Studio lighting consists of 2 main categories. Continuous and Flashlight. Continuous is light that’s on all the time never flashing. These types of studio lights are similar to a house lamp. Turn the switch on and the light comes on. Turn it off and the light goes off.

Flashlight light is a sudden bright artificial light used when taking photographic pictures. They have umbrellas, or a softbox can be attached to diffuse the light.

Other objects and tools you can use are reflectors. A reflector is a photography tool used to redirect light to a subject or scene. It doesn’t create light; rather, it redirects light that is already there.

Hard light is harsh and creates strong shadows, while soft light is more diffused and creates softer shadows. Photographers would use hard light to create dramatic effect with lots of contrast. It’s more natural-looking and makes your subject appear warm, welcoming, and friendly. A lot of wedding pictures would use soft light!

High Key: Very important when taking photos because High Key is a style of photography that uses unusually bright lighting to reduce or completely blow out dark shadows in the image. Upbeat and positive photos are made from using high key.

Low Key: Low-key lighting has greater contrast between the dark and light areas of the image with a majority of the scene in shadow.

My Top 3 Environmental edited Photos.

In this photoshoot, my classmate and I, went into St Helier town and walked around asking different members of the public if we could photoshoot them in their working environment. It started hard as we didn’t plan anything. But we quickly started asking lot’s of different people if we could photograph them and explained it was for our A-Level photography. A lot of workers actually really wanted us to photograph them and got excited when we asked them, especially the construction worker and the Ice cream cabin lady.

These are my 3 favourite photos I have taken. These 3 are really good because they all show the engagement towards the camera even with hand gestures in the first.

An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and typically illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings. It also should resemble if they like their job by facial expressions or how hygienic the workspace is by using effects such as B/W.

It isn’t made in a studio with a simple background. Instead, the subject is photographed in a particular environment, perhaps the place where they work, their home, or anywhere that relates to who they are. Done well, the environmental portrait should give us further insight into the life or character of the subject.

In this photo it shows how the man is working in these poor, hot conditions, where his clothes look dirty and used, and he’s also wearing sandals which means he could damage his feet easily. The use of black and white makes him look sad or old wheres the image below doesn’t.

Whereas this image shows the man looking happy with all the colours popping with the two knife/metal sticks as the main subject but the shaper knife has been blurred. This photo shows how he is happy and enjoys his workspace as it looks like he is cutting meat and other animals in a market which is outdoor, talkative, and friendly to customers.

In 1963, Jewish photographer Arnold Newman was commissioned by Newsweek to take a portrait of Alfred Krupp, a convicted Nazi war criminal. At first, Newman refused, but eventually, he decided to take the assignment as a form of personal revenge. The resulting portrait became one of the most controversial and significant images of its time.

Alfred Krupp by Arnold Newman

Alfred Krupp was a German industrialist who ran the Krupp empire, a major arms manufacturer during World War II. Convicted as a war criminal for his company’s use of slave labour, he was later pardoned. Despite his pardon, Krupp remained a controversial figure, and his reputation as a ruthless businessman and war profiteer followed him.

To capture the image he envisioned, Newman had a platform erected, positioning Krupp against an industrial backdrop. He asked Krupp to lean forward slightly and clasp his fingers under his chin, creating an unsettling and sinister appearance. The portrait captured the essence of Krupp’s character, making him look like the embodiment of evil.

Newman wanted to take this photograph as a way or revenge for what Krupp had done in his past especially to Newman’s own race. Which Newman executed perfectly capturing his pure evil and upsetting Krupp.

Arnold Newman. Igor Stravinsky

This picture is dominated by a grand piano silhouetted against a white wall with the composer confined to the corner.

His black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky seated at a grand piano became his signature image, even though it was rejected by the magazine that gave the assignment to Newman. Taken during a rehearsal in New York (December 1, 1946), the image juxtaposes Stravinsky with the piano, and together they form the shape of a musical note. 

The image is almost monotone, dominated by the stark geometric contrast between the white wall and the black piano. Newman deliberately used the open lid of the piano because he felt “It is like the shape of a musical flat symbol—strong, linear, and beautiful, just like Stravinsky’s work.”

His dramatic cropping of the composition was a key technique that Newman often utilised to make for more immediate impact. He would routinely experiment with aggressive crops of his original picture, intending to maximise the overall effect.

Emotional

The effect of this image makes me feel uncomforted because it is dark, looks cold, gloomy, rough, creates a male stereotype look and how the walls haven’t been cleaned shows unhygienic which also leads to uncomforting. He also has no emotion in his face which makes us feel like he is stopping us from entering.

Visual

Their is a dark, abandoned look to the photograph by having the bottom of the photo really dark an the overall photo dark with the man staring straight at the camera in the middle and the only light source being the sunlight through the windows above. Everything in the background looks old, industrial, rusty, stained or has graffiti on.

Technical

The two pillars and the perspective help create symmetry on the photo because it keeps the man in the middle with equal objects on each side. The light is used from different side angles, (left and right of his body), with one coming in from behind showing us that he is the main subject in the photograph.

Conceptual

The portrait captured the essence of Krupp’s character, making him look like the embodiment of evil. He took this photo because he was Jewish and Krupp was a convicted Nazi war criminal. But eventually after many refuses, Newman agreed as a form of personal revenge. It then later became one of the most controversial and significant images of it’s time.

Contextual

Newman was very popular for using his skillful techniques such as natural light. His work was influenced by the work of the Cubists, including Picasso, influenced the way he structures a photograph. He is mostly important for pioneering and popularizing the environmental portrait.

For this Photograph I used the brush on the background but slanted the camera to give it a 3D look and also added a light behind the object to create a glow and better effect.

For Single Life I really liked the look of a still object in Black and White because it gives it an old, antique look that almost shows what people used to use for tools in the past but in fact people still do everyday! 😊

I chose these three tools because I really like how they all are different with either different backgrounds or different angles. But also are very similar themed with very different meanings.

Here is a few of my single object photos. I used a light behind the tools for some of the photos because I really liked how the glow behind the object looks because it gives it a silhouette and also I can change the colour of the glow if I want a different effect/look.

Walker Evans

Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans’ work from the FSA period uses the large format, 8×10-inch view camera.

Evans’ most famous photo was a portrait of Allie May Burroughs- a farmer’s wife, and mother of four – whose unforgettable eyes seem to stare right through us – is one of the most firmly embedded images in American consciousness.

This is some examples of Walker Evans’ work, where he takes simple flat photographs of different tools and then makes them black and white and maybe even give them a reflection or shadow to create dark, old, almost scary feel to the photographs. Also, they all don’t use any colour only shadow colours like grey, black and white and some pictures he gave an almost floating effect by using no shadow by using extra lights which also helps capture all the details on each tool.

Darren Harvey-Regan

Darren Harvey-Regan is a graduate of the Royal College of Art. His work has appeared in exhibitions and publications internationally and is part of the permanent photography collection at the V & A Museum, London.
Darren is an accomplished Leader with a focus on designing culture, strategic thinking, change management, operational design, HR and project leadership.

Darren Harvey-Regan’s photos are very bold and powerful and this picture in particular has a very strong contrast between the block and the shadow. This makes the object used stand out and look more powerful. The use of shape and line in this image makes the object appear more interesting to look at and gives the object a different composition.

These photos are actually montages of Walker Evans’ work when many people think it is Darren Harvey-Regan’s work.

My Top 3 edited Still-Life images.