Initial ideas:

Environments:

Subjects: I intend to take photos of is my family and friends.

Environments: I will try to capture my subjects in their environment most suited to them. For example: Sister: Will be photographed at her bank or at her home office Dad: Will be photographed at his garage Mum: Will be photographed at home on her patio Sisters boyfriend: Will be photographed at his workshop or his work van Friends: Will be photographed at the football pitch or basketball court

Poses: I intend to make my subjects keep quite a natural face and expression, I may also get them to hold items that will help hint of what their profession is.

Gaze: I intend to make my subjects keep eye contact with the camera in order to make the photo feel more authentic.

Composition: I intend to experiment with various amounts of compositions. Mainly on Rule of thirds and symmetry.

Framing: I intend to get the perfect balance of keeping the subject in frame and in focus while still maintaining the quality of the background behind the subject so the viewer will be able to identify the subjects environment easily.

Orientation: I will be taking most of my pictures in landscape in order to achieve a wider view of the environment.

Aperture: I will experiment with small to medium aperture in order to create a long and medium depth of field which will help me determine which is the best style to take my environmental portraits.

Arnold Newman (born in 1918 – 2006) was a American photographer who was most famous for his environmental portraits. For his portraits he made sure he used a carefully framed and well lit setting while also making sure its contents were also visible, this helps symbolize the individuals life and work in the photograph. One of his famous portraits was one taken of a man named Alfred Krupp and he was originally commissioned by Newsweek to take the portrait but he refused at first, This is due to their backgrounds as Arnold Newman is Jewish and Alfred Krupp was a convicted Nazi war criminal. Eventually Arnold Newman agreed to take the portrait as he saw the assignment as some sort of personal revenge. This portrait would then later become one of the most controversial images taken at its time.

Technical

Lighting – The photo is positioned in a way where most of the light from the image is at the top while it gets darker between the bottom of the image. The subject is also illuminated to make him the main focus which can make him look more sinister.

Aperture – The photo looks like it was taken with a wide angle lens as we are able to view a great amount of detail in the image, it also uses a low aperture which gives us a large depth of field as we are able to view most things in the images clearly and with ease and it also doesn’t appear blurry.

Shutter speed – The photo looks a bit over exposed as we can notice from the light towards the back which makes things near the light appear slightly blurry.

ISO – The photo does not appear to look very grainy so I assume that a low ISO was used.

White Balance – The picture uses quite warm colours especially on the pillars and the subject.

Visual

The image features a few colours but mainly sticks to using warm colours. The tone of the image is both light and dark, we can see this with the subject where he is illuminated with light which creates some dark shadows at the bottom of the image. We can also see that the subject takes up half of the image and has his fingers interlinked while resting his chin on top and leaning towards the camera and this being done helps create some mystery and uneasy feelings towards the subject which makes us wonder who he is and what he does in his life. We can see a pattern in the background with the pillars which are placed symmetrically with one on the left side and one on the right side which helps us direct our attention to the middle which is the subject.

Contextual

This image is supposed to represent the horrors that were happening in WW2 specifically the time period were Nazis were using Jewish people as slaves. This is easy to see as we can see that the setting appears to be in an industrial building which resembles closely to a train station, the pose and positioning of the subject also makes us uneasy and makes him look sinister to represent the Nazis at the time who were in charge of trafficking the slaves and what to do with them. The subject named Alfred Krupp was actually a convicted Nazi war criminal which makes the photo even more connected to the setting and what it is supposed to represent.

Conceptual

The concept of this image is to show the public the tragedy of the loss of millions of Jewish people during WW2 and how horrible their conditions were, By using a convicted Nazi as the subject of the photo it helped layout the true meaning of the photo and what it really presents. Arnold Newman was said to be furious when he saw this image and this photo allowed Newman to share his hatred towards Krupp with the world.

Environmental portraiture are pictures taken of the subject in their usual environment, for example a person whose skill and job is baking would have a picture taken of them at the bakery or a person who does boxing for a hobby would have a picture taken of them doing boxing at their training session. These images without explaining anything can help us determine the life’s that these people live and can reveal the type of person they are by what they do in their life. This makes Environmental portraits interesting as it gives the image a meaning and a story behind it which makes these images standout compared to other styles of images.

Why do people use environmental portraits?

People use environmental portraits as it tells a story, by viewing an image of a subject and their environment, which would be easily identifiable as its usually something we see day to day or have heard of, it allows for viewers to give their insights on the subjects personality, their life style, their hobby/job. In some cases it can even make enhance the viewers understanding of the photo as some environmental portraits have a deep and fascinating meaning like the image Alfred Krupp taken by photographer Arnold Newman.

How do I take environmental portraits?

To take a good environmental portrait image you want to make sure you have a subject and their environment (or a background/object which will make the image easy to identify of what the subjects usual environment is) and you also want to make sure that you have a plan in place of what you want to capture. Once you have everything in order you want to position your camera and ensure you have the settings you want to use to capture the image like how much light is being let in or the depth of field you want to achieve. Once that’s all done you can get your subject to look at the camera and pose however you would like and then you can capture the image.

I have taken images using paper to try create some unique abstract images. The artist who has inspired my images is named Francis Bruguière.

Francis Bruguière

Francis Bruguière is an American photographer who was famous for creating amazing images using only paper and light. He was introduced to photography by Alfred Stieglitz (Photographer and modern art promoter) in 1905 where after studying painting in Europe he became acquaintances with Stieglitz who accepted him as part of the photo-secession. He experimented with many different options with his photographers and in 1927 he created the Cut-paper abstraction piece which became really popular. He was able to capture this image by cutting up the paper and folding it in a way which is used to make unique details and make it look 3D, he would then use light to shine through the paper which would then result in shadows being created against the paper which resulted into making some amazing images.

My Texture Photoshoot:

My Favourite Images

I selected these images as they looked the most appealing compared to the rest, you can also see how they’re structured in a way that gives it that 3D look and you can also see the amount of shadows it creates against the paper and floor.

My Favourite Images Edited

With these images I edited them by changing the image temperature up to around the mid 20s which gives it this yellow tint which brings out more detail in the image and also matches the kind of colour Francis Bruguière’s photo uses, I also turned up the contrast high in order to get a better visuals with the shadows, as well as slightly increasing the exposure to give the image more light. I also lowered the highlights of the photo to make it less bright in some areas to increase detail. The final results after applying these changes are these images where its easy to identify the shadows in the image as well as preserving the detail of the paper pattern.

What is Shutter Speed?

Shutter Speed is the length of time your cameras shutter stays open, which also determines how much light the sensor is exposed to. The longer the shutter is open then the longer the light will have to hit the sensor and brighten the image, The shorter the shutter is open then the shorter the time the light will hit the sensor which could result in darker images. Shutter speed is part of the exposure triangle which is the three factors that determine the exposure of a image.

By adjusting and controlling your shutter speed it can determine how sharp or blurry your moving image is. By taking images with a fast shutter speed you can capture a moving image and it will essentially be frozen in place so you end up getting a clean and sharp photo of your subject. By taking images with a slow shutter speed you end up getting images of your moving subject being blurry.

Examples

By using a fast shutter speed it makes your moving subject freeze in place in your image so you end up getting images like these below.

All photos used in the examples are not mine

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman experimented with slow shutter speed and was able to create an amazing series of photos. Her photographs were taken at her parents farmhouse in the countryside of Florence Italy where they would spend their summers. The European culture and art had a huge influence on her work. The influence of surrealist art in the photographs of Man Ray and Claude Cahun can be seen in the themes and style used in her photographs. Her ideas and skills were developed at the Rhode island school of design. Her photographs was important and had an influence for American artists. Especially since in the 1970s the status of photography wasn’t really as big as paintings and sculptures. However in 1981, Francesca Woodman ended up taking her life at the age of 22

Her images below:

My Photos

Thanks to the low shutter speed (2 Seconds used) I was able to create light trails using flashlights and led lights which in return made some interesting and spectacular photos.

In Photography, texture refers to the visual quality of the surface of an object. This can be things like the variances in shapes, tone and colour depth. Texture can bring life and vibrance to images which would otherwise look flat and dull.

