Rembrandt lighting is a lighting technique which was named after Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. It is used in photography and cinematography and can be achieved by using one key light and a reflector. It creates a triangle shape from the light on the side of the face which it is not directly hitting whilst leaving the rest of the face dark.

Movie director Cecil B. DeMille is credited for the first use of the term. While shooting his 1915 film DeMille borrowed some portable spotlights from the Mason Opera House in downtown LA and began to make shadows on his subjects. DeMille’s partner first thought that people would only pay half for these images he had taken as only half of the face was captured. But then DeMille told him that is was Rembrandt lighting and they would pay double.

How is Rembrandt lighting useful?

This lighting technique is useful as it creates a dramatic but also natural look on the person. It is considered one of the go-to lighting effects as it creates a dramatic effect but is fairly simple to set up.

Rembrandt lighting set up.

The one key light is placed diagonally to the subject to highlight one half of the face and the camera either centre or at an opposite angle to the light. A reflector should be used to get more light onto the underneath of the subjects face.

Rembrandt lighting own images

Butterfly lighting is a type of lighting which is used mainly in a studio setting. It comes from a butterfly shape shadowing under the nose because of the light coming from above. You only need one key light to create the butterfly lighting and also a reflector would help reflect some of the light onto the bottom of subjects face. It creates a soft and flattering effect on a subjects face.

What is butterfly lighting used for?

It is used for taking glamorous portrait photos. The soft lighting on the face creates a butterfly shaped shadow underneath the nose. This type of lighting is good for portraits as it highlights the main features like the nose and cheekbones.

It was also used to photograph a lot of famous people and because of the shadows onto the neck and the highlights of the cheekbones it made these people look thinner.

How butterfly lighting is set up.

Butterfly lighting own images

Camera obscura and pinhole photography

Pinhole photography is when you use a camera without its lens and with a tiny aperture. It uses the lightproof box with a small whole on one side which is what camera obscura is.

Camera obscura is a darkened box with a convex lens or aperture for projecting the image of an external object onto a screen inside. The earliest known written about camera obscura was in 400BC by a Chinese philosopher called Mo-Tzu. He wrote that light from an illuminated object that passed through a pinhole into a dark room would invert the image.

Nicephore Niepce

Niepce was a French inventor who was most commonly linked to the invention of photography. He developed Heliography which was a technique he used to create the world’s oldest and first surviving product of a photographic process. In 1826/27 he used a primitive camera to produce the oldest surviving picture of a real world scene.

Heliography

Heliography is an early photographic process producing a photoengraving on a metal plate coated with an asphalt preparation. Heliography was developed using two distinct methods. The first consisted of “fixing the views” in the camera obscura, while the other copied existing methods to “reproduce them by printing using known methods of engraving.”

Louis Daguerre

Daguerre was a French artist and photographer who was known for his invention of the Daguerreotype process of photography. After this he became known as one of the fathers of photography. He developed the Daguerreotype process in 1839.  Daguerre partnered with Nicephore Niepce in 1829. Niepce died in 1833 but Daguerre continued to experiment and evolved the process which would be known as the Daguerreotype process.

Daguerreotype process

The Daguerreotype process consisted of treating silver-plated copper sheets with iodine to make them sensitive to light, then exposing them in a camera and ‘developing’ the images with warm mercury vapor. Daguerre’s images made using the Daguerreotype process were praised and the news of this process then spread quickly around the world. The French Government then bought the rights to Daguerre’s invention in return for him having lifetime pensions. In 1839 the French Government presented the invention as something for the world to use and published working instructions on how to create images using the Daguerreotype process.

Henry Fox Talbot

Talbot was an English photographer, scientist and also an inventor who invented the salted paper and Calotype method. His first successful camera photographs were made in 1835. He used paper which was sensitised with silver chloride which would darken when it was exposed to a light source. In the 1840’s he worked on something called photomechanical reproduction, (a reproduced photographic image that is printed in ink and usually on paper) which then led to his creation of the phytoglyphic engraving process which is a gelatine and bichromate mixture which was then coated over a metal plate and then placed in the light. When the light reaches the plate the gelatine hardened and the image area can be washed away. Talbot created the photographic process know as Calotype. The Calotype process is an early photographic process which was done using paper which was coated with silver iodine. Paper texture effects in calotype photography limit the ability of this early process to record low contrast details and textures.

