what is environmental portraits?

an environmental portrait is when the object of the photo is placed in an area that you would associate it with (footballer at a football pitch etc).

mood board:

mind map:

photo must have a distinct subject that matches its background

props can be useful to help paint the picture

location of photo (inside or outside etc).

more than one person can help create more emotion in a photo

Artist study-August Sanders:

“It is not my intention either to criticize or to describe these people, but to create a piece of history with my pictures.” – August Sander

Introduction:

where was he born? August Sanders was born in Herdof Germany. he grew up having an interest in photography after his uncle bought him camera and he met some photographer who helped spark his interest in photography.

august sanders took photos of people all over Germany, even though they didn’t consist much emotion if not none from the subject but could still paint a story of what the person does or is. he did this from the early 1900s all the way up until 1964 where he would pass away he created a portfolio called “people of the 20th century” his photos helped document the change and growth in society and the differences in social classes.

august sanders helped to document changes in one of the most dominant army’s in history (the uniform and the environment of the soldiers and commanders etc).

individual photo analysis–

this photo in my opinion helps us show what August Sanders really wanted to capture in all his photos in this genre

this photo shows that he liked to use quite an old fashioned large format camera that consisted of long exposure times, as in this photo it allows him to capture all the details not only in the person but everything around the person as well such as the little details in most of the bricks the floor where he is standing. this photo tells what environment this person worked as it seems to be quite messy but so precise as his surroundings are quite dirty (floor, stain on the wall etc) and the the preciseness of how the bricks must be laid out. so to conclude this photo really portrays what this persons work life is like in multiple different ways.

all of this really helps us show what life was like in the 20th century as he is essentially creating a piece of history.

other examples

obviously after having such an influence in photography multiple people have tried to replicate his work with a modern twist it and these are some examples:

One Point Lighting

Single Point Lighting is the simplest type of light placement and mimics something we see everyday, the sun. It has the most natural look and can have a dramatic lighting effect, it also draws attention. But it may though give the person you are photographing may look more flat or two dimensional. It’s a bit of a basic lighting due to having the option to choose so many different types of lighting but then only sticking to one light.

One-point lighting, also known as single-source lighting, refers to a lighting setup that uses one primary light source to illuminate the subject. This technique creates strong contrasts between light and shadow, emphasizing texture and form.

In photography, one-point lighting can be achieved using various light sources, such as natural light from a window or a studio light. The placement of the light significantly impacts the mood of the image: for instance, positioning the light at a 45-degree angle can create dramatic shadows and highlights, enhancing the subject’s features. This approach is commonly used in portrait photography to create depth and dimension, while also allowing for creative effects and a more intimate atmosphere.

Several artists and photographers are known for their effective use of one-point lighting to create striking visuals. Here are a few notable figures:

1. Richard Avedon: Renowned for his fashion and portrait photography, Avedon often used single light sources to create dramatic contrasts and emphasize the subject’s features.
2. Gregory Crewdson: Known for his cinematic and surreal images, Crewdson employs one-point lighting in many of his elaborately staged scenes, enhancing mood and atmosphere.
3. Ansel Adams: While primarily known for landscape photography, Adams’s use of light and shadow often reflects the principles of one-point lighting, particularly in his black-and-white work.
4. Clyde Butcher: This environmental photographer uses natural light in a way that highlights textures and contrasts in his large-format black-and-white landscapes.
5. Platon: A portrait photographer celebrated for his iconic images of public figures, Platon often employs strong single-source lighting to create impactful portraits.

These artists showcase how one-point lighting can be effectively utilized to create depth, drama, and emotional resonance in their work.

Two Point Lighting

A two-point lighting set up is when theyre are two lighting sources, which are usually placed at a 45 degree angle point from the subject. One of them is your key light, which is the main light used to illuminate the subject and the second is your fill light which helps to remove harsh shadows on the subject that are created by the key light. 

Two-point lighting is a lighting technique that uses two light sources to illuminate a subject, creating depth and dimension in the image. This setup typically includes a key light and a fill light:

1. Key Light: This is the primary light source and is usually positioned at an angle to the subject. It provides the main illumination and creates highlights and shadows, defining the subject’s features.
2. Fill Light: The fill light is softer and less intense than the key light, positioned opposite the key light to reduce harsh shadows and balance the overall lighting. It helps to illuminate the shadow areas without overpowering the key light.

By using two-point lighting, photographers can achieve a more nuanced and balanced look, enhancing the subject’s three-dimensionality while maintaining a natural feel. This technique is commonly used in portrait photography, film, and video production to create a pleasing and dynamic visual effect.

