These images are my edited final outcomes and the most successful images. The images I changed into black and white mostly had very white and plain backgrounds so the monochrome look enhanced the images and some of them simply just looked better with the black and white filter so I adapted them accordingly.

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After transferring these images onto Lightroom, I began to sort between which images were the most successful and flagged them with an X or P to sort them into a smaller selection before starting the editing process.

This image makes me feel intimidated as the mans pose displays him as powerful and the use of light positioning to create shadows on his face portrays him as cruel and spiteful making the audience feel uneasy. The dim lighting also creates an eerie and dark feeling to the image with the writing on the pillars implying that there are some unknown stories and secrets hidden within this image.

In the background we can see what looks like a train and rails making me question what sort of role he had in a place like this and following further research I found out that the man was a German industrialist that was a convicted war criminal. Alfred Krupp’s business was using almost 100,000 slave labourers from concentration camps to manufacture arms for the Nazis under terrible working conditions. This caused many deaths from exhaustion, hunger, neglect and malnourishment. Krupp was surprisingly interested by the work of Arnold Newman, a Jew, despite his obvious hateful views. This lead the New York based magazine Newsweek to commission Newman to take Krupp’s portrait. He originally refused on a moral basis however he changed his mind when he realised he could create an image that would represent the evil that he harboured and the pain and misery that Krupp was responsible for.

This context explains the use of a downwards camera angle, which contrasts the power we originally sensed. This is to present how Arnold was looking down on Krupp, positioning the viewer to be higher up then him potentially symbolising the fact that now that Krupp has no power and authority over the Jewish people and Arnold Newman is taking back that power.

Arnold Abner Newman was an American photographer, known for his environmental portraits of artists and politicians and for  popularizing this style of portraiture. With this method, he placed his sitters in a setting representative of their professions, aiming to capture the essence of an individual’s life and work.

His environmental approach to portraiture was influenced by symbolism and impressionism, and defined by the imperative of captivating the viewer no matter how well known the subject was and often stressed that he was motivated by a genuine interest in his subjects, and in the craft of photography. While he specialized in photographing artists, Newman captured the likeness of a vast range of figures, from athletes and actors to presidents and politicians.

This image shows the sitter, Eugene Smith, sat in a messy and chaotic room. Eugene was a famous American photojournalist so we can assume this image is shot in his workplace/studio as the background shows images being produced. I find this image creates a feeling of being overwhelmed as he is positioned in the centre of the image to be small compared to the mess around him portraying the large impact his work takes on his life as he allows it to be larger than himself and shows how his work has taken over his life. However, In contrast to that I get a sense of a calm and contentness from this image presenting W.Eugene as comforted by his work as he has made it his life.

Portraiture is a very old art form going back at least to ancient Egypt. Before the invention of photography, a painted, sculpted, or drawn portrait was the only way to record the someone’s appearance. Getting painted portraits done was only available to families in the upper classes of society. That all changed when photography came into existence.

Photography

Portrait photography is the process of taking a picture in an attempt to capture the subject’s personality. The idea of the subject being aware separates portrait photography from every other type of photography involving people in the frame.

Richard Avedon says,

“A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he’s wearing or how he looks.”

However, portrait photography hasn’t always been that easy. In the late 18th century, the process behind creating a single portrait took immense amounts of laborious, economically conscious efforts which had an effect on how portraits were done.

In 1839, Robert Cornelius shot the first successful portrait photograph in the form of a self-portrait.

He used the natural light outdoors to get a faster exposure. Robert had to hold this pose for a whole minute before rushing back and putting the lens cap back on due to the early type of camera he was using.

Nowadays, portraits have become a staple in photography and can be seen in the media. As with many other styles of photography, portraiture has evolved and modernized with the aid of smartphones and devices, and the self-portrait has been made more convenient with the selfie.

The selfie is a form of self-portraiture that has become increasingly popular over the past decade. Although the word “selfie” didn’t start becoming used until around 2002 which isw nearly 150 years after Cornelius snapped his first self-portrait and the term didn’t really catch on until around 2011.

An environmental portrait is a photographed portrait that captures subjects in their natural surroundings and workplace instead of in a studio or other artificial setup.

mood board:

With my final images I framed them by mounting some of them on foamboard and the sticking them on some black board to make the images stand out.

I chose to look at air pollution as it is a topic that effects almost all aspects of our life whether it’s health, environment etc. When looking into causes of air pollution i started to research the effects smoking and vaping have on our environment and decided that it would be one of my focus points for this project.

I looked at well known photographers such as Mandy Barker and Edward Burtinsky for inspiration however my favourite work was made by a photographer called George Marazakis. His work focused a lot on images of factories omitting pollution into our atmosphere and the damage that causes so he became a big inspiration for my work in this project.

For my photoshoots I went on a walk and took pictures of cars and chimneys and then also recruited my brother (who vapes) to be photographed.

By focusing mainly on vaping and smoking it allowed the project to become something very well known to me as it is such a common thing to see and so it was interesting to photograph and delve into the damage that it is actually doing to the air. I used the smoke in my images to represent the air pollution produced by larger scale industrial factories and use it to represent other forms of air pollution which I wasn’t able to photograph due to not having access to them kind of large scale factories in jersey. However in my opinion they still delivered the point I intended them to despite being unable to reach large factories.

Overall I consider this project to have been quite successful as I managed to create some interesting outcomes however next time I think I should get a larger range of very different images so that I have more to work with.

This is a virtual gallery I made to display some of my best outcomes.

These are my most successful outcomes from this project: