Vanessa Winship 

Vanessa Winship is a British photographer born in 1960 who works on long term projects of portrait, landscape, reportage and documentary photography. These personal projects have predominantly been in Eastern Europe but also the USA.

She uses black and white photographic film in natural light. For her work in a reportage or street style she has used a 35 mm hand-held camera, for her landscape work she has at times used a medium format camera and for her portraiture work she has at times used a 5×4-in large format camera. She says of the difference between using 35 mm and large format that “Each methodology makes for a different relationship with my subjects [and] both have their own beauty for me”.

In her series Sweet Nothings she has been taking photographs of schoolgirls from the borderlands of Eastern Anatolia. She continues to take all photographs in the same way; frontal and with enough distance to capture them from head to toe and still include the surroundings. Personally, I like her work because she is bringing political and realistic portraits to keep them natural. Environmental portraits are also to associate with the people being photographed and they tell a story of the people by using the background. This is a good way to make a photograph political which links to Vanessa’s work since she is a documentary photographer.

Winships work focuses on cultural diversity and lifestyle from using environmental portraits.

My emotional response to these portraits definitely varies depending on what aspect I focus on. Overall the photo reminds me the different cultural habit and lifestyles I forget exist in the world. In this album of images, she also uses young children from head to toe in the frame. She may be portraying the vulnerability and innocence of the children by showing them in as it looks school uniform and their height. She also uses a series of two children to portray connection and family. This makes her photos unique and reminds me that family is important and valued everywhere in the world.

These photos were taken in black and white possibly to make them look older and vintage which links to the theme nostalgia. As they are children as well this links to the theme as well. She uses natural lighting with a clear sense of shadowing. She may of used black and white to emphasize the depth of shadows. Especially in the middle one which seems to look like a school in the background which tells us they are educated.

As I can see, the two people are normally physically touching which gives off a sense of warmth and connection. However, this contrasts to the interaction they are giving with the camera as they are not really showing an emotion. They are numbly staring at the camera which doesn’t tell us a lot on how they are feeling. Overall the physical touch gives off a growing up in a family and caring lifestyle. However majority of her images are in black and white which ultimately make the images feel nostalgic which also links to the fact they are children, although it would be interesting to see the background, colours to be able to tell the weather and what time of day for the outside for pathetic fallacy. On another note, I like how the picture is a head to toe frame of the children and how there is more than one.

MOODBOARD

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, for example their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography.

The surroundings or background is a key element in environmental portraiture, and is used to convey further information about the person being photographed.

While it is often true that the background may dominate the subject, this need not necessarily be so. In fact, the details that convey the message from the surroundings can often be quite small and still be significant. It can be used as a way to tell a story.

Two good rules of thumb when attempting to photograph people in their surroundings:

1. “Half of all location photography is moving furniture.”

2. “‘Available light’ means any light that’s available.”

Both sayings have been attributed to the great location portraitist Arnold Newman. More importantly, each can help spell the difference between a good environmental portrait and a great one.

Why shoot environmental portraits?

• they give context to the subject you’re photographing
• they give points of interest to shots (something you need to watch as you don’t want to distract from your subject too much)
• they help your subject relax
• they often give the viewer of your shots real insight into the personality and lifestyle of your subject

These shots sit somewhere between the purposely posed shots of a studio portrait (they are posed and they are unmistakably ‘portraits’) and candid shots which capture people almost incidentally as they go through their daily life.

Some important objectives are:

Spend time getting to know your subject.

Choosing a Location- Your person needs to associate with the background or location.

Props

Posing- This can depend on the mood/tone of your image.

Camera Settings

Typologies- A body of work with a consistent style. Often portrayed in many different forms, some being in a structured group with equal spacing in-between or a particular style in general like the style of environmental portraits. Environmental portraits are often associated with the style of typology as they are always structed images with the same idea of the subject looking into the camera and often centred.