Several artists and photographers are known for their effective use of two-point lighting to enhance their work. Yousuf Karsh is celebrated for his iconic portraits, often employing two-point lighting to create depth and dimensionality in his subjects. David LaChapelle, known for his vibrant and theatrical style, frequently utilizes two light sources to achieve a balanced yet dramatic effect in his fashion and celebrity photography. Diane Arbus also employed this technique, using it to illuminate her subjects in a way that highlighted their unique characteristics and emotions. Additionally, contemporary photographer Annie Leibovitz often uses two-point lighting in her portraits to create rich textures and striking contrasts, emphasizing the personalities of her subjects. Each of these artists demonstrates how two-point lighting can enhance storytelling and visual impact in photography.

Three Point Lighting

Three-point lighting is a traditional method for illuminating a subject in a scene with light sources from three distinct positions. The three types of lights are key light, fill light, and backlight. Three-point lighting is a standard method regularly used in visual media such as theatre, video, film, still photography, computer-generated imagery and 3D computer graphics. This technique can be used to eliminate shadows cast by foreground elements onto the background, or to draw more attention to the background. It also helps to off-set the single eye nature of the camera, this means that it helps the camera give depth to the subject.

Three-point lighting is a comprehensive lighting technique commonly used in photography, film, and video production to create a well-rounded and balanced illumination of a subject. This setup involves three key light sources:

1. Key Light: This is the primary light source and is usually placed at an angle to the subject. It provides the main illumination and establishes the overall mood, creating highlights and shadows that define the subject’s features.
2. Fill Light: Positioned opposite the key light, the fill light is softer and less intense. Its purpose is to reduce harsh shadows created by the key light, providing a more even illumination without overpowering the key light.
3. Back Light (or Rim Light): This light is placed behind the subject, pointing towards the camera. Its role is to create separation between the subject and the background, adding depth and dimension. It highlights the edges of the subject, enhancing the three-dimensionality of the image.

Together, these three lights work harmoniously to create a balanced and dynamic look, making three-point lighting a versatile technique widely used in portrait photography, interviews, and cinematic lighting.

Several artists and photographers effectively utilize three-point lighting to enhance their work:

1. George Hurrell: A renowned Hollywood portrait photographer, Hurrell is famous for his glamorous and dramatic portraits of stars in the 1930s and 1940s, using three-point lighting to create striking highlights and shadows.
2. Annie Leibovitz: Known for her iconic celebrity portraits, Leibovitz often employs three-point lighting to create depth and dimension, effectively highlighting her subjects against various backgrounds.
3. Joel Grimes: A commercial photographer known for his dynamic and dramatic portraits, Grimes uses three-point lighting to achieve a strong sense of depth and to make his subjects stand out.
4. Philippe Halsman: A master of portrait photography, Halsman often used three-point lighting in his innovative and playful portraits, capturing the personalities of his subjects in engaging ways.
5. David Bailey: A legendary fashion and portrait photographer, Bailey frequently employs three-point lighting to create well-defined and impactful images that highlight his subjects’ features.

These artists showcase the effectiveness of three-point lighting in creating visually compelling and dynamic portraits across various genres.

There are 3 types of main lightings:

-rembrandt

-chiaroscuro

-butterfly

chiaroscuro

what is chiaroscuro?

Chiaroscuro is a high-contrast lighting technique that utilises a low-key lighting setup to achieve contrast between the subject and a dark background.

High-key and low-key lighting are two studio lighting techniques that result in very different moods and aesthetics.

the photo on the left is low key because it emphasises on shadows whilst the photo on the right is high key as it minimalizes on shadows and low contrast.

• High key lighting -​
• photos typically have a more optimistic feel and are used for fun,  bright projects. ​
• It is the go to source for many sitcoms and comedies. It is often used for portraits and weddings. This technique is great for making your recordings look active and energetic.

low-

• photos typically have a cold, gloomy feel and are used for dramatic effect.
• it is popular for portrait photography.

Response shoot:

What Is Rembrandt Lightning?

Rembrandt lighting takes its name after Rembrandt Harmen zoon van Rijn, a 17th-century Dutch painter who was known for using earthy tones and golden highlights to frame the faces of his portraiture subjects. What made his painting style distinct was focusing lighting on the subject’s face and adding detail around it, tapping into an innate human attraction to the face.

The Rembrandt lighting technique results in a moody and dramatic effect. This type of lighting technique often features a dark or black background behind the subject, putting the subject front and center.

• Rembrandt lighting technique is considered one of the go-to photography lighting setups because it produces a dramatic visual effect without requiring a lot of setup
• A more sophisticated version of this setup includes a reflector, which brings detail back into the shadows on the subject’s face, but even this setup requires minimal tools and associated costs
• In this way, all renditions of the Rembrandt method are considered low-effort while producing high-impact photographs

How to Create a Rembrandt Lighting Setup

a single light source placed on a 45 degree offset from the subject, about 5 feet away. Positioned roughly two feet higher than eye level, the light source is angled slightly downward and hits the side of the face that is farthest away from the camera.