Robert Cornelius

Robert Cornelius was an American photographer who designed the photographic plate for the first photograph taken in the US, which was an image of a Central High School taken by Joseph Saxton.

Cornelius took the first ever selfie. He did this by setting up his camera at the back his family store in Philadelphia. He took the selfie by removing the lens cap and then running into frame where he sat for a minute before covering the lens again.

Julia Margeret Cameron

Julia Margeret Cameron was a British photographer who is considered as one of the most important portraitists of the 20th century. She is mostly known for her close-ups of famous Victorian men and women.

After showing an interest in photography for many years, Cameron started photography as a profession after her daughter gave her a camera as a present. After this she started to capture men, women and children who would visit her studio which was at Freshwater. Her images of some respected men like Charles Darwin and Henry Taylor have been described as ‘extraordinarily powerful’ and she has been credited with producing the first close-ups in history.

Pictorialism

The movement known as Pictorialism represented a photographic aesthetic and a set of principles about photography’s role as art. This movement dominated photography during the late 19th and early 20th century. Pictorialism started in England but then expanded to New York which is where it centred around Alfred Stieglitz, which is who started Pictorialism.

Henry Mullins

Henry Mullins Moved to Jersey in 1948 and set up a studio which was known as the royal saloon. At first Mullins was in a partnership with someone called Mr Millward who he only worked with for around a year. After that Mullins worked by himself and continued to for another 26 years.

When Mullins came to Jersey he started photographing the locals and managed to photograph almost 10000 people who lived in Jersey at the time.

Mullins was popular with officers of Jersey which were very popular to have their portraits taken. Their wives and children were also popular for having their portraits taken. The portraits of these officers show the fashion of their time with the long hair and beards and it is hard to tell the difference with some officers who were of the same rank.

August Sander

“If we can create portraits of subjects that are true, we thereby in effect create a mirror of the times.” August Sander

Sander started photography when he was a teenager and when he came to his twenties was operating a portrait studio. Although he had a studio, Sander would travel across Germany with a large-format camera to find people who would not normally come to him for photos. Sander worked on his project (people of the twentieth century) through a period of large social and political change which spanned the Weimar Republic and the Nazi regime. This project took Sander his whole career as he tried to capture people in Germany of all working backgrounds and segments of society. The project adapted and evolved throughout the time he was doing it splitting into seven groups; ‘The Farmer’, ‘The Skilled Tradesman’, ‘The Woman’, ‘Classes and Professions’, ‘The Artists’, ‘The City’ and ‘The Last People’.

Sanders work was a source of inspiration for other upcoming photographers including Walker Evans, Bernd and Hilla Becher etc. He also changed the way that many people look at portrait photography, also informed the way people see gender and class.

Image analysis

This image shows a Nazi soldier who has a pilots mask at the top of his head. Not to long before this image was taken, the Nazis impounded unsold copies of his book ‘face of our time’ and destroyed its printing blocks. Sander then abandoned his project to do landscape photography. This persons facial expression makes him look sort of normal, but the person behind the face could be completely different, aggressive and brutal because of him being a Nazi soldier. He could of done things which would not be even slightly acceptable in this day and age, because of the war and the person that was in charge of Germany.

Alec Soth

Soth is a photographer who is best known for capturing the Midwestern USA. Soth’s early work (and most popular project/book) “Sleeping by the Mississippi”, gained him a lot of attention by art critics. These art critics said that his photographs conveyed a strong sense of intimacy with the landscape. Soth was extremely shy as a child a was driven to start pursuing portrait photography after seeing the portrait images created by Diane Arbus. After his initial success with “sleeping by the Mississippi” Soth went on to create and publish another photo book in 2006 called “Niagara”. For this project he photographed people and places around Niagara Falls and has since then produced two more books.

Image analysis

This image shows a man (Charles) dressed in work overalls holding two model airplanes. Soth had spotted this mans house while travelling along the Mississippi and admired the glass room which had been built at the top of the house. Soth waited for Charles to come home from work and when he arrived back he was wearing these work overalls which Soth though would be perfect for a portrait photo. Charles showed Soth around the glass room and then thought to show him his model airplanes which Soth also wanted to be in the photo. Charles took Soth to the roof to take some photographs. This image represents the inner child of adults with Charles still having an interest in model airplanes which is normally something a child would enjoy.

https://www.artsteps.com/view/63d91ddf695e5469b4950183?currentUser

These images all represent and link to Anthropocene as they all show changes being made to the environment and places being polluted by things like plastic. Also land being altered by things like construction workings to make more places for people to live, work and also travel on a daily basis. A couple of the images also show how poorly people live and how bad of conditions they live in. How sea levels are rising because of global warming and how people are having to travel in boats because of the water levels.

A French photographer duo which work primarily with a large-format camera and they concentrate solely on photographing urban ruins. They both live and work in Paris and at first they worked individually but met online just before their Detroit project in 2005 which Steidl then published is 2010. They have also made a book called Gunkanjima and have done a project which is all about capturing American theatres that have decayed or been abandoned or even been completed transformed.

I find all of their photos intriguing as they all capture places that have been abandoned for a period of time and are decaying. It would be interesting to find out the stories behind all the images of the abandoned theatres and the images taken after the Detroit incident. Most of their images create an empty feeling as there is not a lot happening in them and most of them are plain but interesting.

About the theatres

In the early 20th century, following the development of the entertainment industry, hundreds of theaters were built across North America. Major entertainment firms and movie studios commissioned specialized architects to build grandiose and extravagant auditoriums.

From the 60’s, TV, multiplexes and urban crisis made them obsolete. During the following decades, these theatres were either modernised, transformed into adult cinemas or they closed, one after the other; many of them were simply demolished.

This image is interesting as it shows an abandoned theatre which could have once held exciting shows and events. In this sort of image including the rows of seats I picture the theatre being full of people and I picture how the theatre would have been before it was abandoned and becoming almost lifeless. You can see the dust on the seats and the decayed look from the paint having come off parts of the walls. The image is being lit up by natural lighting which is coming through the windows and you can see the light casting on certain areas of the rows of seats. You can also see the organisation of the seats and how they are put into organised rows which is Aesthetically nice to look at.

The ruins of Detroit

Image analysis

I find this image super interesting because of all the old equipment thats is included and how some of the stuff in the image is decaying and falling apart. There are certain objects, like what looks like a gas mask sat on top of the tv which gives the image a story and meaning. From the image title we know that this is an old evidence room from a police station but was abandoned because of the Detroit incident. The image looks organised but also messy. You see the organised look because of the filing cabinets which are creating organised and straight lines and the Tv being a square shape. But then you see the things falling out of the filing cabinets and how they have a rusty and old look. You also see how the Tv is covered in dust and how there are things piled up and things lying around causing mess and clutter. The lighting in this image look natural as it is not to bright and not dark. There are shadows casting from some of the objects in the photo and there are some dark spots like underneath the desk.

Anthropocene is a geological epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. It is all about capturing the changes and possible changes that people are making to the environment and how people could be destroying the worlds ecosystems.

Edward Burtynsky, The Anthropocene project.

A Canadian photographer and artist who is know mostly for his large format photos of the industrial landscape. His works depict locations from around the world that represent the increasing development of industrialisation and its impacts on nature and the human existence. His photos capture the changes made to the environment and the things that are destroying it. His style of photography is characterised by the sublime nature of the scale of his photographs. Burtynksy worked with Jennifer Baichwal to create a documentary about Anthropocene in 2018. Burtynsky is considered one of the world’s most accomplished contemporary photographers.

This image shows how in some places there are people struggling with all the used plastic waste because of it all being piled up. They can’t get rid of the plastic as it is not being recycled and used again. It shows us that things like plastic should not be used as it creates dumps and fills up land spaces especially in places where they are not able to destroy or reuse the plastic. It also is dangerous for sea animals as it is being dumped into the ocean carelessly. This image gives a story and insight into how we are badly affecting the environment.

This image shows the process of people making a change to the natural land and how they are about to start some sort of construction. They are moving and altering the natural land to make room for something manmade which is benefiting for people only. This land change could be bad for the environment because of the use of certain equipment.

This image shows how manmade things like roads can alter the natural landscape. Even to make these roads it has impacted the ecosystem, by using equipment and fuels it is causing pollution. Also roads make more room for cars and cars cause more air pollution because of the gas they release.

All of these images include something that relates to manmade things or things that are making the environment and our society worse which links to the topic of Anthropocene and how we are poorly affecting ecosystems and our environment.