in addition to the environmental photography study i did on my grandmother, i and a few other students took a camera across school to take photos of teachers and school staff in there everyday enviroment

This photo school not only helped my confidence in photographing people i am not close with or comfortable with but also taught me a lot about the camera and helped me learn how to take high quality and in focus photos quickly and under pressure, with the teachers anxious to get on with there work we did ou best not to occupy to much of there time and therefor had to learn very quickly about how to focus and use the camera as quickly as possible, unfortunately a good amount of the photos we took did end up being a little blurry but the ones above are what i believe to be my best work from the hour we spend around school.

i edited these photos to be black and white/greyscale in imitation of Daniel Mordzinski’s photography style when photographing the ‘human atlas’ one of his most famous photography series.

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. 

The plan:

I will take photos of my subject with deadpan expressions and other expression and merge them together, or replace different body parts to different parts of face. Another thing I could do is keep the subject the same but edit certain parts of the face to bring attention to it (make it stand out more).

With these photo-montage edits, I did not want to make it over edit them as they are both already fairly interesting photos. I used photo shop to edit both. With the bottom one I also used geometric template to add the triangles.

diamond cameo is where photos are arranged into a diamond shape, as it means all photos get equal coverage. I took 4 photos of a class mate with different angles of his face, using the studio lights and a continuous light with a soft box to add some contrast. We positioned it slightly above the subjects face, and slightly on the right. This is done to mimic a butterfly effect.

Here are the photos I took and decided to use. I colour graded and adjusted mainly just the shadows and highlights to make it look very retro like. Here are the editing setting.

BRUCE GLIDEN – FACE

Bruce Gilden’s project, Faces 2012–14, is an extended series of confronting and compelling photographic portraits. He went very up and close to the subjects faces, capturing and amplifying all the imperfections lack of symmetry of people, making each person very different to each other as we are all individuals.

“My style evolved because I liked being among the common man,” he once said. “I like characters. I always have. When I was five, I liked the ugliest wrestler, so it was easy for me to pick what I wanted to photograph.”

Gilden is not without critics who view the photographs as potentially exploiting his subjects. He would often take photos of unsuspecting people along the street. The artist describes the series as a reflection on his childhood in Brooklyn and the result of a lifelong fascination with ‘characters’ he encounters in pursuit of his subjects.

Gilden, like many photographers, often shies away from explaining the meaning in his photographs. “When people look at my pictures I don’t want to tell them what’s in the pictures. I want them to look at the picture and make up their own story.” So now I’m going to analyse some of his photos in my own way.

Both these photos have a few things in common. They leave very little space in the frame for the background, and making sure the whole face is including in the photo. This allows the viewers to see every imperfection in the face, making the individuals look ugly. There’s almost a since of humour to these photos as well as the subjects didn’t get a change to pose properly and it looks like mug shots.

Here, the blemishes, bad teeth, the stubble and the scrapes – as well as the pimples, wounds, wrinkles, and bulbous veined noses – are rendered even more extreme by the closeness of the camera and the unremitting light of the flash.

type of portrait photography typically used for websites, press releases, publications, and social-media profiles. The term “headshot” or “head shot” just means that the portrait photo is cropped somewhere in the middle torso – so that the focus is on your face. The subject would usually look directly into the camera so the viewer feels more engaged.

Famous headshot photographers:

There are many famous headshot photographers like Peter Hurley, Jordan Matters, Joel Grimes and many more. They are all famous for capturing interesting models, famous actors and singers, ext.

Examples of Headshots (famous people):

The are many different techniques to create interesting headshots, like DIAMOND CAMEO, DOUBLE/ MULTIPLE EXPOSURE, JUXTAPOSITION, SEQUENCE/ GRID AND MONTAGE. You can make them into a typology of many photos of a similar look.

Using my Mullins photos, I experimented more with the types of Headshots I could create.

By overlaying images, cutting them out from their individual layers and lowering their opacity I was able to create some edits I liked the outcome of:

(Example of what the cuts look like)

(Layer 3 – 40% opacity, layer 1 – 50% opacity = helps create overlapped effect)

By adjusting the Hue and saturation, this is how I got the multi-coloured image with each layer having a sperate colour.

(For example, this is how I adjusted my images to get the colour I wanted)

Edits:

I like how these images came out, In future, more photos would be better as I would be able to further experiment with my images.

Grid sequence of photos can be used for many different things, from documentation of progression to creative outlets. Most commonly used to make comparisons and group individuals together, for example they are often used to show a team within a company as they create a team feeling and not a narrow focus as everyone’s photos is as important and similar to the next. They have also been used for things like typologies, however I’m, going to be doing headshot portraiture and a typology tends to be a grouping of similar objects or constructions etc.