Butterfly lighting

What is butterfly lighting?

Butterfly lighting is a type of portrait lighting technique used primarily in a studio setting. Its name comes from the butterfly-shaped shadow that forms under the nose because the light comes from above the camera. You may also hear it called ‘paramount lighting’ or ‘glamour lighting’.

What is it used for?

Butterfly lighting is used for portraits. It’s a light pattern that flatters almost everybody, making it one of the most common lighting setups.

How to create butterfly lighting.

Response shoot:

photomontage is the process and the results of making a composite photograph by cutting, gluing, rearranging and over-lapping 2 or more photographs into one image.

Thomas Sauvin, is a French photography who used photo montage to display his images. In this image he has cut out different parts of the image and placed it on top of them.

My Photos and Edits

Edits:

What is Chiaroscuro lighting ?

Chiaroscuro lighting is a high contrast lighting technique that utilises a low key lighting set up to achieve contrast between the model and a black background.

The importance of chiaroscuro ?

Chiaroscuro is important as it looks at the contrast between light and dark and emphasis and illuminates important figures in a painting or drawing.

Image analysis

Chiaroscuro uses colour in this image by contrasting black and white light. The form of this image is 3D and there is a pattern of striped light on one of the example images. The space of the images is the depth perception. 3D objects are defined by the three spatial dimensions of height width and depth.

My response

My best photo

This is my favourite photo because of the contrast between the dark background and the highlights from the light. The colour from the green jumper also gives a nice contrast between the dark background which highlights the eye.

Chiaroscuro was a compositional device developed by Ugo da Carpi, however high renaissance artists Leonardo da Vinci was found out to have also helped to ‘pioneer’ the creation of Chiaroscuro lighting. Chiaroscuro is a renaissance painting technique which means “light-dark” in Italian. The theory of Chiaroscuro is that it is always best achieved by the effect of light falling on the model/ subject however it must also allow the shade to give two-dimensional figures a sense of volume.

How To Do It

Through my research I have found out that the most important elements of chiaroscuro lighting are:

(Definitions obtained from google)

•  highlights– Highlights are the lightest elements in an image, whereas shadows are the darkest areas. Dynamic range is the ratio between those vivid highlights and dark shadows, from bright white to pure black. That range is key to an image’s depth and drama.

• halftones– Halftone is the reprographic technique that simulates continuous-tone imagery through the use of dots, varying either in size or in spacing, thus generating a gradient-like effect. “Halftone” can also be used to refer specifically to the image that is produced by this process.

• deep shadows– Shadows are the dark areas where a light source is blocked by an object. Shadows change shape, intensity, and even colour along with the angle, direction, and temperature of light.

• reflected lights– Reflected light is light that’s reflected off a subject. No matter what direction the light is coming from, it will be affected by what it’s bouncing off. The subject will determine which type of light will be reflected.

• cast shadows– The difference between core shadows and cast shadows is that core shadows are the darkest part of a shadowed region on a subject, whereas cast shadows are shadows that are cast by one object onto a different object. The silhouette you see of yourself on a sunny day is a cast shadow of yourself.

Creation and Development of Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro lighting is known as a ‘high-contrast’ lighting technique that uses a low-key lighting setup which achieves a contrast between the model and a dark background. Chiaroscuro lighting helps to balance its high-contrast light and its shade which gives the appearance of depth, creating an enhanced or more dramatic monochromatic effect. 

Da Vinci quickly discovered that he could create depth through slow gradations of light and shadow. He then decided to use this in his paintings, this is demonstrated in the painting below. The parts of the painting in the squares are the particular areas that highlight the chiaroscuro lighting technique and how Leonardo Da Vinci used it in his paintings.

Examples of Chiaroscuro Cinematography

These images I have collected from a movie I have researched called ‘Apocalypse Now’ I chose this movie because I have seen the amazing cinematography throughout. Here are some images that represent the elements of chiaroscuro lighting in this film.

These photos are a perfect example of low-key lighting in cinema. During the ‘Willard’s scenes’ it shows the characters face is darkness apart from a small yellow back light, which lights up the image from behind with only the left half being illuminated. This element of chiaroscuro is shown by some parts of the face being shaded, some slightly exposed to light and some completely exposed to light. The creator made a challenging lighting scenario, however it has positively impacted the images as they create a sense of mystery melancholy and sinister impression . This has inspired me with my photography using the chiaroscuro technique.

