Femininity: Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviours, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed and there is also some evidence that some behaviours considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent femininity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is conceptually distinct from both the female biological sex and from womanhood, as all humans can exhibit feminine and masculine traits, regardless of sex and gender.

What does it mean to be feminine? Traits such as nurturance, sensitivity, sweetness, supportiveness, gentleness, warmth, passivity, cooperativeness, expressiveness, modesty, humility, empathy, affection, tenderness, and being emotional, kind, helpful, devoted, and understanding have been cited as stereotypically feminine.

What are negative feminine traits? Typical negatively feminine traits, referred to as unmitigated communion or unmitigated expressiveness within the literature, are those of being overly submissive, passive, anxious, excessively worried, dependent, fearful and also overly concerned with the welfare of others to the detriment of one’s own well-being.

Masculinity :Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviours and roles associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as socially constructed and there is also evidence that some behaviours considered masculine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent masculinity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is distinct from the definition of the biological male sex as anyone can exhibit masculine traits. Standards of masculinity vary across different cultures and historical periods. In Western cultures, its meaning is traditionally drawn from being contrasted with femininity.

What does it mean to be masculine?In the socialization of masculinity, boys and men are encouraged to reject or avoid anything stereotypically feminine, to be tough and aggressive, suppress emotions (other than anger), distance themselves emotionally and physically from other men, and strive toward competition, success and power.

What are negative masculine traits? of toxic or unhealthy masculinity can include: Unconditional physical toughness. Physical aggression, fear of emotions. Discrimination against people that aren’t heterosexual. Hyper independence.

My images.

I took 220 images in total and did 2 photo shoots I have decided to only use my photos from the first shoot and I took 140 photos in that shoot.

Those are the images from my first shoot and these are my photos from my second shoot which I am not using.

These are my selected/flagged images from my first shoot.

I have edited some of these photos.

I edited all the photos of Amelie in this lighting by increasing the highlights and I made them more pink but changing the colour grading shadows and highlights to a pinker tint. I also changed the colour temperature to blue so that the pink and blue would stand out against each other. This is a before and after of 2 of the edited photo’s.

I edited these photos of Maks the same as he is also in the more feminine lighting.

 

 I took my favourite images of mine and went into power point to make them into a table with all 4 photos lined up. Amelie was my representation of femininity, I asked her to pose how women stereotypically pose for photos this is what we came up with. I used honeycomb lighting with a pink film to create a pink background behind her and then used colour gels to put over a light to create the blue on her face. I used pink and blue as they are stereotypical boy and girl colours.

 Maks was my representation of masculinity I told him to do these poses as this how i think stereotypically men would pose. For these photos i switched the colours around and had the blue in the honeycomb lighting but the pink colour gel wasn’t appearing as apparent as I wanted so I switched to red which is a more masculine colour according to stereotypes so it worked.

 

I then switched the roles and got Maks in the feminine lighting and got him to do the feminine poses and Amelie in the masculine lighting to do the masculine photos.

I then added words to the images to show stereotypes of both femininity and masculinity.

This was for femininity, I used a dark pink and smaller writing to show the positive stereotypes of women and the black large words are the negatives ones that associate with women.

This was for masculinity, I used white and smaller text for the positive words that associate with men and a light grey and larger text for the negative words.

This is my idea of trying to break the stereotypes as I have a man in the feminine lighting doing typical female poses and I have a women in the more masculine lighting doing man like poses. Amelie is presenting as strong and brave although those words associate with men and she is a female so therefore she is proving the stereotypes for women wrong. Maks is acting more feminine as he is presenting to be quite friendly looking and kind although those words are associated with women not men so he showing that men can be kind as well as females. My idea behind this was to show that by being masculine you don’t have to act like the stereotypes and to be feminine doesn’t mean you are weak.

These are my mood boards for femininity and masculinity my aim was to make the ‘masculine’ mood board very feminine and the feminine mood board very masculine.

 

 

Cynthia Morris Sherman (born January 19, 1954 is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters. She is well known for testing the stereotypes of each gender.

Her breakthrough work is often considered to be the collection untitled film stalls, a series of 70 black-and-white photographs of herself evoking typical female roles in performance media (especially art house films and popular movies.

Cindy Sherman is famous for her use of make-up, costumes, props and prosthetics to create complex and ambiguous photographic images. She invents fictitious characters and photographs herself in imaginary situations. Her work #cindysherman will continue to inspire artists around the world for many years to come.

For four decades, Cindy Sherman has probed the construction of identity, playing with the visual and cultural codes of art, celebrity, gender, and photography. She is among the most significant artists of the Pictures Generation—a group that also includes Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine and Robert Longo who came of age in the 1970s and responded to the mass media landscape surrounding them with both humour and criticism, appropriating images from advertising, film, television, and magazines for their art. She was a key figure of the conceptual art movement.

Cindy Sherman has always been adamant that her photographs are not self-portraits, even though the photos are of her. In a interview when asked about this she replied with this  ‘I guess technically they’re pictures of me, but not, because I’m doing all these weird things to my face so it doesn’t look anything like me.’ ‘I always want my photographs to be a little off, whether it’s the background not quite fitting in or, in the old work, you’d see the shutter cord, or be able to tell that I’m using fake tits or a fake nose. Everybody knows it’s not real anyway.’

What is identity? Identity is the set of qualities, beliefs, personality traits, appearance, and/or expressions that characterize a person or a group. Identity emerges during childhood as children start to comprehend their self-concept, and it remains a consistent aspect throughout different stages of life.