MINDMAP

The photos I used:

Firstly, I used this photograph in the genre (still life) so I included all genres we have covered so far. I used this image as it has a warm tone, landscape and therefore differs from the other images I used. It also has outstanding and unique objects in a special arrangement so in my opinion, without this image the gallery may look dull and boring to look at. However, in order for not all the attention and eye catching features to draw the eye to the one image I attempted to balance it out by using another still life photograph shown below.

Although this photograph has a dull tone, it is still eye catching by the correct amount with the amount of depth to the shadow, increased highlights and exposure. It also has unique qualities from the objects and the arrangement. Since I have used 2 landscape still life photos. I then added 3 portrait formalism images to break up the pattern of still life and landscape.

Formalism images I used:

I have chosen these images as they are a wide variation of formalism. The first photo includes a daily and useful object which relates to Evan’s work since his purpose is to value and celebrate the man-made objects. The singular object symbolizes the importance of the image and eye catching with a plain background. I then used a paintbrush behind a plain white background which is similar to the first. To create a variation I added an image with 4 other objects to make it differ. Another quality that contrasts with the other images is that I included a knife in the image. This could possibly signify that although we do not think about it. Cutlery is a daily and necessary object in our lives. This relates to Evans work just simply in more of a hidden way.

I could improve my gallery by making my formalism photographs black and white so it relates to Evan’s and Regan’s work and also differs from my still life photographs on the side to create a variation and contrast in my gallery.

In these photos, I increased the exposure to make it more clear meanwhile decreasing the contrast to create more vivid detail. Lastly, I decreased the shadows to create more interesting features to make the objects look as if they are levitating so they are similar to Evan and Regan’s work and increased the highlights.

Before I had taken this photograph I used books as they give a nostalgic and vintage effect and placed them in the arrangement I thought looked best. Within this photograph, I edited the image in Lightroom and increased the temp to make it have a warmer tone which gives off a vintage effect which links to still life as it has existed from the 17th century until the modern-day, but in the 19th century, artists adopted photography as a new medium for still life art. I then increased the exposure and contrast so the shadowing had more depth and was more eye catching to make the image more interesting to look at. I decreased the highlights so the image stayed clear and detailed but at the correct amount so it didn’t look to bright nor dull. I increased the shadowing by a little to make the shadowing darker. Lastly, I increased the whites so the image wasn’t too yellow or bright and so it is the correct tone I want it to be.

In the same image, I put it in black and white but overall, decided that I preferred the colour image as it adds more to the image and more eye catching colours and shadows. As the photograph has a warm tone with the objects, put together it creates an ancient and vintage look to it which shows similar qualities to ‘still life’ as most famous ones are in colour and are taken years ago as they started in the 17th century. I also prefer it in colour because the details are clearer on the writing on the book and you can tell what the objects are clearly, however the black and white oppositely could be better as it leaves a mystery keeping the viewer guessing. This links to ‘still life’ as most images from this genre have symbols to tell the viewer what the photograph is about. Whereas my photo do not have symbols but still keep the viewer guessing on what story the image is trying to tell.

Q1. Where and when did still life originate?

• The early 1600s from Dutch and Northern European paintings

Q2. What does colonialism mean?

• Control by one power over a dependent area or people

Q3. How did colonialism impact the still life?

• It introduced new materials and techniques.

Q4. what do you see in early still life paintings?

• Variety of foods, flowers and occasionally skulls.

Q5. What could they symbolize?

• They could symbolize wealth and power in some cases and others maybe death, and lack of time which is shown in the paintings with skulls and or hourglasses.

Q1: What is the etymology (origin & history) of the world photography?

A: Writing with light

Q2: What year was the first photograph made in camera?

A:1826 ( Joseph Nicephore Niepce)

Q3) When did the first photograph of a human appear?

A: 1838 (Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre

Q4: Who made the first ‘selfie’?

A: Robert Cornelius (1839)

Q5: When did the first colour photograph appear?

A: 1861 (James Clerk Maxwell)

Q6: What do mean by the word genre?

A: A style or category of art

Q7: What do we mean by the genre of still-life?

A: An image that shows inanimate objects from the natural or man- made world

Q8: What was the main purpose of the Pictorialist movement?

A: To affirm photography as an art form.

Q9: How do we describe the term documentary photography?

A: Captures images that truthfully portray people, places and events.

Q10: What is exposure in photography?

A: The amount of light that reaches your cameras sensor

Q11: What controls exposure on your camera?

A: Aperture, shutter speed, ISO

Q12: What control on our camera records moving objects?

A: Shutter

Q13: How do we explain depth of field?
A: How much of your image is in focus

Q14: What factors affect Depth of Field?

A: Lens aperture, distance from camera to subject, and lens focal length.

Q15: What is composition in photography?

A: The arrangement of visual elements within the frame.

Q16: What is your understanding of aesthetics in art?

A: Concerned with the nature of beauty and taste.

B: It is subjective and in the eye of the beholder.

C: Aesthetic qualities refer to the way and artwork looks and feels.

D: Making a critical judgement based on observation and understanding.

Q17: What are contextual studies in photography?

A: To provide historical, cultural and theoretical understanding of images.

Consider factors outside of the image, as well as inside the frame.

Q18: How many images are captured on average every day world wide?

A: 4.7 billion

Q19: Which portrait is the most reproduced in the world?

A: The Queen (Elizabeth II)

In todays lesson, we moved all of our photographs we took in the studio and imported them from our media drive onto Adobe Lightroom classic. We placed them into colour co-ordination and star rating to make it more organized to see our personal ranking of our photos. A range from green and red with green the best and red the worst.

Lastly, I chose this photograph as it was green flagged and 5 star rated as it was my favourite and personal best. After, I edited the photo to make it look even clearer and more similar to Evans ‘ Beauty of the Common Tool’. I did this by changing the white balance to auto the make it more white and clear, I then adjusted the photo with exposure, highlights, and saturates. With the correct adjustment I created more depth of the shadows and clearer, brighter details. This contrasts to Regan’s work as Evan’s work has more depth of shadows and different shades of white, whereas my photo is more similar to Evans.

There are formal elements of this photo to make it a formalist photograph such as,

Form- This photograph relating to Evan’s and Regan’s work is 3D which is proven by the dark and clear shadowing. The effect on both of their work is that the object is slightly hovering from the blank sheet or background underneath them throughout the shadowing and highlight of the photo. This signifies the importance of the object. This creates the image to not look flat and dull.

Texture- The surface and purpose of the subject is mechanical and to sort regular problems. The texture is metallic and rubbery but slightly smooth. The objects are also man- made which links to the choices of texture which will work best for these tools to be functional.

Colour- the colour of these photographs is black and white however edited to be so they have similar qualities to Evan’s work.

Size- although photographs can be manipulated to make the object seem bigger or smaller, in these photographs they are the size as they appear to be in the photographs.

Depth- the depth of field shows how much the camera is in focus. Within my photos and Evan and Regan’s in the ‘ Beauty of the common tools’, the objects are close up and in focus behind a blank white background so the photographer is showing the viewer where to look, which may be to value the objects because of their function for the world.

More photographs from editing in lightroom

In this photograph, I edited the white balance so the background and the image itself was far clearer and whiter so the image looked more modernized and had a better background. The reasoning for this is because as you take a photo the camera should already have the setting ‘ white balance’ on however if your camera doesn’t capture the photo correctly or you forget to put it on Adobe Lightroom can do it to make the photo look more professional. This stops the photograph from looking off and dull.

After I edited the white balance I edited the images to be in black and white so it has more similarity to Walker’s and Regan’s.

Walker Evans– Beauty of the Common Tool (1955)

Walker Evans (an American photographer) greatly influenced Darren Harvey-Regan, and both artists paid careful attention to choice of objects, composition, lighting and exposure values. Walker Evans captured photographs of every day man- made useful daily objects from a birds eye view with little shadowing to show the significance of the objects and valuing them. Walker Evans work is behind a white background when the object is in the centre, this influences the photograph to catch the eye straight to the object. Its sort of as if Evans is celebrating the object as they are useful to our daily life. Both artists paid careful attention to choice of objects, composition, lighting and exposure values.

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist. He began to photograph in the late 1920s, making snapshots during a European trip. He is very well known for his work for the FSA, documenting the effects of the Great Depression.

Each tool tells a story about life during the Great Depression and how they played important roles for people struggling to make a livelihood.

DARREN HARVEY- REGAN

Darren Harvey-Regan was a photographer interested in the idea that photographs do not exist just to show things, but are physical things that become objects themselves.

Regan was heavily inspired and influenced by Evans after his portfolio of the ‘ Beauty Of the Common Tool’ was published in 1955. He then sourced matching tools, cut them in half and re-joined several halves together, with the resulting physical objects being photographed to create his work.

Regan’s work was unique and interesting as he merged 2 tools together for creativity. In which a ratchet wrench is combined with a pair of pliers and a Mason’s trowel joined with a pair of scissors. This made it stand out from the rest as the strangeness made it more eye-catching.

He named his work ‘Beauties of the Common Tool, Rephrased II, 2013’.

He took the story that Walker Evans represented and rearranged it, modernising it.

Within this photo, Regan uses a clear white (possibly on white balance) as a background with no shadow which contrasts to Evans work as Evans captured the shadow and depth of the tools. Evans often used different shades of whites whereas Regan did not. This could represent the fact he has modernised it. His photo is from birds eye view which is equal to Evans which shows similar qualities.

Formalism Inspired- My Photo

To achieve this photo, I went down to the studio and took these from a birds eye view to reach its full potential which links to Evan’s work as all of his photographs are and have a deep and clear shadowing to create a dull effect. I placed my tools onto a white blank sheet of paper to allow the tool to be in focus and so the light doesn’t reflect, which at first looked bright and modernised like Regan’s. >

However, after I took this photograph I continued to edit the saturation and highlights of the photo and this created it to be a lot more unique and more eye catching qualities such as deep shadowing and darker shades of whites to make it look like an older image. This links to Evan’s work as his photos have low saturation which gives the hint that they are old photographs specifically (1955)

I then continued to put these photos in black and white and placed them in a collage to make it even more similar to Evan’s work with the shadowing and dull effect with it to add more eye catching and interesting qualities.

Still life is a painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects, typically including fruit, flowers and objects contrasting with these in texture, such as bowls and glassware.

Still life photography is a form of professional photography that depicts inanimate objects or subject matters. Still life is a unique genre of photography. One thing that makes it so special is that often the subjects aren’t very interesting. The effect of this can make the photograph slightly a mystery and can tell its own story, sort of like a book as you imagine the way you want too.

Still life photography is important for several reasons. It can capture beautiful images that can be enjoyed for years to come. It can serve as a way to document and preserve history. Still life photography can be used to create art and has been a popular art subject for centuries.

Abraham van Beveren (Dutch, The Hague 1620/21–1690 Overschie) This photo presents the themes of wealth and high class which is shown through the lobster and the metal work reflecting on the lush fruit. This photograph can tell us many things but a main theme is wealth especially around the timing it was published.

Cookmaid with Still Life of Vegetables and Fruit c.1620-5 Sir Nathaniel Bacon 1585-1627

Sir Nathaniel Bacon did not paint professionally, although he was a skilled amateur artist. Very few works attributed to him survive, so the appearance of this work on the art market presented the Collection with a rare opportunity for acquisition. Furthermore, the subject matter, a cookmaid surrounded with lavish produce, more usually associated with Dutch and Flemish art, is highly unusual in England for the period and associated only with Bacon. Every item depicted is known to have been growing in England: Bacon himself grew melons on his Suffolk estate.

Fruits can symbolize prosperity, wealth, abundance, pleasure, fertility, and the fleeting nature of life, depending on the composition, colour, and presentation of the fruit. Although  fresh fruit, represents fertility, vitality, youth, and abundance. When the fruit is in a state of decay, however, it characterises the inevitable and undeniable mortality of our presence in the world.

As we are on the topic of symbolic meanings and metaphors. There are Vanitas

Pieter Claesz, Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill, 1628

A vanitas is a symbolic work of art showing the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, often contrasting symbols of wealth and symbols of ephemerality and death. Vanitas remind the viewer of the shortness, fragility and uncertainty of death, which often include symbols such as skulls and extinguished candles. 

However, they can also include other symbols such as musical instruments, wine and books to remind us explicitly of the vanity (in the sense of worthlessness) of worldly pleasures and goods.

Although there are also light Vanitas which bring a more positive mood and outlook. Which although they are very different, they are actually similar within symbols and metaphors.

Still Life inspired – My photo

In this photo I used random objects and created an arrangement of the objects to create a meaning. The typical thing about still life is that the objects aren’t very exciting which makes it interesting. However my objects aren’t the typically used objects and don’t have a symbolic meaning. I also used an orangey-warm tone which created a significant and eye-catching shadow to make the photograph more interesting. The objects put together don’t explain the story behind them which is the beauty of still life, as it can be personal to you or how you imagine it to be. However, because I did not use dark lighting in the studio it contrasts and is different to the typical still life photographs, which is in my opinion less effective. Overall, it is still a still life photo but I would like to change some qualities to make it more like the professionals such as add symbolic objects and use natural or darker artificial lighting in the studio.

There are seven basic elements to photographic art in formalism. Formalism is that photographers have to impose order, bring structure to what they photograph. ” A photograph without structure is like a sentence without grammar.”

These formal and visual elements (such as line, shape, repetition, rhythm, balance etc.) are shared with other works of art. But photographs also have a specific grammar – flatness, frame, time, focus etc. 

The seven basic elements of formalism are:

Line- line is one of the most important elements considered in photography, as they guide the eye around the image. improper arrangement of lines can take away the strength of the subject matter of the photo. Lines are either straight, curved, or a combination of the two. Lines can be solid, dashed or interrupted, implied, or psychological. They can be vertical, horizontal, or somewhere in-between. Lines are either straight, curved, or a combination of the two. Lines can be solid, dashed or interrupted, implied, or psychological. They can be vertical, horizontal, or somewhere in-between.

Shape– shape in photography is the 2D appearance of objects captured by the camera. Shape can be highly influenced by the lighting of your photo: by taking a photo where the shape is emphasised, place the lighting either directly in front or behind the object. There are two basic types of shapes: geometric (or regular) and organic. We all know geometric shapes—circle, square, triangle, dodecahedron, and so on. We are also familiar with organic shapes—the outline of a bird, elephant, flower, tree, etc. Fluids can create organic shapes that cannot be permanently defined—the shape of a cloud or a rain puddle, for instance.

Form– form refers to when shape takes on 3D. Form is created by shadows and highlights on an object in the photograph. Form is very important, because without the 3d effect, most images can look flat and dull.

Texture- texture in photography refers to the visual quality of the surface of an object, revealed through a variety of colour, tone and depth. texture brings life and vibrancy to images which would otherwise appear uninspiring and perhaps boring.

Colour– colour is one of the main compositions a photographer can use in their images, as other elements such as tone and mood are dependent on it. How a photographer combines various colours in their work has an influence on how the viewer looks at the image, and how they evoke emotion.

Size– size in photography is the term given to describe the height and width of an image, although it can be manipulated by the camera. Larger camera sensors gather more light, which is excellent for low light photography.

Depth– simply, depth of field in photography is how much your image is in focus. It is the photographers job to tell a story through their images, so how the image is focused is important for the photographer to consider. If an object is close to the camera and is in focus, the photographer is telling the viewer where to look.

Photo Literacy – Superficially, it might suggest an ability to ‘read’ a photograph, to analyse its form and meanings. But what about the making of photographs? We would argue that literacy is more than just a command of the mechanics of a particular ‘language’. It also takes into account fluency of expression and sensitivity to material. Words and images are different. A photograph of a particular subject is different to a description of the same subject in words. It is surely possible to see, understand and appreciate a photograph without the need for words. And what about the other possible ‘literacies’ such as emotional and physical literacy?

My own inspired photo: