyanotype process reverses light and dark, so a negative original is required to print as a positive image. Large format photographic negatives or transparent digital negatives can produce images with a full tonal range, or lithographic film can be used to create high-contrast images.
Cyanotypes in science
The cyanotype is an alternative photographic process that relies on the chemical properties of two iron compounds – ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. Basically, formulas of these two iron compounds are mixed together in a 1:1 ratio to form a citrine coloured solution.
This is an example of the use of Cyanotypes in art produced by Rachel E. Church.
Anna Atkins
Anna Atkins was an English botanist and photographer. She is often considered the first person to publish a book illustrated with photographic images. Some sources say that she was the first woman to create a photograph. Her nineteenth century cyanotypes used light exposure and a simple chemical process to create impressively detailed blueprints of botanical specimens.
This is a photo of Anna Atkins who was born in 1799.
This is one of many Anna Atkins cyanotype pieces that she created in the 1840s.
Sir John Herschel, a friend of Atkins, invented the cyanotype photographic process in 1842. Within a year, Atkins applied the process to algae (specifically, seaweed) by making cyanotype photograms that were contact printed by placing the unmounted dried-algae original directly on the cyanotype paper.
Henry Peter Bosse
Henry Peter Bosse is an German-American photographer, cartographer and a civil engineer who was born on November 13 1844. Henrys cyanotypes surfaced at a Sotheby’s auction in 1990, his cyanotype photographs have been included in the permanent collections at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. His cyanotypes were exposed with large glass plates and printed on the finest French cyanotype paper, each sheet off-white measuring 14.5″ x 17.2″ and bearing the watermark “Johannot et Cie. Annonay, aloe’s satin.”
This is one of Henrys early pieces of work which shows the watermark he regularly used on most pieces of his work.
After the first photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826, photographs have been used to capture moments in time/history.
Iconic Photos
As photography evolved so did photography. The history of the camera began even before the introduction of photography. Cameras evolved from the camera obscura through many generations of photographic technology – daguerreotypes, calotypes, dry plates, film – to the modern day with digital cameras and camera phones.
Juxtaposition is an act or instance of placing two elements close together or side by side, they can contrast either through visual elements or through different meanings. This is often done in order to compare/contrast the two, to show similarities or differences, etc. The definition of juxtaposition is placing two things together to show contrast or similarities. In photography, we use composition, forced perspectives or props to convey the contrasts in the picture. Photographs can also rely on cultural ideas and identities of the viewers.
My Juxtaposition
I chose these images as I think they truly represent juxtaposition as they show one place at two different times creating the contrast between new and old.
Juxtaposition refers to the side-by-side placement of two or more contrasting things. As with colour, shape, and cropping, juxtaposition can become a key component of photographic compositions, helping to tell a story and emphasize differences or similarities between objects or people.
EXAMPLES OF JUXTAPOSITION
Juxtaposition in street photography is hugely influenced by individuals emotions – some may volunteer to be photographed whilst some shots are candid. This photo shows two people, perhaps lovers, standing in front of a painting of two individuals kissing. The two in front are looking away from each other and away from the camera, this could symbolize conflict between the two. The woman is holding her arm as an act of defiance. The painting behind them juxtaposes the couples emotions.
MY PHOTOS
I edited these photos on Lightroom and Photoshop. For the first one i used the warp tool and motion blur to convey emotion, for the second one i increased the saturation and clarity to give the photo a soft blur and more vibrant background.
The juxtaposition between my photos is reliant on emotion. The first photo suggests a sadder more chaotic atmosphere, with the lack of eye contact due to the eyes blurred out to make it more mysterious. The black background makes the individual in the photo stand out more so she is the main focus. The second photo is the opposite – i am smiling in the photo to show a happier atmosphere, the brighter colours and light background furthermore suggest this.
Portrait photography has had a long and varied history since Louis Daguerre introduced the photographic process in 1839. In that same year, Robert Cornelius produced what’s considered the first photographic self-portrait. Photography has served many purposes, mainly to commemorate occasions and periods in history.
How Portrait Photography Has Evolved Over Time
If you were a wealthy individual in the early 1800s, you might have been able to commission an artist to paint a portrait of you. This was not likely to have been a pain-free process, however, even if it meant that you got a framed likeness of yourself at the end. Think multiple sessions of sitting still and trying to keep your features frozen in a dignified smile. And if you didn’t quite like how the portrait turned out, there wasn’t much you could do about it.