My Chiaroscuro Photography

This is a virtual gallery of all the photos I have taken during my photoshoots. I labelled these photos with multiple different colours. I labelled my Rembrandt lighting photos red, my chiaroscuro lighting images green and my butterfly lighting photos in blue. I also then labelled some photos in yellow, this was for photos that include none or multiple of these lighting techniques. This is an easy and simple way to identify images and separate them into different categories. I then categorized them further with stars. This helps me to further categorise my photos and easily pick my highest quality photos. I categorised these by having my best images at 5 stars ‘*****’ and my least favourite, low quality images at 1 star ‘*’.

I think this photo is a perfect powerful stance for my model. It is a beautiful 1/4 body shot which demonstrates power through her pose and the chiaroscuro lighting.

I then took these chiaroscuro inspired images and edited them into black and white, this black and white effect has added an extra element of wonder and dramatic impressions. I think the lack of colour has brought out more contrast and has given them more cohesion to the overall look of my images.

These photos I think perfectly demonstrate chiaroscuro lighting, the way some parts of her face are shaded and some are exposed shows this interesting and mysterious impression about my photos. I think that the lighting technique of chiaroscuro is definitely a great method in accentuating form throughout my photography and editing. Chiaroscuro lighting also will help draw viewers’ eyes to things they might not focus on otherwise in my photos.

I think in order to take my work to the next level when it comes to Chiaroscuro, Rembrandt and Butterfly, I should use a reflector, this includes another person helping and holding a reflector that looks like this..

These photography tools called ‘reflectors’ help to redirect light onto my model, I must remember that it does not It doesn’t create any light but it will move and redirect light that is created by a flash head create fill light and lessen shadows.

I organised all of my Chiaroscuro images into one colour so I could easily see them all and figure out which ones had the best lighting.

MY FAVOURITE IMAGES:

I thought these 3 images were the best out of all the others. Although they are similar in the way that they are the same position and person, however I liked the way they went together. In the first image, as she is blonde this has reflected well off of the light and only lights up part of her face as she is turned away. In the second, the lighting has been completely split down either side of the subject’s face which I really liked. In the last image, I got her to close her eyes as this made the darker part of her face almost disappear which I thought was effective. They didn’t need much editing as the placement of the lighting along with the black curtain behind worked well together.

The original images:

These two images didn’t require any editing.

I colour-coded all my images so I could see which ones I preferred over the ones that were the worst and could easily see them.

MY FAVORITE IMAGES:

I like the way her hands are included in the image in a relaxed way as I feel it adds more to the image and fills up what would’ve been empty space. I like the way they are curved on top of each other and you can see her jewellery as I feel like this brings more life to her character. She has a very relaxed and neutral expression and is central. I cropped the background so that she was the main focal point of the image. The position she is sat in is quite powerful as she is straight on from the camera looking right into it which I really liked.

Original image:

MY SECOND IMAGE:

I really like the way she is looking to the left of the camera because a lot of my other images are looking directly forward and the light is bouncing off her face more. Her cheekbones have been darkened alongside the butterfly shape under the nose so I know this technique has been successful. I cropped the background so she would be more central to the image. Instead of a neutral expression she has a slight smile which I also really like as it is more natural instead of being neutral and lifeless.

The final images:

Chiaruscuro Is an Italian word used to describe the use of light in dark in artwork. It combines the Italian words: “chiaro” meaning “clear” or “bright,” and “oscuro” meaning “obscure” or “dark.” 
There were a few famous artists at the time Chiaruscuro was introduced but none were as good as using it than Caravaggio.

Chiaroscuro lighting technique was used in films very commonly. As shown in the photos above, it’s common that the lighting used is natural light coming fro, certain places such as through a window or a gap where the sky is visible.

Chiaroscuro examples in cinema

• The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
• Nosferatu (1922)
• The Maltese Falcon (1941)
• The Third Man (1949)
• Apocalypse Now (1979)

How to set up a Chiaroscuro Lighting studio:

By using artificial light with aid of a flash, Chiaroscuro lighting is very simple to create. The shutter speed should be set very high to remove any ambient lighting. this means any light picked up will only be from the flash. Light cross your subject from only one direction. this is usually taken from the side or on an angle.

My Chiaroscuro Lighting photoshoot editing:

This is an example of Chiaroscuro lighting as the side of her face closest to the light. I placed the flash light at an angle to capture this type of lighting. I think the position of the subjects head also adds to the lighting as all the light is absorbed by only one side.

I decided to make this photo black and white to further show the contrast in the light and dark.

Though many Chiaroscuro lighting photos are edited to black and white, there are still some that remain in colour. For this photo I decided to keep it at the original colours so that I have a photo that differs from the rest.

I like this photo because the subjects face is directly facing onto the camera but the positioning of the light is still managing to capture the contrast of light and dark.