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Studio Photography

Rembrandt

This technique is inspired by Rembrandt who was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. He used to paint shadows in his paintings in order to add more depth and make them more realistic. This technique created a triangle on the side of the face and makes the model look more attractive. It 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.

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Chiaroscuro/side light

Chiaroscuro (from Italian chiaro, “light,” and scuro, “dark”) is a film lighting style that emphasizes shadow and light. Chiaroscuro first emerged during the Renaissance as a painting technique used to create tension between the light and dark elements in portraits and other still life. To achieve this you just need to put your light on the side of the model and use a flash.

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Butterfly

Butterfly lighting is a portrait lighting pattern where the key light is placed above and directly centred with the model’s face. This creates a shadow under the nose that resembles a butterfly. It’s also known as ‘Paramount lighting,’ named for classic Hollywood glamour photography.

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Oliver Doran

Oliver Doran is a commercial, editorial and portrait photographer from Jersey, Channel Islands. He has over 15 years of experience and he photographs some of the most recognisable faces on the planet. He is known 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.

His passion for travel, meeting new people and appreciating cultures different from his own lights the fire beneath everything he does. His roster of experiences includes working for the royal families in Bahrain and Dubai, an honour that he cherishes. Some find working with famous people intimidating, but for Oliver, the experience has made him empathetic to the innate human spirit.

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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ENVIRONMENTAL PORTRAITS

I chose this image because I really like the yellow tones in the image and how the majority of the image is blurry with the exception of the reflection of the subject, I think this creates a really unusual contrast as -in the portrait- attention to drawn to the side where you cannot actually see the main subjects face which is unusual for portrait photography, it also really reminded me of Larry Clark‘s photographic style.

I chose this image because it really reminds me of Michelle Sank‘s photography, although the composition of the image is plain I really like how attention is drawn to the subject as they are the only interesting thing in the image- making the viewer “judge” the subject.

I have decided to print the two images above as a set as I really like the contrast between the skaters actually in the skatepark versus the almost commercial image of the torn skate shoes which implies the reality of skating: clothes getting torn, injuries and wrecked shoes.

HAMPTONNE EXTERIORS/INTERIORS

I chose this image because I really like the contrast of the shadow between the two buildings and how the two building almost look attached due to the perspective the photo was taken from. I also really like the wide variety of tones in the image and the texture of the Jersey granite (an important part of Jersey’s heritage) on the buildings as it creates interesting textures.

This is one of my favourite images so I tried to do the most minimal editing for this image because I really like how the walls and light almost frame the chair in the middle. I also really like how simple the composition is, with the empty chair in the middle- almost looking lonely.

In this image I really liked how the doorframe framed the bed and made it the centre subject. I also really like the shadows and light in the image so I tried to make the shadows more visible.

I decided to make the two images above a set as the similar compositions create a set of images that look almost abandoned and empty- possibly bringing in the theme of heritage as Hamptonne is no longer a used farm yet these rooms did once have people living in them.

HAMPTONNE PORTRAITS

I have decided to print this image because I really like the natural lighting on the model’s face and how the light hits the apple. I also believe the composition of the image is unusual, with the subject in the bottom right corner surrounded by empty space- displaying a sense of isolation.

PRODUCT TABLE

I included this image of a tool taken on a product table because it is obvious of -my inspiration- Walker Evans’ photographic style in ‘Beauties of the Common Tool’. I also really like how you can see every detail on the tool, especially the rusty colour.

Walker Evans-

Walker Evans (1903-1975), was an American photographer and photojournalist. His pictures are in black and white, due to the camera he used, and document life in the US during the great depression. He also did a series of still lifes, including Beauties of The Common Tool. The images are all of a simple tool on a plain background, focussing on how we can see beauty even in unexpected places.

Most of the interest from these come from the interesting shapes they are made up of and how light reacts to each subject, creating interesting and varying shadows.

Darren Harvey-Regan-

Darren Harvey-Regan (1974-), is a British photographer greatly inspired by Walker Evans’ work, using mostly black and white images and exploring shape and shadow. Harvey-Regan’s work is used to explore the space between 3D and 2D using a camera.

Images-

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Inspired Photomontages-

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Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh was an Armenian-Canadian photographer best known for his portraits of notable individuals. He has been described as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century. Here is some of his most famous work:

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Philippe Halsman

Below are some INSTRUCTIONS AND INSPIRATIONS for your headshots in the studio. We will be experimenting with both continuous lights and flash lights using 1, 2 and 3 light sources and respond to a number of creative approaches to headshots with reference to both historical portraits photographers from Societe Jersiaise Photo-Archive and contemporary practitioners.

TECHNICAL

RECORDING: produce at least 3 portrait shoots in the studio and consider the following:

1. Lighting: soft, hard

2. Framing: Headshots

3. Focusing: focus on the eyes

4. Expression: Explore different moods and emotions.

5. Pose: Manner and attitude. Use hands too…

Camera settings (flash lighting)
Tripod: optional
Use transmitter on hotshoe
White balance: daylight (5000K)
ISO: 100
Exposure: Manual 1/125 shutter-speed > f/16 aperture
– check settings before shooting
Focal lenght: 105mm portrait lens

Camera settings (continuous lighting)
Tripod: recommended to avoid camera shake
Manual exposure mode
White balance: tungsten light (3200K)
ISO: 400-1600 – depending on how many light sources
Exposure: Manual 1/60-1/125 shutter-speed > f/4-f/8 aperture
– check settings before shooting
Focal lenght: 50mm portrait lens

DUE DATE FOR HEADSHOTS PROJECT = FRI 17TH DECEMBER

BLOG

In addition to complete the work listed in Studio Portraits 1 you are expected to show evidence of the following three EEEs on the blog for the work on Headshots.

EDITING: For each portrait shoot produce a contact-sheet, select and adjust your BEST 3 IMAGES in Photoshop using basic tools such as cropping, contrast, tonality, colour balance, monochrome. Describe also the lighting setup using an image from ‘behind the scenes’, ie. key light, back light, fill light, use of reflectors, gels etc.

EXPERIMENTING: Complete at least 3 out of these 5 experiments on DIAMOND CAMEO, DOUBLE/ MULTIPLE EXPOSURE, JUXTAPOSITION, SEQUENCE/ GRID AND MONTAGE (see more details below). Make sure you demonstrate creativity and produce at least 3 different variations of the same portrait experiment.

EVALUATING: Compare your portrait responses/ experiments and provide some analysis of artists work and images below that has inspired your ideas and shoots. Use this Photo-Literacy matrix.

INSPIRATIONS

Henry Mullins is one of the most prolific photographers represented in the Societe Jersiase Photo-Archive, producing over 9,000 portraits of islanders from 1852 to 1873 at a time when the population was around 55.000. The record we have of his work comes through his albums, in which he placed his clients in a social hierarchy. The arrangement of Mullins’ portraits of ‘who’s who’ in 19th century Jersey are highly politicised.

You can read more here in an extract from Dr Gareth Syvret’s (former photo-archivist) PhD thesis; The Photographic Matrix: Henry Mullins Portrait Albums

Henry Mullins started working at 230 Regent Street in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in July 1848, setting up a studio known as the Royal Saloon, at 7 Royal Square. Here he would photograph Jersey political elite (The Bailiff, Lt Governor, Jurats, Deputies etc), mercantile families (Robin, Janvrin, Hemery, Nicolle ect.) military officers and professional classes (advocates, bankers, clergy, doctors etc).

His portrait were printed on a carte de visite as a small albumen print, (the first commercial photographic print produced using egg whites to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper) which was a thin paper photograph mounted on a thicker paper card. The size of a carte de visite is 54.0 × 89 mm normally mounted on a card sized 64 × 100 mm. In Mullins case he mounted his carted de visite into an album. Because of the small size and relatively affordable reproducibility cartes de visite were commonly traded among friends and visitors in the 1860s. Albums for the collection and display of cards became a common fixture in Victorian parlors. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons.

ED.EM_.03.01_lowDOWNLOAD

Here is a draft layout of ED.EM.03 Henry Mullins / Michelle Sank – on the social matrix. ED.EM. is a photo-zine produced by Societe Jersiaise Photographic Archive that presents a selection of images from its historical collection.

Becque á Barbe: Face to Face: A portrait project about Jèrriais – the island of Jersey’s native language of Norman French. Each portrait is titled with a Jèrriais word that each native speaker has chosen to represent a personal or symbolic meaning, or a specific memory linked to his or her childhood. Some portraits are darker in tonality to reflect the language hidden past at a time when English was adopted as the formal speech in Jersey and Jèrriais was suppressed publicly and forbidden to be spoken in schools.

Juxtaposed with portraits of Jèrriais speakers are a series of photographs of Jersey rocks that are all designated as Sites of Special Interest (SSIs); important geological outcrops that are protected from development and preserved for future public enjoyment and research purposes. The native speakers of Jersey French should be classified as People of Special Interest (PSIs) and equally be protected from extinction through encouraging greater visibility and recognition as guardians of a unique language that are essential in understanding the island’s special character.

Ole Christiansen (Danish): A special preoccupation has been music photography, portraits, but also – often strongly graphically emphasized urban landscapes which is reflected in his portraiture . Ole has over the years provided pictures for a myriad of books, magazines, record covers, annual reports, etc.

THE DEADPAN AESTHETIC

According to sources the origins of the word “Deadpan”  can be traced to 1927 when Vanity Fair Magazine compounded the words dead and pan, a slang word for a face, and used it as a noun. In 1928 the New York Times used it as adjective to describe the work of Buster Keaton.

It is less clear when it was first used to describe the style of photography associated with Edward Ruscha, Alec Soth, Thomas Ruff and many others.  Charlotte Cotton devotes a complete chapter to Deadpan in The Photograph as Contemporary Art and much that has been written since references that essay.

In summary 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.

This style originated in Germany and is descended from Neue Sachlichkeit, New Objectivity, a German art movement of the 1920s that influenced the photographer August Sander who systematically documented the people of the Weimar Republic . Much later, in the 1970s, Bernd and Hilla Becher, known for their devotion to the principles of New Objectivity, began to influence a new generation of German artists at the Dusseldorf School of Photography (4). These young German photographers included  Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer and Thomas Ruff. The Bechers (4 & 5) are best remembered for their studies of the industrial landscape, where they systematically photographed large structures such as water towers, coal bunkers or pit heads to document a soon-to-disappear landscape in a formalistic manner as much akin to industrial archeology as art. The Bechers’ set of “rules” included clean, black and white pictures taken in a flat grey light with straight-on compositions that perfectly lent themselves to their presentation methodology of large prints containing a montage of nine or more similar objects to allow the study of types (typology) in the style of an entomologist.

If you want to learn more about the theoretical and philosophical basis for the deadpan aesthetic READ HERE.

Thomas Ruff wanted to mimick the setup for a having a set of passport images taken. Read an interview with him here recently published in the Financial Times

PASSPORT PHOTO

From the UK Government website

FACE:

BACKGROUND:

Photos must have a background which:

TYPOLOGY means the study and interpretation of types and became associated with photography through the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose photographs taken over the course of 50 years of industrial structures; water towers, grain elevators, blast furnaces etc can be considered conceptual art. They were interested in the basic forms of these architectural structures and  referred to them as ‘Anonyme Skulpturen’ (Anonymous Sculptures.)

The Becher’s were influenced by the work of earlier German photographers linked to the New Objectivity movement of the 1920s such as August Sander, Karl Blossfeldt and Albert-Renger-Patzsch.

UP CLOSE

BRUCE GILDEN: FACE: Recently you have explored street photography and Bruce Gilden is renowned for his confrontational style and getting up close to his subject. Between 2012-14 Gilden travelled in America, Great Britain, and Colombia and created a series called FACE. Read a review here in the Guardian newspaper and another on Lensculture.

In addition to focusing on details of the face try and isolate body parts, gestures, clothing and physical features, such as hands, elbows, shoulders, neck, torso, hip, knees, feet. Your understanding of abstraction in photography; focusing on shapes, colours, light and shadows, textures and repetition is crucial here.

Satoshi Fujiwara: Code Unknown: In Michael Haneke’s 2000 film Code Unknown, there is a scene in which the protagonist’s lover, a photographer, secretly snaps pictures of passengers sitting across from him on the train.

Inspired by the film, I used the same approach to shoot people in Berlin trains. Yet in contemporary society, it is not acceptable to rashly and publicly display pictures of people’s faces that were taken without their permission. Thus, I shot and edited my pictures in a way that makes it impossible to identify the individual people who served as my “models.” To avoid impinging on the “right of likeness,” I used the shadows created by the direct sunlight pouring in through the windows, various compositional approaches, and digital processing to keep their identities anonymous.