Brian D Smith

Brian D Smith

Brain D Smith is a portrait photographer based in Charleston SC and Traverse City MI, he began his career after feeling unfulfilled in his successful engineering career. He was always a hobby photographer until one day he photographed a wedding and the results were beyond what he was expecting and instantly he knew this is what he wanted to do as a career. He had a passion for photography and quickly grew with his unique style of portraiture, he started by doing only wedding portraits before quickly moving onto studio portraiture as well to allow a creative outlet. When he is not photographing a wedding he does mainly editorial shoots as he puts it ‘Portraits and editorial work present an opportunity to slow down, and craft something artistic and uniquely mine. It’s an opportunity to share a bond with a subject and for a brief moment reflect something beautiful within one another.‘ He started his own studio, in which he provides many different types of shoots from professional portraiture to bridal detail shoots.

He combines the idea of 1960’s vouge style shoots with fine art editing, particularly in the bridal portraiture shoots, this allows him total creativity creating stunning, unique results. For this project I’m looking at his studio portraiture that he has made into a sequences of photos displayed in a grid pattern. He uses a simple matching colour palette to create softness in his work that isn’t always clear in many other headshots. I think this makes his work feel friendlier and more appealing.

I love this grid set he has created as there is a real sense of integrity within the photos. There is small details that seem unusual for this style, for example in the middle shot on the bottom row he has posed the model to not be following the rule of thirds and instead having the arm of the model touching the edge of the portrait. He has done this on the top photo of the same column as well, I think this stops the grid feeling too formal and constricted. However the rest the shots are ordered and uniform with following the rule of thirds even if they do not firs appear to be with how he has posed the model when you look closer they do fit the rule. He has posed with model creatively with a different pose in every shot. the first row has the model looking in three different directions including directly into the camera. Where as in the next row the model only looks directly into the camera lens and only her hands move which contrast the last row where the model is looking anywhere but the camera and her arms move in each shot as well. It appears almost like a progression of creativity captured in a series of photos, from how people go about their everyday life fitting their actions to certain situations to then at the end the model doing what suits her and possibly acting outside of societal norms.

The Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds is a simple useful tool, used in most styles of photography to create a well balanced, equal photo, that draws the eye in. ‘a composition guideline that places your subject in the left or right third of an image, leaving the other two thirds more open‘ there are many other techniques similar to the rule of thirds with similar intentions but rule of thirds is the most common and most widely used.

Plan For Photoshoot

Femininity :

what is femininity ?

qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of women or girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed, and there is also some evidence that some behaviours considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors.

femininity can be altered and changed within a person depending on their area and surroundings, for example if someone was brought up with the old rules and laws based around woman and brought up to think they should be dominated and controlled by all the men in their life they would act different to someone who was brought up to be an independent woman and told to never rely on a man but to provide and live for themselves only without being controlled by an manly figure.

woman are seen to be the weaker gender of society who are seen as needy, weak and mentally unstable compared to men being viewed as strong, mentally stable and always the dominant one of the two, for many years it was a patriarchal society which means it was controlled by men this took years before woman were allowed to have a wider say in day to day things and to have the right to jobs and normal things that men had the priority to be able to do/have whereas woman were treated differently and never had as many rights or freedoms as men.

femininity mood board :

What is masculinity?

Masculinity is a set of attributes, behaviours, and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed, and there is also evidence that some behaviours considered masculine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors.

masculinity can be changed depending on the location and who men and boys are brought up surrounded by, for example some boys are brought up around a father who has more control then his mother and the mother may be the one who stays home and does all the housework, living in this household the boy would be brought up to be a man who dominates and makes sure he is in control this also means he would be tough minded and wouldn’t let his emotions get to him, however someone who lived in a household where both the mother and father have hard working paid jobs and both do the cleaning around the house that child would grow up knowing that both men and woman are equal and could possibly be less closed off emotionally rather then someone who was brought up knowing to hide their emotions.

masculinity mood board :

men have always been represented as the dominant, strong and hard working people of society which is a stereotype that has stuck around for years all the way until the end of the second world war where woman were finally given more rights.

Examples of binary opposition

According to Ferdinand de Saussure, binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another. Using binary opposites can often be very helpful in generating ideas for a photographic project as it provides a framework 

Good vs Evil Black vs white

peace vs war Man vs women

Masculinity and Femininity

Femininity

Qualities or attributes regarded as characteristics of women or girls. Women after world war 2 were expected to stay in and cook and look after the children. They were often seen as weak and not powerful and less than the man

Masculinity

Qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of men or boys. The man was suppose to go out to work all day and earn the money for the family and he was seen as the powerful one in the family and who supports the family.

Culture Wars

Culture wars are cultural conflicts between different social groups and struggle for dominance and there values, beliefs and practices.

The term is commonly used to describe contemporary politics in western democracies  with issues such as abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights, pornography, multiculturalism, racial viewpoints and other cultural conflicts based on values, morality, and lifestyle being described as the major political cleavage