-3 environmental portrait
-3 people
Mood Board
Plan
shoot 1 Inside – Rubys room
Bedroom, posters, music albums, Messy/Made bed, lighting in bedroom
shoot 2 Outside – Dads Garden
Housing Environment, hobby’s, lighting, Time of day.
Shoot 3 two people – 2 friends
The cyanotype process was introduced by an astronomer John Herschel in 1842 who tried to find a way to copy his notes. Herschel figured out that by coating paper with a UV light sensitive emulsion and placing objects on the paper created a white silhouette on a blue background. A year later (1843) a friend of his, Anna Atkins, used the cyanotype process to publish the first ever photographically illustrated book; “British Algae; Cyanotype impressions”.
The cyanotype procedure is quite scientific in nature. It requires a UV light sensitive substance which is created by mixing a solution of potassium ferricyanide and a solution of ferric ammonium citrate. This solution is then applied to a surface such as paper by soaking and drying it all in a dark room. An image is produced by placing an object on the paper and exposing it to a source of ultraviolet light.
The UV light and the citrate reduce the Iron(III) to Iron(II) following the reaction of the Iron(II) with ferricyanide this produces ferric ferrocyanide which has a blue pigment. After the paper has been exposed, it gets developed by washing in water so that all the Iron(III) salts get washed away. Next, the paper is dried. The areas where the objects were places are not exposed to the UV light and so remain white whilst the rest turns blue.
Initially, cyanotypes were used for creating blueprints of architectural or scientific diagrams. After Anna Atkins published her book people stared seeing the artistic aesthetic of cyanotypes. Since then they were widely used for creative purposes.
One way of producing cyanotype art is by using negatives. This is done by desaturating and inverting a digital image to create the negative. This image is printed onto acetate then placed on a surface coated with the UV light sensitive substance and exposed to UV light resulting in an alternative image.
Cyanotype art can be combined with traditional media like painting or printmaking to create something unique.
One of the cyanotype artists that intrigued me is Karen Landey. Landey has been a photographer for over sixty years, she enjoys finding alternative meaning of clichés and presenting them in unique ways. She find particular interest in dreams, their magical, mysterious nature and unlimited possibilities they offers us. She often refers to Photoshop as a tool to explore the world of dreams and transform them into reality. To Landey the ability to create digital negatives of collages and print as cyanotypes is downright magic.
“I am intrigued by the interface between quantum physics and mystical realms. This radiant edge inspires me to find ways to bring this light through my artwork and into the world.” – Karen Landey
Photography is the art of capturing light with a camera, usually via a digital sensor or film, to create an image. With the right camera equipment, you can even photograph wavelengths of light invisible to the human eye, including UV, infrared, and radio.
The first permanent photograph was captured in 1826 (some sources say 1827) by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in France. It shows the roof of a building lit by the sun.
Colour photography started to become popular and accessible with the release of Eastman Kodak’s “Kodachrome” film in the 1930s. Before that, almost all photos were monochromatic – although a handful of photographers, toeing the line between chemists and alchemists, had been using specialized techniques to capture colour images for decades before. You’ll find some fascinating galleries of photos from the 1800s or early 1900s captured in full colour, worth exploring if you have not seen them already.
These scientist-magicians, the first color photographers, are hardly alone in pushing the boundaries of one of the world’s newest art forms. The history of photography has always been a history of people – artists and inventors who steered the field into the modern era.
Landscape photography is the art of capturing pictures of nature and the outdoors in a way that brings your viewer into the scene. From grand landscapes to intimate details, the best photos demonstrate the photographer’s own connection to nature and capture the essence of the world around them. Below, you’ll find all the landscape photography articles we have written over the past decade, including our highly approachable tutorials and techniques. If you want to learn everything there is to know about taking beautiful landscape pictures, this is the place to start.
