Thursday 17 April 2008
Wednesday 16 April 2008
Preliminary work..
Preliminary work and ideas can be found at the bottom of the page. Please refer to this before viewing the main body of work.
Main Body of Work.
These are some of the handouts we were given and an example of some of the photographs I produced during our technical workshops. Experimenting with different lighting set-ups during the workshops and reading all the information given to us really helped me make an informed decision on what lighting I wanted to use.blog.jpg)
After I had decided that I wanted to use a low key lighting set up I then sat down with a pen and paper and started to plan my photo shoot. I thought of ideas of what props I could use, which model would be appropriate and what individual photos I could take. It was then when I first realised how much planning and effort goes into a photo shoot. I decided to use a friend to be my model, I have photographed her before and already knew she is comfortable in front of the camera and most importantly very easy to direct.
These photographs were taken by Tyra Banks and featured on ‘America’s Next Top Model’. These photographs directly influenced the idea behind my studio shoot. I want to create a series of strong portraiture shots that have a hint of an editorial fashion shoot to them. I have chosen to follow a horror-esque theme similar to these photos by Tyra Banks. I really like this series of photographs. In all the photographs contact lenses were used and this, with the addition of the make up, really work well towards creating the scary horror theme to these images.
This is a small selection of the original unedited photographs taken during my photo shoot. I used a Canon 30D for all of these images which allowed me to take over 400 photographs. This is just a small selection showing what type of photographs I took. Some show the model's full body and some just show her face, I was experimenting with different scenes and stories and each pose was vital to telling the viewer what was happening.
This is a photograph of me photographing the model I used. It shows the lighting set up I used, which was just one large soft box to the right of the set. I then moved myself and the model into different positions for each of the photographs in order to catch the light in a variety of ways.
Previously I mentioned wanting to experiment with layering images or double exposing them to heighten the eerie feeling I was wanting to achieve, but having experimented with this I have decided that the outcome is too fake looking and not suitable for the images I have taken. It also detracts from the lighting I have used. This can be seen from the following image.
Therefore I began experimenting with the following editing technique. This technique has been inspired by the post-mortem photography of the Victorian times. I have tried to manipulate the photograph in order to mimic a Victorian daguerreotype and other old, poor quality photographs.
Post-Mortem photography became popular in the Victorian era, with the invention of the daguerreotype and, later, several other important advances in photographic technology. This type of photography is also called ‘memento mori’ (although this name also encompasses a wider variety of art forms), which means ‘remember you will die’. Portraits of the dead were taken for their families and loved ones; sometimes the corpse would actually be pictured with members of the family, particularly in the cases of young infants whose deaths were so common in the nineteenth century. Many post-mortem photographs depict the subject as if peacefully asleep, whereas others attempt to give the illusion of life. The practice provides us with an interesting contrast between our attitudes to death in the nineteenth century and today. Having read about this in an essay by Dan Meinwald I wanted to explore the idea in my project. Meinwald points to the writing of Geoffrey Gorer, a sociologist from the 1950s who – as paraphrased by Meinwald – said:
Death is treated in twentieth century society much like sex was treated in the nineteenth century. The subject is avoided, especially with children, or spoken of in euphemisms if it cannot be avoided. Death now, like sex then, is hidden, an event which takes place behind closed doors. The opposite is also true: in the nineteenth century, death was discussed as freely and openly as sex is today.
So these post-mortem portraits can be said to reflect a Victorian attitude to death that seems to be more open than ours is today. Whilst this may be down to the fact that death is less of a day-to-day experience for most of us, I feel that this distinction, the fact that we are evidently quite reticent about death, means that my pictures have more of an impact.
Here are a few examples of post-mortem photography.
Annie Leibovitz is a contemporary American photographer who, upon the death of her partner, Susan Sontag, took a series of photographs of her body. This work is of a a similar nature to these Victorian post-mortem images. Leibovitz s career began when she started working for Rolling Stone magazine. She now works for Vanity Fair and has become an extremely successful photographer, particularly known for taking pictures of celebrities. Unfortunately I could not obtain a copy of one of the images of Sontag.
This photograph was taken with a large soft box positioned to the right of the model using a shutter speed of 1/320 and an aperture of f/13.0. The original, unedited photograph was quite dark and with the addition of the models dark make up, a lot of her face is in shadow. When editing this image to replicate an old photograph, I lightened the shadows and the levels greatly. Whilst also adding some blue using the colour balance tool and slightly de-saturating the image. I used a table with a white sheet over it as a prop. The subject lies looking half dead; her eye contact with the camera is the only thing that tells us she is alive. This state of uncertainty towards the subject being alive or dead creates an unsettling atmosphere in the photograph.
This photograph was again taken with a shutter speed of 1/320 and an aperture of f/13.0 but this time the model was standing up so caught more of the light. The prop used in this photograph is a red pashmina, curled tightly and wrapped round the models neck. Kayleigh my partner in this module held the scarf up out of the view of the photograph to give the impression that the model is hanging. I edited this photograph much the same was as the last, heightening the levels and the shadows in order to give the grainy and old effect. I did, however, with this image create two final images, one with blue added and one with a more natural colour. The blue in the last image helped increase the sombre tone to the photograph however here I feel it is a little too much and the story created is enough to stand on its own with out the enhanced colour. These photographs, however, detract greatly from the lighting used so I went on to experiment with other editing techniques that didn’t distract.
With this photograph I have carried on the pretence that the model is dead, however, when editing I did not strive to lose quality. I digitally decreased exposure and heightened the contrasts, whilst also adding a hint of blue. The subject appears dead laying on a table. I really like the way her black dress blends in to the darkness of the background, which was achieved by my lighting set up.
This photograph demonstrates the low-key lighting set up that I used and how with this set up I could choose which parts of the body to light and which parts to fade off to the back ground. This ability to select and hide parts of the body is very successful because it adds an element of the unknown. This photograph demonstrates the exact effect I was hoping to achieve by choosing the lighting set up I used.
However, the method of editing I used detracts from the image, I did not like the yellowy tint that I added and therefore in the next image you can see a similar photographed but edited slightly differently.
With this image that was taken using a shutter speed of 1/320 and an aperture of f/11.0 I slightly decreased the exposure and contrast of the image, before adding a hint of blue and almost entirely de-saturating the image. I really like the effect this editing had on the image and I continued to edit other images in the same style.
With the next series of images I used the same editing techniques as the previous. (Enhancing the contrast and levels whilst slightly de-saturating the image and adding a hint of blue)
Shown directly below,I chose to edit another picture of the model being hung as although I enjoyed mimicking the Victorian post mortem photos I felt they were not very strong images on their own. I really like the way the light is shinning from the beneath the model as it gives the impression of height and makes the fact that she is hanging more believable. I also like that the “rope” only catches the light in two places, which means the viewers attention is drawn more to the models face and her ‘dead’ looking expression.
With the two images directly below, the model is playing the role of a ‘monster’, lurching towards the camera. The second image is more successful, I think, both because the models expression is better and more daemon like and because of the use of the white table. The model looks as though she is reaching across the table at the viewer. When editing both these images I tried adding another element of manipulation above the technique I acquired before. I edited the image how I wanted it (with levels, contrast, saturation and colour balance) I then duplicated the layer, added a screen effect to the top layer and then decreased the opacity of the layer. This made the models skin look luminous, with fewer imperfections visible and accentuated the effect of the low-key lighting set up I used. Shown is the three stages of the photograph, original followed by the first edit and then the final image.
This next shot I stumbled across when in between shooting, my model got cold so wrapped her scarf round her, I liked it so I shot it. It then sparked off a new series of images and research; she went from acting the monster/ghost or daemon to being the victim. The same black eye and face make up that was used earlier to create a scary face is now used excellently to make the model look sad, hollow and repressed.
The switch these pictures show, of the model seeming to turn from the ‘monster/ghost or demon’ into the victim made me think about the way in which women are portrayed both historically in art and today through the visual media. From the controversial portrayal of women in comic books, typically being seen as stereotypical with unrealistically perfect bodies, to the endless photographs of young celebrities revealing significant amounts of perfectly airbrushed skin that are so prominent in our popular culture, the representation of women is a no less complicated area than it was, say when Caravaggio’s ‘Mary Magdalene’ was created.
The fact that my images show how easy it is to transform the way a woman is portrayed in a piece of art makes you wonder how much control, historically, women have had over their own images. When we consider that the only remaining images of women we have from the past thousand years are in paintings – the vast majority of which will have been created by men – it is easy to see that we are seeing only a very small part of these women’s lives. According to Theresa Man Ling Lee in Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Politics of Representation, ‘Historically, feminism has always been a struggle for the proper representation of women’.
This is the original unedited image I mentioned previously. Followed by the image with minor tweaking of the photograph, enhancing the colours, levels, brightness and contrast. Then finally the completed photograph, I wanted my photograph to resemble some of the painted works I came across in my research. To achieve this I selected very small parts of the subjects face and feathered the selection and then applied a small Gaussian blur to the selection. I repeated this many times over the subjects face to erase definition and create a painted effect. I made sure to keep her lips, eyes and other areas of detail unblurred as to not spoil the image. I really like the way the lighting picks out the models face and the scarf leaving the rest of the picture and the top of her head to fade into black.
Paul Plews is a photographer from the north east of England, he recently produced a series of images named 'mordern classics'. The style of these photographs, which were shown to us at the beginning of the year, heavily influenced the previous photograph and how i edited it. Below is one of Paul Plews Images.
Following looking into the portrayal of women the next two images again show the model looking more like victim then a monster which I had originally intended my shoot to be. In the first of these images the camera is looking down at the subject making her look small and vulnerable and even though the model is looking directly at the camera, a technique I have used in the past to create tension and conflict, with only one eye visible and her left arm clutching her body for strength the subject looks depressed and downtrodden. The eye contact with the camera almost acts as a plea for help.
With this image the subject is pulling a similar pose, still holding her shoulder, although with this photo, instead of it looking like she’s clutching for strength it seems like she is closing her self off from further pain. This photo was taken with a shutter speed of 1/320 and an aperture of f/13.0. I applied the same editing technique that I learnt earlier to make her skin luminous on both this image and the previous.
Having my group (Kayleigh) present when I did my photo shoot proved invaluable. Not only was the extra pair of hands necessary in being able to set up the lights and the photographs, she was very supportive and gave me the confidence to try things I might not have done on my own. She helped me with practical things like make up and fetching things when I needed them but also helped me think of ideas. Helping her with her shoot also confirmed to me how important working in a team is where studio photography is concerned. I also learnt lots from watching and helping Kayleigh.
At the end of one of Kayleigh’s shoots we had spare time until the studio was next booked so I quickly took some more photographs, this time I tried high key lighting. I was not very pleased with these photographs, mainly because high key lighting does not suit the idea behind my project but also because I did not plan well enough for this particular shoot and therefore felt very rushed and this showed in the photographs. Here is one example of the high key photographs I took.