Edward Weston

Edward Weston is a photographer who is often named as “one of the most innovative and influential American photographers”. He is best known for his Sharply Focused Photos of natural forms, landscapes and nudes. His mother died when was only 5 years old and was then raised by sister Mary who was nine years older than him. After a few years his father remarried but neither Weston or his sister got along with their new stepmother and step brother. Mary got married in 1897 and left home which results into Edward Weston being left on his own due to his father primarily focusing on his new wife and stepson which resulted into him dropping school and isolating himself in his room. For his 16th birthday his father purchased him a Camera and after going on holiday in the Midwest his interest in photography grew which led into him purchasing a better camera. In 1930 he decided to experiment taking photographs of different subjects as at the time he was mostly focused on taking Landscapes and nude photos. He took photos of Cabbage, Kale, Bananas, onions and in August of that same year photographer Noskowiak brought him seven green peppers which ended up into him creating one of his most famous piece named Pepper No. 30 which was taken of a green pepper in rich black and white tones. This photo was one of the best-known photos taken by Edward Weston. Another image he took which interests me is cabbage leaf taken in 1931 which was taken when experimenting taking photographs with different types of vegetables.

Edward Weston will be my inspiration for my textural photos as I really like the style of how his images are taken and the subjects in them. For example with the Cabbage we can see the veins of the leaves clearly along with the grooves and shape of them.

My Photos

My Six Personal Favourites:

I chose these images as I feel that the detail of the fruit and vegetables can be seen clearly which is important to me as it follows the same idea Edward Weston uses in his images like for example his image ‘cabbage leaf’ where you are able to view the grooves of the cabbages leaf in detail. So with these images it should match up close to his style especially when edited as I will be able to try get those details in the images to pop out more and be more obvious. I have used a large aperture in order to have a shallow depth of field which allows the cabbage and orange to be the only thing in focus which is needed for my type of photography style.

My Six Personal Favourites Edited:

These are the images after they have been edited and with the images edited they are looking much better. You can see the details pop out more as the black and white colour scheme brings our attention more to the small details of the images. For instance with the orange picture on the bottom left the wrinkles in the orange skin are more visible and easier to look at compared to the same image in colour. The use of a high aperture also helped to keep the subjects in focus which is needed in order to capture all the small details in the photo.

ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the number that represents how sensitive your camera sensor is to light.

By having a lower ISO value it makes your cameras sensor less sensitive to light which is perfect for locations with lots of light. By having a High ISO value it makes your cameras sensor more sensitive to light which is ideal for locations with minimal amount of light. However using a High ISO value can affect the image quality of your photo making it appear noisy and grainy.

High ISO is sometimes needed because if the conditions of your photos are dark and doesn’t feature a lot of light then a higher ISO can help brighten the image but also degrading it in the process. Below is an example of an image taken from a Low ISO value at the start to a High ISO value at the end.

Adobe Lightroom is a very useful program that is used to edit pictures efficiently in large quantities. For example lets say you take pictures of a large event, Adobe Lightroom will allow you to import them into the library and sort them into a collection where you can edit your photos freely without changing the original image.

Develop Tab

The Develop Tab will allow you to edit your images to your choosing. On the left side you should be able to see a subcategory named Presets. Presets allows you to choose settings that has already been done and configured to apply to photos, this can be useful if you want to edit your photos quick or want to find a preset that would suit your photo.

With the develop tab you are also able to view your photos information in depth. This is called the histogram and its useful for determining why the image may be blurry or why its not really lit up and etc. The histogram is usually located on the top right side.

Contact Sheets

Contact sheets are photos that are usually arranged in a grid which allows photographers to see previews of the images to determine which images are favoured and liked more. William Klein was a photographer who used contact sheets and was able to make an interesting piece. William Klein would use his contact sheets and draw over them, with the pictures he didn’t want to use he would draw a X across the image while the pictures he wanted to use he would highlight it around the corners eventually creating an interesting piece like this photo below.

Camera Obscura

The Camera Obscura is a natural phenomenon where the rays of light pass through a small hole into a dark space and when they hit a surface they will form an inverted and reversed image of the view outside in that dark space. The name is formed from Latin words for dark (obscura) and room (camera) and it is about 200 years old although its exact origin cannot be pinpointed as it is a phenomenon.