Portrait photography is one of the most popular genres of photography, with good reason. Good portrait photographers are able to capture the personality and emotion of people around them, along with earning money via wedding photography, senior portraits, family photography sessions, and so on. Below, you’ll find everything we’ve written about portrait photography, intended for both beginners and professionals. Also, if you want some ideas beyond our basic portrait photography tips, take a look at our more specialized tutorials on weddings and flash photography. Those articles will help you with posing, camera settings, and lighting portraits. It isn’t always easy to take pictures of people, but it’s worth the effort to learn.
Abstract art and abstract photography art are relatively new but well-established styles of modern and contemporary art. Abstraction in photography is a stark departure from documentary-style photography or hyper-realism. Read on to learn more about abstract photography, including its inspiration, origins, and purpose.
For my first indoor photoshoot of environmental portraits, I photographed my dad in his garage. He has worked there for around 27 years and the setting was very natural for him. The lighting in the garage is quite low in most areas so this became a problem I had to consider.
For my second photoshoot, I went to a gym/WCB centre in town called ‘The Rock’. Here, I am planning to photograph Tommy, a personal trainer with his boss and owner of the gym. Whilst I was there, Tommy was training with a customer who was happy to let me take photos of them training. The reasoning for this was because I went to the gym myself for a fair few months and knew that Tommy and Craig (the owner) wouldn’t mind if I asked to take photos of them.
For my third and final photoshoot, I photographed Susie, a hairdresser in the ‘Style’ salon, also in town. I had just had my hair cut and asked if she was happy to be photographed for my coursework. She had a customer booked in after myself so I only had 2 minutes to get what I could.
An environmental portrait is a portrait taken in the main subject’s usual environment, which could be places like their home or place of work, and they typically illuminate/highlight the subject’s life and/or surroundings. The term is most often used as a genre of photography.
When taking photos of a person in their natural surroundings, generally you will be able to more clearly portray their character/personality, therefore portraying their personality, rather than just a likeness of their physical appearance. It is also thought that when photographing a subject in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience. The background in these photos is a key feature as it portrays part of their characteristics and personality which are often things pointed out by the environment that someone works/lives/rests in.
Photographer James Philip Nelson was born in 1967 in Sevenoaks, Kent. He spent his childhood in Africa, Asia and South America, traveling around with his father, who worked as a geologist for International Shell. At the age of 7, he was sent to Stoneyhurst College boarding school in Lancashire UK.
In 2010, Nelson started to work on his second book, Before they Pass. Away He travelled for 3 years and photographed more than 35 indigenous tribes around the world in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, and the South Pacific, using a 50-year-old 4x5in camera. Nelson said the project was “inspired by Edward S. Curtis and his great photographs of Native Americans”. Like Curtis, Nelson documents his subjects in a romantic, stylised and posed manner, with the aim of “putting them on a pedestal”. Nelson remarks that the project is not meant to convey “a documentary truth, but rather [his] own artistic interpretation and a celebration of diversity and beauty.” The tribes that Nelson photographed include the Huli and Kalam tribes of New Guinea, the Tsaatan of Mongolia and the Mursi people of the Omo River valley in southern Ethiopia. In a TED talk he described the working process used in this project and stated it occasionally took “months trying to find [these indigenous peoples] and then again weeks to gain their trust and permission to photograph them.” Nelson borrowed the funds for the project from a Dutch billionaire, Marcel Boekhoorn. As a result of the project, a book containing the photographs and texts, a limited edition of the book, as well as printed photo portraits were published.
More of his work:
During my visit to Hamptonne, I took pictures of objects within and around the farm. These objects were a mix of things such as crockery, food, clothing, personal objects and books.
Contact Sheets
At Hamptonne we got the chance to explore around the different farm houses that people would have lived in. They had been set up with the different items that people in that time would have used. For example their were shoes and hats at the front door and the table had food on it ready for the people to eat.
Editing
For my edits I have turned some of my photos black and white and I have kept some in colour but have increased the saturation or exposure to make them brighter and to give it a more vintage look. I have also made the black in some of my images more bold so that contrasts to some of the dull backgrounds.
Final Objects
I have picked these as my final photos because they each capture different aspects of the houses, how people use to live and what they used or wore. I like how the first image 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. I also like the fourth photo because the bold blacks sit nicely on top of the lighter grey tones from the book.
An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography
By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.
ALFRED SANDER
Sander was born in Herdorf the son of a carpenter working in the mining industry. While working at a local mine, Sander first learned about photography by assisting a photographer who was working for a mining company. With financial support from his uncle, he bought photographic equipment and set up his own darkroom.
He spent his military service (1897–1899) as a photographer’s assistant and the next years wandering across Germany. In 1901, he started working for a photo studio in linz, Austria, eventually becoming a partner (1902), and then its sole proprietor (1904). He left Linz at the end of 1909 and set up a new studio in Cologne.
In 1911, Sander began with the first series of portraits for his work people of the 20th century. In the early 1920s, he came in contact with the cologne progressives a radical group of artists linked to the workers movement
In 1927, Sander and writer Ludwig Mathar travelled through Sardinia for three months, where he took around 500 photographs. However, a planned book detailing his travels was not completed.
Sander’s Face of our Time was published in 1929. It contains a selection of 60 portraits from his series People of the 20th Century, and is introduced by an essay by Alfred Doblin titled “On Faces, Pictures, and their Truth”. Under the Nazi regime, his work and personal life were greatly constrained. His son Erich, who was a member of the left wing socialists worker party (SAP), was arrested in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died in 1944, shortly before the end of his sentence. Sander’s book Face of our Time was seized in 1936 and the photographic plates destroyed.
Around 1942, during westawald he left Cologne and moved to the small village of Kuchhausen, in the westerwald region; this allowed him to save the most important part of his body of work. His Cologne studio was destroyed in a 1944 bombing raid, but tens of thousands of negatives, which he had left behind in a basement near his former apartment in the city, survived the war. 25,000 to 30,000 negatives in this basement were then destroyed in a 1946 fire.
In 1962, 80 photographs from the People of the 20th Century project were published in book format, under the name Deutschenspiegel. Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (German Mirror. People of the 20th Century).
Sander died of a stroke on 20 April 1964. He was buried next to his son Erich in Cologne’s Melaten cemetery .
An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography.
By photographing a person in their natural surroundings, it is thought that you will be able to better illuminate their character, and therefore portray the essence of their personality, rather than merely a likeness of their physical features. It is also thought that by photographing a person in their natural surroundings, the subject will be more at ease, and so be more conducive to expressing themselves, as opposed to in a studio, which can be a rather intimidating and artificial experience.
For my environmental portrait I will photograph a fishmonger at Homefields
I will be taking photos of the worker while focusing on light and angles.
I will conduct this shoot at some point in the next week.
I am designing the shoot in this way to take photos which represent the busy life of a Fishmonger. I will produce the best images by working with the worker to find the best lighting angle.
Contact Sheets
Here I have shown evidence of me creating collections in Lightroom, I have created multiple different collections such as Hampton objects and Hampton buildings. This helps me organise all of my photographs, like separating images those that are blog friendly, and the images that I would like to edit.
Editing and Final Images
Below I have demonstrated how I have edited some of my images to make certain features more prominent such as the sign below being brighter bringing out the yellow and reds in the image. Furthermore, editing the image of the shoes to create the texture more visible and the whites in the image lighter, as when I took the image the lighting in the room was limited. My favourite aspect of this image is its simplicity and the brighter yellow contrasting with the duller brown floor background.
I like how in Lightroom you can used the before and after function to compare how you have edited your images, like her where I have edited this image of some pots, located in the cooking house at Hampton. I like how I toned done on the colours in the image, giving it a more rustic and old fashioned look. In addition, I adjusted the clarity to make the individual pots more legible and the wall in the background now being whiter makes matches better with the dull browns in the image, making it more cohesive.
