Masculinity, Femininity and Identity –

For my photoshoot I based some of my photos from Eugene smiths documentative series ‘Country Doctor’, Creating my own version, I explored in my photoshoot the way Masculinity, Femininity and Identity are explored throughout my Relatives locally owned business, A pig farm.

‘A day in the life’ – George Blake

In comparison to my inspiration, I think I created a good visual and textual inspired photoshoot for my edited photographs. With a similar concept in mind I went my own way with documenting through a photo essay of the ‘day in the life’ of my relatives pig farm.

Comparison –

I find that these images create a comparison, due to both images capturing the subject in a working environment. Despite different Jobs entirely, they’re similar in the fact both subjects in the image are doing a task related to their practice.

To me, these images can be shown to comparison from each other as Both images subject does not provide a direct eye contact to the camera. This for me creates that documentative element in these photographs as it further associates the subject into the image as the viewer is captured to their appearance within their environment.

In comparison to Smiths work, I believe my editing to create a picture essay, envisioned as a newspaper matches closely to his work. Going into detail about the contents within the image, I believe I have made a good replica of his concept.

Overall, I believe I have captured the same conceptual basis, the photographer, Eugene Smith had when creating these images. I think with the technical aspects, such as lighting and aperture, I was able to make a close match. Since Smith’s photos were made in 1948, I tried to replicate a newspaper effect from the time period. I based my idea of positioning my photographs to create that same effect as if being read out of a newspaper or magazine.

I was also inspired from a vintage WW2 Jersey Newspaper I own, where photographs were presented in small circles popping out on a page. Using my knowledge of photoshop I had gained from making diamond cameos, I recreated that effect with some of my smaller side images.

Studio Portraits –

For my photoshoot, I was inspired by a large mixture of photographers such as Henry Mullins, a local photographer who merged his studio portraits of people of Jersey into a Diamond Cameo and Andrés Gallardo Albajar, who got headshot photographs of people with and without hands covering their face, to then merge them as Multi-exposures.

In comparison to Mullins, I believe I was easily able to create a similar approach to his style, basing my concept of his, I used by photographs from my studio shots.

Comparisons –

Overall, I like how these came out a lot as I think I managed to create a similar style to both photographers. Using photos from when we played around with studio lighting, they are a mixture of Rembrandt, Chiaroscuro and butterfly lighting.

I would improve however with further with more photoshoots to be able to have a wider experimentation to Image manipulation. This is because I feel like I could create some additional diamond cameos and multi-exposures without over-using images from the shoot.

Environmental Portrait –

Inspired by the German photographer, August Sander, I wanted to recreate his style of some of his high contrast, environmental portraits. Using a similar aperture I tried to capture my portraits of people in their natural environments. I was also inspired by Alec Soth, who would photograph people doing their hobbies.

Overall, I like how these came out, I think the angles of the shots and composition produce an nice image, I would improve however with getting better lighting. As some of my photos appear to have less definition on shadows as during my photoshoot it wasn’t particularly a sunny day.

Comparison –

Overall, I like how these turned out. In comparison to, Soth’s and Sanders work, I think my images loosely take influence through capturing the visual concepts of people in their natural environments. How I would improve is for further exploration into environmental Portraits, capturing more realistic locations like a work place or home, I think combined with a more accurate attempt at shot distances, I could produce a similar style of image.