Luckily, the invention of photography transformed portrait making into something less time consuming and with more reliable results. Early portraits were daguerrotypes. They were named after the French inventor, Louis Daguerre, who came up with this technique of imprinting images on an iodine-sensitized silver plate using mercury vapor. Daguerrotypes were produced for around twenty years starting in 1839 before they were edged out by other photographic techniques. Since they had a pretty short run overall, daguerrotypes that survive today (such as the two below) are valuable collectibles.
Photography. An art form invented in 1830s, becoming publicly recognised ten years later.
Today, photography is the largest growing hobby in the world, with the hardware alone creating a multi-billion dollar industry. Not everyone knows what camera obscura or even shutter speed is, nor have many heard of Henri Cartier-Bresson or even Annie Leibovitz.
In this article, we take a step back and take a look at how this fascinating technique was created and developed.
Before Photography: Camera Obscura
Before photography was created, people had figured out the basic principles of lenses and the camera. They could project the image on the wall or piece of paper, however no printing was possible at the time: recording light turned out to be a lot harder than projecting it. The instrument that people used for processing pictures was called the Camera Obscura (which is Latin for the dark room) and it was around for a few centuries before photography came along.
It is believed that Camera Obscura was invented around 13-14th centuries, however there is a manuscript by an Arabian scholar Hassan ibn Hassan dated 10th century that describes the principles on which camera obscura works and on which analogue photography is based today.
An illustration of camera obscura. Image: Public domain via Wikipedia
Camera Obscura is essentially a dark, closed space in the shape of a box with a hole on one side of it. The hole has to be small enough in proportion to the box to make the camera obscura work properly. Light coming in through a tiny hole transforms and creates an image on the surface that it meets, like the wall of the box. The image is flipped and upside down, however, which is why modern analogue cameras have made use of mirrors.
In the mid 16th century, Giovanni Battista della Porta, an Italian scholar, wrote an essay on how to use camera obscura to make the drawing process easier. He projected the image of people outside the camera obscura on the canvas inside of it (camera obscura was a rather big room in this case) and then drew over the image or tried to copy it.
Giovanni Battista della Porta. Image: Public domain via Wikipedia
The process of using camera obscura looked very strange and frightening for the people at those times. Giovanni Battista had to drop the idea after he was arrested and prosecuted on a charge of sorcery.
Even though only few of the Renaissance artists admitted they used camera obscura as an aid in drawing, it is believed most of them did. The reason for not openly admitting it was the fear of being charged of association with occultism or simply not wanting to admit something many artists called cheating.
Today we can state that camera obscura was a prototype of the modern photo camera. Many people still find it amusing and use it for artistic reasons or simply for fun.
The First Photograph
Installing film and permanently capturing an image was a logical progression.
The first photo picture—as we know it—was taken in 1825 by a French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. It records a view from the window at Le Gras.
The first photograph, taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. Image: public domain via Wikipedia
The exposure had to last for eight hours, so the sun in the picture had time to move from east to west appearing to shine on both sides of the building in the picture.
Niepce came up with the idea of using a petroleum derivative called “Bitumen of Judea” to record the camera’s projection. Bitumen hardens with exposure to light, and the unhardened material could then be washed away. The metal plate, which was used by Niepce, was then polished, rendering a negative image that could be coated with ink to produce a print. One of the problems with this method was that the metal plate was heavy, expensive to produce, and took a lot of time to polish.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce 1765-1833. Image: public domain via Wikipedia
Deadpan photography is defined as a devoid of emotion. There is no visible joy or sorrow in the photos. The only subject of focus us the object or person itself.
Perhaps two of the most famous deadpan photographers in history, Bernd and Hilla Becher became famous through their typological deadpan photographs of water towers, coal mines, industrial landscapes, grain elevators and gas tanks. Their many different series of photographs offer a look into the industrial past of the world, and showcase landscapes and subjects that cannot be seen as readily in the world today. While many viewers may see the images as lacking substance or meaning, their work resonates with many people today as a typology of a world that no longer exists.
For my experimentation, I decided to use people instead of objects.
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