Nicephore Niepce

Nicephore Niepce in the early 18th century was the first person who was able to find a way to use the Camera Obscura and make the image formed permanent. He inserted at the back of the Camera Obscura sheets of silver salts coated paper which were known to blacken by daylight which would then form an image when the camera was in contact with sunlight. He was not always considered as the first person to shoot a photo as the method he used was done with the Camera Obscura which is a natural phenomenon meaning that anyone could of replicated the discovery that Niepce had discovered.

Henry Fox Talbot

In 1834 Henry Fox Talbot discovered a way to create camera less images called Photogenic Drawing. He used a fine sheet of writing paper and coated it in salt and brushed with a solution of silver nitrate. By doing this he was able to discover that the paper would darken when in contact with sunlight so with this discovery he was able to make precise tracings of specimens like leaves and plants. How he did this was he pressed the specimen of his choice against the paper then covered it with a sheet of glass and let it sit in the sun. After letting the light strike for a while he was then able to analyse that the paper had darkened under the sun but where the plant was placed it remained light due to the plant blocking the section of the paper from receiving sunlight. looking at this he called his new found discovery “the art of photogenic drawing”.

As his chemistry knowledge improved he was able to make a new discovery with this time returning the idea of photographic images made using a camera. He placed the sensitized photographic paper into the miniature cameras and used it to try and record the silhouette of Lacock Abbeys animated roofline and trees. His wife called his discovery the mouse trap. The mousetrap was a little wooden box with a brass tube housing a lens on one end and a sliding wooden panel at the other end. The wooden sliding panel housed the writing paper he made sensitive to light so when it was inserted in the camera, the camera would have to be placed in front of the subject and be left for hours to expose. Once it was left long enough to expose the paper would be removed from the mouse trap and be chemically treated so the image is stabilised. if the image reached this point successfully then the negative points were then used to create positive points by sensitising another sheet of paper, laying the negative on top of it on the frame, and exposing it for multiple hours. The resulted print would then need to be fixed to prevent the image from fading. Having to have the right balance of chemicals and treatments in order to produce the perfect and clearest image. This process was seen as one of the most tedious areas of research for the duration of early photography.

Louis Daguerre

Louis Daguerre presented his new discovery called the daguerreotype in 1839, the daguerreotype was the first commercially success photographic process used popularly from 1839 till 1860. The daguerreotype was named after the inventor Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. How the daguerreotype worked was the picture was produced onto a sheet of copper plated with a thin silver plate instead of photographic paper, the plate had to be polished until the surface looked like a mirror after that the plate would be exposed to chemicals that made it light sensitive and then inserted into the camera. The images produced was very accurately detailed and sharp. The daguerreotype had a big flaw which was that you could not reproduce the original image which then made Talbots photography system dominate the daguerreotype.

Richard Maddox

Richard Maddox was a English Photographer and Physician who invented lightweight gelatin negative plates to be used in photography in 1871, His invention was called the dry plate. The dry plate is a glass plate coated with a gelatin emulsion of silver bromide. It can be easily stored and then be exposed and after exposure it can be brought back to a dark room for development at a leisure. His invention was so important for the history of photography as photographers were able to use dry plates off the shelf instead of having to prepare their own solution in a darkroom. The negatives also did not have to be developed immediately and for the first time cameras were made small enough to be able to hold and be used handheld.

George Eastman

George Eastman initially worked in the bank as a bank teller. He grew an interest in photography as he wanted to document a vacation he had planned. He became so interested in photography that he ended up not going to vacation at all. In 1879, London was the center of the business world especially for photography. George Eastman ended up obtaining a patent there for his plate-coating machine, he was able to get an American patent granted the following year. In April of 1880 Eastmen was able to lease the third floor of a building on state street in Rochester and was able to manufacture and sell dry plates for photography use. He ensured that his product was focused on the customer, mass produced at a low cost, was able to be sold worldwide and was advertised extensively in order for his company to grow and be successful. His company at one point found itself collapsing when a batch of dry plates went bad in the hands of the dealers. Instead of ignoring this issue eastman issued a recalled and replaced them all with a good product, even though it cost him his last dollar he believed that the companies reputation was more important than money. Eastmans goal was to make cameras as convenient as the pencil so he conducted experiments to make a new product that would change everything. The roll of film which he formed a new company for called Kodak.

Kodak (Brownie)

The roll of film was used for the first Kodak camera, the term kodak was formed by George Eastman himself and the name first appeared in December 1887. With the Kodak Camera Eastman insured that it would be able to be used by everyone. The Camera (named Brownie) was a basic box camera which housed a single lens, it used their roll of film made by George Eastman himself to produce photographs. Once you would take photographs with this camera you would send it to Kodak to get developed and then printed, the camera would then return to you with a new roll of film along with your photos.

Digital Photography

In 1969 sensors were being made which were needed for digital photography to take place, the sensor acts like a roll of film as it records the light that hits it and then sends it to the processor (CCD chip) in order for it to be translated to be viewed and made digitally. These sensors were being made by Willard Boyle and George Smith in a company named Bell labs, They made the CCD chip (Charge-Coupled Device) which worked by essentially using a row of tiny metal-oxide-semiconductors capacitors to store information as electrical chargers. Subsequent Inventors after hearing this information made the connection that if you were able to pair this chip with something that was photosensitive then you had got yourself a camera sensor. in 1972, the first published digital colour photograph was used on the cover of the Electronics magazine, taken by a British-born engineer named Dr Michael Tompsset

Henry Mullins

Henry Mullins worked at 230 Regent Street in London in the 1840s and he had decided to move to jersey in July of 1848. He set up a studio known as the Royal Saloon at 7 Royal Square. He was in a partnership with Mr Millward but shortly afterwards he worked alone in the same studio for 26 years. He took up to 16 photographs in a single sitting of his subjects including some influential people such as Dean Le Breton and the father of Lillie Langtry. His preferred method of photography was the Daguerreotype who was invented by Louis Daguerre.

Aperture

Aperture is the amount of light that is allowed into the lens, this is measured in F/Stops. F/Stops is what allows how much light can get into your picture. For example at a 2.8mm F/Stop it allows lots of light in and has a small depth of field while at a 22mm F/Stop it allows a minimal amount of light through and has a large depth of field as the lens becomes a pinhole shape.

Focal Length

The focal length of your lens is the optical distance (measured in mm) from the centre of the lens and its focus. This is what determines what you are able to see when you use your camera.

As you can see in this picture the lower mm focal point is able to capture the wide area of your picture while a high mm focal point is able to capture things much further away which helps if your subject is far away.

Depth Of Field

Depth Of Field is what is in focus in your image, If you have a Deep Depth Of Focus means that everything in the image will be in focus at a low aperture while if you have a Shallow Depth Of Field it means that only one item will be in focus at a high aperture. If you would like to get a better focus you will need a high F/Stop and if you’d like a less focused image you will need to use a low F/Stop.

We can see in this picture taken at f/2.8 that the main focus is more on the centre of the image as it has a shallow depth of field

We can see in this picture taken at f/8 that the focus is starting to focus on more than one item, getting closer to a deep depth of field.

We can see in this picture taken at f/22 that the focus is mostly focusing on everything giving us a deep depth of field in the picture.

The Work of Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Ralph Eugene Meatyard (born in 1925 and died in 1976) worked as an optician for a living and pursued his passion for photography in the Lexington Camera Club. He was experimenting with many different strategies which included multiple exposures, motion blur and other various methods of photographic abstraction. Two of his series of photos are uniquely made using focus and depth of field, he used these features to make his images blurry to show the big potential of photography, film and cameras when looking at the world. His photos below:

As you can see the artist for one of his series of photos has used potentially a very low aperture to make his photos/subjects out of focused. And for his other series of photos he has used a higher aperture to have a sharp focus to show the large depth of field of his subject.

My Images

My images are inspired by Ralph Eugene Meatyard and I have tried to replicate both effects he has applied to his images.

What I like about these images is that it has the same style that Ralph Eugene Meatyard used and the images themselves have been taken and edited to try and replicate the effect of his work. What I can notice though is that some images contain too much in focus specifically in image two which I could definitely improve by finding a subject that contains less leaves or by using a much higher aperture. I also can notice that on the 2nd set of photos where the out of focus style was applied could also be better as in photo one it doesn’t seem as out of focused as the others compared to Ralph Eugene Meatyards. To improve this I could of made the photograph more out of focus by changing the manual focus dial to focus less on the subject.