When we look at another person, either directly or through another medium, we interpret a wide range of information based on outward appearance (face, physique, clothes and accessories, and movements)—in other words, various codes. By regulating and altering these codes in various ways, I set out to obscure the individuality and specificity of the subjects in the pictures in my series.—Satoshi Fujiwara

David Goldblatt: Particulars: Following a series of portraits of his compatriots made in the early 1970s, photographer David Goldblatt, for a very short and intense period of time, naturally turned to focusing on peoples’ particulars and individual body languages “as affirmations or embodiments of their selves.” Goldblatt’s affinity was no accident: Working at his father’s men’s outfitting store in the 1950s, his awareness of posture, gesture and proportion—technical as it was—formed early and would accompany him throughout his life.

In this series we see hands resting on laps, crossed legs, the curved backs of sleepers on a lawn at midday, their fingers and feet relaxed, pausing from their usual occupations. This deeply contemplative work is framed by Ingrid de Kok’s poetry.

EXPERIMENTATION

TASK

You must produce the following experiments:

1. DIAMOND CAMEO : Recreate a diamond cameo, similarly to Mullins of which four separate portraits of the same subject are arranged onto the same document in Photoshop.
2. DOUBLE/ MULTI-EXPOSURE: Either in camera or in post-post-production layer or merge two or three images into one portrait.
3. JUXTAPOSITION: Select 1 portrait by Mullins and one response that you have made and juxtapose opposite each in a new document in Photoshop. Look for similarities in pose, expression, gestures and overall composition. If you have some environmental portraits from previous shoot try and juxtapose in a similar way that Michelle Sank responded to Mullins portraits in ED.EM.03.
4. SEQUENCE/ GRID: Select a series of your headshots (between 5-12) and produce a sequence either as a grid, story-board, contact-sheet or typology. Reference Mullins pages in his portrait albums
5. MONTAGE: Select an appropriate set of portraits and create a montage of layered images in Photoshop as an A3 document.

DIAMOND CAMEO

DOUBLE / MULTI-EXPOSURES

Double or multiple exposures are an illusion created by layering images (or portions of images) over the top of each other. This can be achieved in the camera settings, or on Adobe Photoshop by creating LAYERS and then using BLENDING OPTIONS and OPACITY CONTROL. Artist have used these techniques to explore Surrealist Ideas and evoke dream-like imagery, or imagery that explores time / time lapse.

Idris Khan’s Every… Bernd And Hilla Becher… series appropriates the Bechers’ imagery and compiles their collections into single super-images. In this piece, multiple images of American-style gabled houses are digitally layered and super-imposed giving the effect of an impressionistic drawing or blurred film still. Since 1959 Bernd and Hilla Becher have been photographing industrial structures that exemplify modernist engineering, such as gas reservoirs and water towers. Their photographs are often presented in groups of similar design; their repeated images make these everyday buildings seem strangely imposing and alien.

JUXTAPOSITION

Juxtaposition is placing two images together to show contrast or similarities. For inspiration look at some of the page spreads from ED.EM.03 where pairings between portraits of Henry Mullins and Michelle Sank are juxtaposed to show comparison/ similarities/ differences between different social and professional classes in Jersey mid-19th century and early 21 st century.

For inspiration look also at the newspapers: LIBERATION / OCCUPATION and FUTURE OF ST HELIER produced by past A2 photography students and the publication GLOBAL MARKET by ECAL.

Juxtapose images according to shapes, colours, repetition, object vs portrait

Photographer Mike Terry has created a series of diptychs using a variety of strategies. His images sometimes appear to be two closely related frames from the same event. Some pairs are united by the quality of light. Other pairings juxtapose different viewpoints, subjects, colours and moods to create tension.

The resulting diptychs are still images but reference the theory of montage, first articulated by Russian film makers in the 1920s, specifically Sergei Eisenstein,

SEQUENCE/ GRID

Henry Mullins: Pages and re-constructed contact-sheets from his portrait albums.

Shannon O’Donnell: That’s Not The Way The River Flows (2019) is a photographic series that playfully explores masculinity and femininity through self-portraits. The work comes from stills taken from moving image of the photographer performing scenes in front of the camera. This project aims to show the inner conflicts that the photographer has with identity and the gendered experience. It reveals the pressures, stereotypes and difficulties faced with growing up in a heavily, yet subtly, gendered society and how that has impacted the acceptance and exploration of the self.

Duane Michals (b. 1932, USA) is one of the great photographic innovators of the last century, widely known for his work with series, multiple exposures, and text. Michals first made significant, creative strides in the field of photography during the 1960s. In an era heavily influenced by photojournalism, Michals manipulated the medium to communicate narratives. The sequences, for which he is widely known, appropriate cinema’s frame-by-frame format. Michals has also incorporated text as a key component in his works. Rather than serving a didactic or explanatory function, his handwritten text adds another dimension to the images’ meaning and gives voice to Michals’s singular musings, which are poetic, tragic, and humorous, often all at once.

Tracy Moffatt: The nine images in Something More tell an ambiguous tale of a young woman’s longing for ‘something more’, a quest which brings dashed hopes and the loss of innocence. With its staged theatricality and storyboard framing, the series has been described by critic Ingrid Perez as ‘a collection of scenes from a film that was never made’. While the film may never have been made, we recognise its components from a shared cultural memory of B-grade cinema and pulp fiction, from which Moffatt has drawn this melodrama. The ‘scenes’ can be displayed in any order – in pairs, rows or as a grid – and so their storyline is not fixed, although we piece together the arc from naïve country girl to fallen woman abandoned on the roadside in whatever arrangement they take. Moffatt capitalises on the cinematic device of montage, mixing together continuous narrative, flashbacks, cutaways, close-ups and memory or dream sequences, to structure the series, and relies on our knowledge of these devices to make sense and meaning out of the assemblage.

Philip Toledano: DAYS WITH MY FATHER is a son’s photo journal of his aging father’s last years. Following the death of his mother, photographer Phillip Toledano was shocked to learn of the extent of his father’s severe memory loss.

Walker Evans: One of the founding fathers of Documentary Photography Walker Evans used cropping as part of his work.  Another pioneer of the photo-essay, W. Eugene Smith also experimented with cropping is his picture-stories

Read more here on Walker Evans and his magazine work and  his series Labour Anonymous.

Hans-Peter Feldmann: (b. 1941 Duesseldorf). The photographic work of Hans-Peter Feldmann began with his own publications in small print-runs between 1968 and 1975. Often using reproductions of photographs from magazines or private snapshots, which he mixed with his own photographs, Feldmann, like Ed Ruscha, undermined the aura of the unique, “authentic” work of art. With his laconic imagery he seeks to break down conventional notions of art.

PHOTO-MONTAGE

Photomontage is the process and the result of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and overlapping two or more photographs into a new image. 

John Stezaker: Is a British artist who is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty.

His ‘Dark Star’ series turns publicity portraits into cut-out silhouettes, creating an ambiguous presence in the place of the absent celebrity. Stezaker’s way of giving old images a new context reaches its height in the found images of his Third Person Archive: the artist has removed delicate, haunting figures from the margins of obsolete travel illustrations. Presented as images on their own, they now take the centre stage of our attention

Thomas Sauvin and Kensuke Koike: ‘No More, No Less’
In 2015, French artist Thomas Sauvin acquired an album produced in the early 1980s by an unknown Shanghai University photography student. This volume was given a second life through the expert hands of Kensuke Koike, a Japanese artist based in Venice whose practice combines collage and found photography. The series, “No More, No Less”, born from the encounter between Koike and Sauvin, includes new silver prints made from the album’s original negatives. These prints were then submitted to Koike’s sharp imagination, who, with a simple blade and adhesive tape, deconstructs and reinvents the images. However, these purely manual interventions all respect one single formal rule: nothing is removed, nothing is added, “No More, No Less”. In such a context that blends freedom and constraint, Koike and Sauvin meticulously explore the possibilities of an image only made up of itself.

DUE DATE FOR HEADSHOTS PROJECT = FRI 17TH DECEMBER

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Louis Daguerre France (18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851)

“Louis Daguerre, in full Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, (born November 18, 1787, Cormeilles, near Paris, France—died July 10, 1851, Bry-sur-Marne), French painter and physicist who invented the first practical process of photography, known as the daguerreotype.”

“The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of photography. Named after the inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, each daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate. … The daguerreotype is accurate, detailed and sharp.”

Henry William Fox-Talbot (1800 – 1877)

Fox Talbot went on to develop the three primary elements of photography: developing, fixing, and printing. He made the revolutionary discovery that images did not need extremely long exposure times to create a visible image. however when using short exposure times Fox-Talbot could not see the image therefore he discovered how to make the image visible using chemicals. He called this the ‘calotype’ and patented the process in 1841.

Lighting

There are many types of lighting in studio photography. some of these include: key light, Fill Light, Hair Light, Separation Light, Kicker, Background light, Camera Mounted Flash, Rembrandt Lighting, Loop Lighting, Butterfly Lighting.

My Studio Portraits

My best Images

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After all of our photoshoots, editing and research, I collected my final images from this project.

Final Images

Darren Harvey Regan’s work – comparison

Paulette Tavormina’s work – comparison

http://www.platonphoto.com/menu/

Introduction to Studio Portraits

Louis Daguerre France

Louis Daguerre, in full Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, (born November 18, 1787, Cormeilles, near Paris, France—died July 10, 1851, Bry-sur-Marne), French painter and physicist who invented the first practical process of photography, known as the daguerreotype. Though the first permanent photograph from nature was made in 1826/27 by Nicéphore Niépce of France, it was of poor quality and required about eight hours’ exposure time. The process that Daguerre developed required only 20 to 30 minutes.

Daguerre was at first an inland revenue officer and then a scene painter for the opera. In 1822 at Paris he opened the Diorama, an exhibition of pictorial views, with various effects induced by changes in the lighting.

https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/photo23al/2021/10/14/history-of-photography-19/

Henry William Fox-Talbot

Fox Talbot was an English member of parliament, scientist, inventor and a pioneer of photography.

Fox Talbot went on to develop the three primary elements of photography: developing, fixing, and printing. Although simply exposing photographic paper to the light produced an image, it required extremely long exposure times. By accident, he discovered that there was an image after a very short exposure. Although he could not see it, he found he could chemically develop it into a useful negative. The image on this negative was then fixed with a chemical solution. This removed the light-sensitive silver and enabled the picture to be viewed in bright light. With the negative image, Fox Talbot realised he could repeat the process of printing from the negative. Consequently, his process could make any number of positive prints, unlike the Daguerreotypes. He called this the ‘calotype’ and patented the process in 1841.

Identity

a piece of personal identification that contains a photograph.

Studio Lighting

Oliver Doran

https://www.oliverdoran.com/

Oliver Doran is a portrait and advertising photographer who works in Jersey, London, Paris and Dubai.

Doran loves cinematic and theatrical imagery mainly of humans but also, as any professional photographer, I delve into other areas of the photographic world including; product, food, interiors and architecture. 

Oliver Doran Biography- I endeavour to shoot timeless images that work today and in a 100 years and avoid using fad techniques that date the images. One can only guess where technology will lead us but the art in the humanity will never change. Our eyes on a piece of art, a portrait and the emotion we derive should remain as relevant today as well as in 100 years time or even a 1000 years time. 

Having lived in Dubai UAE for the last decade, I return to my roots here in Jersey and enjoying capturing local personalities mixing influences from the graphic and bold portraiture of Platon and the fashion and audacious style of Helmut Newton. 

Being a strong advocate of organic creativity, I pay special attention to lighting and mood to capture flattering elements of peoples personalities and enjoy immortalising milestones in peoples lives. 

I love to travel, meeting new people and appreciating cultures different from my own – this really excites me. My time in the Middle East was packed with weird and wonderful people from all warps of life. When I first embarked to work in Dubai, it felt I had touched-down on Tatooine, a planet full of hungry aliens and I was the Han Solo of the photography world. 

I’ve worked with the Royal families of Bahrain and UAE, an honour that I cherish, photographing the Princess of Bahrain’s wedding to the Prince where I was the only man in a ball room of 2000 women. I also work with celebrities whom I think appreciate my calming yet relaxing and direct approach to my portraiture. 

The key in Rembrandt lighting is creating the triangle or diamond shape of light underneath the eye. One side of the face is lit well from the main light source while the other side of the face uses the interaction of shadows and light, also known as chiaroscuro, to create this geometric form on the face.

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Butterfly lighting is a portrait lighting pattern where the key light is placed above and directly centred with a subject’s face. This creates a shadow under the nose that resembles a butterfly. It’s also known as ‘Paramount lighting,’ named for classic Hollywood glamour photography.

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Split-lighting- Split lighting is a photography lighting technique. The light source that illuminates the subject is perpendicular to the model.

This setup lights up half of the face while keeping the other half shadowed. You “split” the lighting on your subject’s face.

The strong side lighting emphasizes the texture of the skin and the details of the face. The contrast and texture in split lighting portraits often make them very intense. It gives photos a sense of power, assertiveness or conviction.

You can also use split lighting to emphasize glamour.

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Continuous lighting is exactly knocks itself on the head with it’s name- lights that are always on. Continuous lighting differs from strobe lighting, which flashes on and off. Light sources of this type range from basic indoor light fixtures to professional-grade lighting equipment.

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Sequence/ Grid Of Images

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff got into capturing portrait photos in 1981. He mastered the required photography technique between 1981 and 1985. Along with portrait photography, Ruff was into large format printing, producing images in large seven feet (2,1 meter) by five feet (1,5 meter). This combination helped to introduce a unique feel to the pictures.

When Thomas Ruff started capturing portraits, he was aware that he is living at the end of the 20th Century. In addition to that, he knew that he is spending time in an industrialized Western country. Therefore, he wanted to introduce that unique vibe to the photos captured.

By 1987, Thomas Ruff was well settled as a portrait photographer and in high demand. This tempted him to try other photography styles and come up with innovative photos. To do that, Thomas Ruff experimented with composite faces in 1992, assisted by Minolta Montage Unit.

Then Thomas Ruff started working on 8×10 colour portraits. He took these photos against coloured backdrops. Along with that, he went ahead to capture night images and buildings as well.

Thomas Ruff has once admitted to the fact that portraits captured by him look Apollonian. That’s because the sitters of all his photos are providing a perfect surface to the viewer. They are friendly and neutral.

How to take a Passport Photo

FACE:

eyes must be open and clearly visible, with no flash reflections and no ‘red eye’

facial expression must be neutral (neither frowning nor smiling), with the mouth closed

photos must show both edges of the face clearly

photos must show a full front view of face and shoulders, squared to the camera 

the face and shoulder image must be centred in the photo; the subject must not be looking over one shoulder (portrait style), or tilting their head to one side or backwards or forwards

there must be no hair across the eyes

hats or head coverings are not permitted except when worn for religious reasons and only if the full facial features are clearly visible

photos with shadows on the face are unacceptable

photos must reflect/represent natural skin tone

BACKGROUND:

Photos must have a background which:

has no shadows

has uniform lighting, with no shadows or flash reflection on the face and head

shows a plain, uniform, light grey or cream background (5% to 10% grey is recommended)

Dimond Cameo

Henry Mullins

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Henry Mullins started working at 230 Regent Street in London in the 1840s and moved to Jersey in July 1848, setting up a studio 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.

For a brief period in the 1860s he also worked in London, but judging by the collection of his photographs which is now held by La Société Jersiaise, he found plenty of willing sitters in the island prepared to pay half a guinea (promoted as “one half of that in London”) to have their portrait taken by him.

Double / Multi-Exposures

Double or multiple exposures are an illusion created by layering images (or portions of images) over the top of each other. This can be achieved in the camera settings, or on Adobe Photoshop by creating LAYERS and then using BLENDING OPTIONS and OPACITY CONTROL. Artist have used these techniques to explore Surrealist Ideas and evoke dream-like imagery, or imagery that explores time / time lapse.

Man Ray

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During his career as an artist, Man Ray allowed few details of his early life or family background to be known to the public. He even refused to acknowledge that he ever had a name other than Man Ray.

Man Ray’s birth name was Emmanuel Radnitzky. He was born in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on August 27, 1890.

Man Ray was the uncle of the photographer Naomi Savage, who learned some of his techniques and incorporated them into her own work.

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Up close!

Satoshi Fujiwara

In Michael Haneke’s 2000 film Code Unknown, there is a scene in which the protagonist’s lover, a photographer, secretly snaps pictures of passengers sitting across from him on the train.

Inspired by the film, I used the same approach to shoot people in Berlin trains. Yet in contemporary society, it is not acceptable to rashly and publicly display pictures of people’s faces that were taken without their permission. Thus, I shot and edited my pictures in a way that makes it impossible to identify the individual people who served as my “models.” To avoid impinging on the “right of likeness,” I used the shadows created by the direct sunlight pouring in through the windows, various compositional approaches, and digital processing to keep their identities anonymous.