These are the three final images I have chosen. I have chosen these images because they are the final product of my development throughout this project, they are the images I am most pleased with and I feel that they successfully demonstrate the effects of the lighting set up I used. On top of this, out of all of the images I have produced, I feel that these would be the most suited to the areas in which my work could be used. Obviously each of the images would fit into the wide category of portrait photography, and could, if given the chance, be appreciated by this audience. I also feel that even though the final images (and the majority of the rest of the project's images) do not show the model's body and thus her clothes, I asked the model to wear a particular Vivienne Westwood dress as I feel the theme and style of the photo shoot could lend itself well to an editorial fashion feature. So even though these particular photographs would not be used in the fashion industry I do think similar photographs could reach that audience, had the aims of my shoot been slightly different.
blog.jpg)
After I had decided that I wanted to use a low key lighting set up I then sat down with a pen and paper and started to plan my photo shoot. I thought of ideas of what props I could use, which model would be appropriate and what individual photos I could take. It was then when I first realised how much planning and effort goes into a photo shoot. I decided to use a friend to be my model, I have photographed her before and already knew she is comfortable in front of the camera and most importantly very easy to direct.
These photographs were taken by Tyra Banks and featured on ‘America’s Next Top Model’. These photographs directly influenced the idea behind my studio shoot. I want to create a series of strong portraiture shots that have a hint of an editorial fashion shoot to them. I have chosen to follow a horror-esque theme similar to these photos by Tyra Banks. I really like this series of photographs. In all the photographs contact lenses were used and this, with the addition of the make up, really work well towards creating the scary horror theme to these images.
This is a small selection of the original unedited photographs taken during my photo shoot. I used a Canon 30D for all of these images which allowed me to take over 400 photographs. This is just a small selection showing what type of photographs I took. Some show the model's full body and some just show her face, I was experimenting with different scenes and stories and each pose was vital to telling the viewer what was happening.
This is a photograph of me photographing the model I used. It shows the lighting set up I used, which was just one large soft box to the right of the set. I then moved myself and the model into different positions for each of the photographs in order to catch the light in a variety of ways.
Previously I mentioned wanting to experiment with layering images or double exposing them to heighten the eerie feeling I was wanting to achieve, but having experimented with this I have decided that the outcome is too fake looking and not suitable for the images I have taken. It also detracts from the lighting I have used. This can be seen from the following image.
Therefore I began experimenting with the following editing technique. This technique has been inspired by the post-mortem photography of the Victorian times. I have tried to manipulate the photograph in order to mimic a Victorian daguerreotype and other old, poor quality photographs.
Post-Mortem photography became popular in the Victorian era, with the invention of the daguerreotype and, later, several other important advances in photographic technology. This type of photography is also called ‘memento mori’ (although this name also encompasses a wider variety of art forms), which means ‘remember you will die’. Portraits of the dead were taken for their families and loved ones; sometimes the corpse would actually be pictured with members of the family, particularly in the cases of young infants whose deaths were so common in the nineteenth century. Many post-mortem photographs depict the subject as if peacefully asleep, whereas others attempt to give the illusion of life. The practice provides us with an interesting contrast between our attitudes to death in the nineteenth century and today. Having read about this in an essay by Dan Meinwald I wanted to explore the idea in my project. Meinwald points to the writing of Geoffrey Gorer, a sociologist from the 1950s who – as paraphrased by Meinwald – said:
Death is treated in twentieth century society much like sex was treated in the nineteenth century. The subject is avoided, especially with children, or spoken of in euphemisms if it cannot be avoided. Death now, like sex then, is hidden, an event which takes place behind closed doors. The opposite is also true: in the nineteenth century, death was discussed as freely and openly as sex is today.
So these post-mortem portraits can be said to reflect a Victorian attitude to death that seems to be more open than ours is today. Whilst this may be down to the fact that death is less of a day-to-day experience for most of us, I feel that this distinction, the fact that we are evidently quite reticent about death, means that my pictures have more of an impact.
Here are a few examples of post-mortem photography.
Annie Leibovitz is a contemporary American photographer who, upon the death of her partner, Susan Sontag, took a series of photographs of her body. This work is of a a similar nature to these Victorian post-mortem images. Leibovitz s career began when she started working for Rolling Stone magazine. She now works for Vanity Fair and has become an extremely successful photographer, particularly known for taking pictures of celebrities. Unfortunately I could not obtain a copy of one of the images of Sontag.
This photograph was taken with a large soft box positioned to the right of the model using a shutter speed of 1/320 and an aperture of f/13.0. The original, unedited photograph was quite dark and with the addition of the models dark make up, a lot of her face is in shadow. When editing this image to replicate an old photograph, I lightened the shadows and the levels greatly. Whilst also adding some blue using the colour balance tool and slightly de-saturating the image. I used a table with a white sheet over it as a prop. The subject lies looking half dead; her eye contact with the camera is the only thing that tells us she is alive. This state of uncertainty towards the subject being alive or dead creates an unsettling atmosphere in the photograph.
This photograph was again taken with a shutter speed of 1/320 and an aperture of f/13.0 but this time the model was standing up so caught more of the light. The prop used in this photograph is a red pashmina, curled tightly and wrapped round the models neck. Kayleigh my partner in this module held the scarf up out of the view of the photograph to give the impression that the model is hanging. I edited this photograph much the same was as the last, heightening the levels and the shadows in order to give the grainy and old effect. I did, however, with this image create two final images, one with blue added and one with a more natural colour. The blue in the last image helped increase the sombre tone to the photograph however here I feel it is a little too much and the story created is enough to stand on its own with out the enhanced colour. These photographs, however, detract greatly from the lighting used so I went on to experiment with other editing techniques that didn’t distract.
With this photograph I have carried on the pretence that the model is dead, however, when editing I did not strive to lose quality. I digitally decreased exposure and heightened the contrasts, whilst also adding a hint of blue. The subject appears dead laying on a table. I really like the way her black dress blends in to the darkness of the background, which was achieved by my lighting set up.
This photograph demonstrates the low-key lighting set up that I used and how with this set up I could choose which parts of the body to light and which parts to fade off to the back ground. This ability to select and hide parts of the body is very successful because it adds an element of the unknown. This photograph demonstrates the exact effect I was hoping to achieve by choosing the lighting set up I used.
However, the method of editing I used detracts from the image, I did not like the yellowy tint that I added and therefore in the next image you can see a similar photographed but edited slightly differently.
With this image that was taken using a shutter speed of 1/320 and an aperture of f/11.0 I slightly decreased the exposure and contrast of the image, before adding a hint of blue and almost entirely de-saturating the image. I really like the effect this editing had on the image and I continued to edit other images in the same style.
With the next series of images I used the same editing techniques as the previous. (Enhancing the contrast and levels whilst slightly de-saturating the image and adding a hint of blue)
Shown directly below,I chose to edit another picture of the model being hung as although I enjoyed mimicking the Victorian post mortem photos I felt they were not very strong images on their own. I really like the way the light is shinning from the beneath the model as it gives the impression of height and makes the fact that she is hanging more believable. I also like that the “rope” only catches the light in two places, which means the viewers attention is drawn more to the models face and her ‘dead’ looking expression.
With the two images directly below, the model is playing the role of a ‘monster’, lurching towards the camera. The second image is more successful, I think, both because the models expression is better and more daemon like and because of the use of the white table. The model looks as though she is reaching across the table at the viewer. When editing both these images I tried adding another element of manipulation above the technique I acquired before. I edited the image how I wanted it (with levels, contrast, saturation and colour balance) I then duplicated the layer, added a screen effect to the top layer and then decreased the opacity of the layer. This made the models skin look luminous, with fewer imperfections visible and accentuated the effect of the low-key lighting set up I used. Shown is the three stages of the photograph, original followed by the first edit and then the final image.
This next shot I stumbled across when in between shooting, my model got cold so wrapped her scarf round her, I liked it so I shot it. It then sparked off a new series of images and research; she went from acting the monster/ghost or daemon to being the victim. The same black eye and face make up that was used earlier to create a scary face is now used excellently to make the model look sad, hollow and repressed.
The switch these pictures show, of the model seeming to turn from the ‘monster/ghost or demon’ into the victim made me think about the way in which women are portrayed both historically in art and today through the visual media. From the controversial portrayal of women in comic books, typically being seen as stereotypical with unrealistically perfect bodies, to the endless photographs of young celebrities revealing significant amounts of perfectly airbrushed skin that are so prominent in our popular culture, the representation of women is a no less complicated area than it was, say when Caravaggio’s ‘Mary Magdalene’ was created.
The fact that my images show how easy it is to transform the way a woman is portrayed in a piece of art makes you wonder how much control, historically, women have had over their own images. When we consider that the only remaining images of women we have from the past thousand years are in paintings – the vast majority of which will have been created by men – it is easy to see that we are seeing only a very small part of these women’s lives. According to Theresa Man Ling Lee in Feminism, Postmodernism, and the Politics of Representation, ‘Historically, feminism has always been a struggle for the proper representation of women’.This is the original unedited image I mentioned previously. Followed by the image with minor tweaking of the photograph, enhancing the colours, levels, brightness and contrast. Then finally the completed photograph, I wanted my photograph to resemble some of the painted works I came across in my research. To achieve this I selected very small parts of the subjects face and feathered the selection and then applied a small Gaussian blur to the selection. I repeated this many times over the subjects face to erase definition and create a painted effect. I made sure to keep her lips, eyes and other areas of detail unblurred as to not spoil the image. I really like the way the lighting picks out the models face and the scarf leaving the rest of the picture and the top of her head to fade into black.
Paul Plews is a photographer from the north east of England, he recently produced a series of images named 'mordern classics'. The style of these photographs, which were shown to us at the beginning of the year, heavily influenced the previous photograph and how i edited it. Below is one of Paul Plews Images.
Following looking into the portrayal of women the next two images again show the model looking more like victim then a monster which I had originally intended my shoot to be. In the first of these images the camera is looking down at the subject making her look small and vulnerable and even though the model is looking directly at the camera, a technique I have used in the past to create tension and conflict, with only one eye visible and her left arm clutching her body for strength the subject looks depressed and downtrodden. The eye contact with the camera almost acts as a plea for help.
With this image the subject is pulling a similar pose, still holding her shoulder, although with this photo, instead of it looking like she’s clutching for strength it seems like she is closing her self off from further pain. This photo was taken with a shutter speed of 1/320 and an aperture of f/13.0. I applied the same editing technique that I learnt earlier to make her skin luminous on both this image and the previous.
Having my group (Kayleigh) present when I did my photo shoot proved invaluable. Not only was the extra pair of hands necessary in being able to set up the lights and the photographs, she was very supportive and gave me the confidence to try things I might not have done on my own. She helped me with practical things like make up and fetching things when I needed them but also helped me think of ideas. Helping her with her shoot also confirmed to me how important working in a team is where studio photography is concerned. I also learnt lots from watching and helping Kayleigh.
At the end of one of Kayleigh’s shoots we had spare time until the studio was next booked so I quickly took some more photographs, this time I tried high key lighting. I was not very pleased with these photographs, mainly because high key lighting does not suit the idea behind my project but also because I did not plan well enough for this particular shoot and therefore felt very rushed and this showed in the photographs. Here is one example of the high key photographs I took.
These are the three final images I have chosen. I have chosen these images because they are the final product of my development throughout this project, they are the images I am most pleased with and I feel that they successfully demonstrate the effects of the lighting set up I used. On top of this, out of all of the images I have produced, I feel that these would be the most suited to the areas in which my work could be used. Obviously each of the images would fit into the wide category of portrait photography, and could, if given the chance, be appreciated by this audience. I also feel that even though the final images (and the majority of the rest of the project's images) do not show the model's body and thus her clothes, I asked the model to wear a particular Vivienne Westwood dress as I feel the theme and style of the photo shoot could lend itself well to an editorial fashion feature. So even though these particular photographs would not be used in the fashion industry I do think similar photographs could reach that audience, had the aims of my shoot been slightly different.
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