MINDMAP/ MOODBOARD: Add a mind-map and mood-board of ideas and associated visual stimulus. This is very important for this project, because it will steer your individual photoshoots…. E.g:

Femininity: Femininity (also called womanliness) is a set of attributes, behaviours, and roles generally associated with women and girls. Femininity can be understood as socially constructed and there is also some evidence that some behaviours considered feminine are influenced by both cultural factors and biological factors. To what extent femininity is biologically or socially influenced is subject to debate. It is conceptually distinct from both the female biological sex and from womanhood, as all humans can exhibit feminine and masculine traits, regardless of sex and gender.

Masculinity: Masculinity involves displaying attitudes and behaviours that signify and validate maleness, and involves being recognised in particular ways by other men and women. Traits traditionally viewed as masculine in Western society include strength, courage, independence, leadership, and assertiveness.

Identity in photography explores how we see ourselves as a person but also how we see ourselves in relation to others. The photograph or image is the physical manifestation of an individual experiencing the indexical world. Portraits or self-portraits can reveal aspects of a person’s identity and ways in which it is influenced by family, class, gender, ethnicity, religion, culture, or nationality.

Biography: Claude was born on 25th of October in 1894 in Nantes in France. She died on the 8th of December in1954 in Jersey channel islands.

Claude Cahun worked with and was dating her step sister Marcel Moore.

Cahun was sentenced to death as a punishment in 1954 for undermining the German forces and then her lover/step sister killed herself in 1972.

Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today.  She was exploring her identity, not defining it. 

Claude Cahun mostly referred to herself with grammatically feminine words, but she also said that her actual gender was fluid. For example, in disavowals, Claude Cahun writes: “Masculine? Feminine? It depends on the situation. Neuter is the only gender that always suits me.” Claude Cahun is most well known for her androgynous appearance, which challenged the strict gender roles of her time.

Claude showed her gender through her photographs, these are some examples of that.

Claude used her photography skills to show of and share her sexuality and gender. Cahun was championing the idea of gender fluidity way before the hashtags of today.  She was exploring her identity, not defining it. 

Colour Gels– Colour gels are used in photography to add colour to the light source, which can help create a specific mood or atmosphere in the image. The coloured light can also highlight certain elements in the photo, such as the subject’s hair or clothing.

These are some examples of colour gels i found of the internet.

These are some photos I took using colour gels.

This is the raw image without me editing it.

This is after I edited it.

I edited my photo using adobe Lightroom classic and on the right side of this snip you can see some of the changes I made as I adjusted the highlights to be more red tinted and the shadows to be more blue. I also lowered the texture on her skin to make it a smoother photo.

This is another photo I edited and it side by side with the original making a comparison.

These are all the photos I took.

Chiaroscuro– Chiaroscuro means light and dark in Italian. It is the transition between light and dark ,the chiaroscuro lighting technique can be defined simply as high contrast lighting. You use the extremes of dark and light to create an arresting image. It can be used in colour or black and white photography.

These are some examples I got of the internet. This way of taking photos was invented by Lucas Cranach or as some believe Leonardo de Vinci. These are examples of how it can look.

This is one of my attempt of split lighting and this is the original image before I edited it.

This one of the edited versions I put this one in black and white and increased the highlight and the shadows I also increased the exposure.

This is another version I edited I cropped this and increased the shadows and removed some of the texture on her skin.

These are my comparisons from before and after editing them.

This photo is my favourite one and one of the only ones I have edited but these are some of the other photos I took.

This is all the phots I took.

This is my selection of my photos for shutter speed. I cut down my amount of images via Lightroom by using the flagging filter.

Environmental portraiture-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. The term is most frequently used of a genre of photography.

Technical-This photo is taken in natural lighting, you can see the sunlight shining on the cow. The direction of light is coming through the top that is creating shadows on the opposite side. The man is almost central to the composition.

The blue stands out from the brown background with it being on his overalls and on the milk bottle. The shadows are dark but the sun is creating highlights in the image. The hay and the cow have a slightly rough texture but the milk bottle and the walls have a smoother texture which creates a contrast. The natural items have curved line whether as the man made items are more straight lines. A sense of depth is created by the diagonal lines and this gives an illusion of space.

the concept of this image is to highlight the tradition of dairy farming in jersey. The Jersey breed of dairy cow originates from the Island and is quite distinct from all other breeds. Renowned for its beauty, ease of management and natural ability to produce rich creamy milk, the Jersey cow is a product of the Island, its soil and climate, the people and their history. Jersey milk is prized among dairy farmers everywhere because of its superior properties, with herds to be found in the UK and around the world.

August sander-

This photo was taken by Nicholas Nixon.

This is Ari Versluis’ version of Typology.

This is taken by one of Bernd and Hilla’s Students called Thomas Ruff.

Typology is a type of photograph which had its ultimate roots in August Sander’s series of portraits in 1929, titled “Face Of Our Time”. The term ‘Typology’ was first used to describe a style of photography when Bernd and Hila Becher began documenting old and broken down German industrial architecture in 1959.

These are my photos editing. I cropped them both and put one in black and white. In the first photo I increased the highlights and cropped the image to be more central. I did the same for both sets of photos.

I chose this photo to have a go at editing.

I just played around with the editing adjusting the highlights and shadows.

Paul Jackson

Paul Jackson has been a professional paper artist, paper engineer, writer and teacher since 1983, specializing in origami and the folded arts.

“I’M A PAPER ARTIST,PAPER ENGINEER,WRITER AND TEACHER.”

This is the artist that inspired me, this is one of my inspired photos.

ISO-ISO is a number that represents how sensitive your camera sensor is to light. The higher the ISO number, the higher your camera’s sensitivity, and the less light you need to take a picture. The trade-off is that higher ISOs can lead to degraded image quality and cause your photos to be grainy or ‘noisy.

This is how I put the flagged filter.