When we look at another person, either directly or through another medium, we interpret a wide range of information based on outward appearance (face, physique, clothes and accessories, and movements)—in other words, various codes. By regulating and altering these codes in various ways, I set out to obscure the individuality and specificity of the subjects in the pictures in my series.—Satoshi Fujiwara

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Juxtaposition

Juxtaposition is placing two images together to show contrast or similarities. For inspiration look at some of the page spreads from ED.EM.03 where pairings between portraits of Henry Mullins and Michelle Sank are juxtaposed to show comparison/ similarities/ differences between different social and professional classes in Jersey mid-19th century and early 21 st century.

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Cut and Paste/ Photomontage

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The following images are my chosen images that I will use the technique of cut and paste on

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Creating a GIF

How to make a GIF in Photoshop
1. Create layer for each image
2. Window > timeline
3. Select > Create Frame Animation
4. Drop Menu > Make frames from Layers
5. Timeline > select Forever
6. File > Export > Save for Web Legacy > reduce image size to 720 x 720 pixels

My Chosen Images

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A photomontage is a collage constructed from photographs. Historically, the technique has been used to make political statements and gained popularity in the early 20th century (World War 1-World War 2).

Photomontage was also used to great effect by various Pop Artists in the mid 20th Century Pop art was a reaction to abstract expressionism and was similar to DADA in some ways. Many Pop Art images and constructions tackled popular consumerism, advertising, branding and marketing techniques. Pop art also explored political concerns such as war, and gender roles too

John Stezaker

John Stezaker is a contemporary British Conceptual artist best known for his collages of found images taken from postcards, film stills, and commercial photographs. Stezaker’s work resembles early-Surrealist and Dada collages made by artists like Kurt Schwitters, Hannah Hoch and Man Rey 

Art historian Julian Stallabrass said, “The contrast at the heart of these works [by Stezaker] is not between represented and real, but between the unknowing primitives of popular culture, and the conscious, ironic artist and viewer of post-modern images.” Through Stezaker’s elegant juxtapositions, he adopts the content and contexts of the original images to convey his own witty and poignant meanings

 “My ideal is to do very little to the images, maybe just one cut: the smallest change or the most minimal mutilation,” he stated of his work. “What I do is destructive, but also an act of deliberate passivity.”

In his Marriage series, Stezaker focuses on the concept of portraiture, both as art historical genre and public identity. Using publicity shots of classic film stars, Stezaker splices and overlaps famous faces, creating hybrid ‘icons’ that dissociate the familiar to create sensations of the uncanny. Coupling male and female identity into unified characters, Stezaker points to a disjointed harmony, where the irreconciliation of difference both complements and detracts from the whole. Using stylistic images from Hollywood’s golden era, Stezaker both temporally and conceptually engages with his interest in Surrealism. Placed in a contemporary context, his portraits retain their aura of glamour, whilst simultaneously operating as exotic ‘artefacts’ of an obsolete culture. Similar to the photos of ‘primitivism’ published in George Bataille’s Documents, Stezaker’s portraits celebrate the grotesque, rendering the romance with modernism equally compelling and perverse.

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Handmade Experiments

These are some of the photomontages that I made by cutting out different pieces from my Hamptonne portraits or still life objects and placing them together.

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In the top right I have places a cut out of a violin and another cut out of a hat on top of one of my portraits from Hamptonne. Having the different shapes helps frame her face and bring the attention to the portrait. In the bottom photo I have used a cut out of the good wife and a quote from another photo I took at Hamptonne. I have placed these onto one of the courtyard’s. I like how you can see the texture of ripping the paper instead of cutting it, it gives the montage a more rustic look.

In this montage i have used two portraits of the good wife and placed them onto a background with apples and leaves, the green in them standout because there’s not as many bright colours. I like how you can see two different views of the goodwife and with different poses and lighting.

Photoshop Experiments

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We have also done different experiments in photoshop this allowed me to have more freedom and be more creative with what I chose to do. The middle photo I did a Walker Evans inspired edited, which is where I have halved to different images and put them together. On the right I have used one of my photos from Hamptonne as a background and but black dots around the shoes to make it look like the photo has been hole punched.