The Human
Condition
Name of School
- Arts Humanities and Social Sciences
Course Title -
FD Photographic Media Module
Title - People
Tutor - Andy
Farrington
1. Liaise and
communicate with individuals when shooting portrait and human based
photography.
2. Identify
and analyse a broad range of situations where ‘people’ are the
primary photographic subject.
3. Understand
the importance of suitable camera systems for a given purpose.
4. Select
suitable processes and techniques for given photographic
opportunities and produce imagery for that purpose.
Weighting: 100%
Portfolio: 60%
Online
journal/VLE/blog: 40%
Deadline for
Submission w/c 14th May 2013
Background
“It is
absurd to divide people into good and bad.
People are
either charming or tedious” – Oscar Wilde
As humans,
we are obsessed with other humans – it is part of the human
condition.
From cave
paintings to modern magazines, the evolution of homo sapiens has been
scratched, painted and photographed ad-°©‐infinitum – but still
we crave more.
What makes
an image of a person? Their face; clothing (or lack of); environment;
hairstyle; pose; expression; prop... the list is seemingly endless.
How, as an
artist, do you use photography to represent the human condition?
There are
myriad methods which can be explored and exploited to give the
individual their individuality – from lens and format choice to
lighting, and onward to post production techniques and even
paper/substrate at the printing stage – if indeed printing is the
preferred delivery medium.
A slight
change in any of the aforementioned, will give rise to a sea‐change
in the final outcome. Wise choices will create strong and personal
images.
Submission
Instructions:
- An 8-image portfolio of ‘people’ photographs - you have free choice as to which eight you select that you feel best reflect your project.
- Research In either blog or sketchbook format and tear sheets where appropriate
- Other supportive material such as appropriate Model Release evidence;
Development of
ideas; contact sheets etc.
- A disc (CD or DVD) or memory stick containing both RAW and JPEG files with full metadata.
An excellent
submission will involve extensive creative and technical exploration
of all four categories underpinned by a broad knowledge of portrait
photographers past and present.
Background
Brief
The reading you
have undertaken during reading week will help to inform the
introduction to this brief. There are four study areas within this
module – you must explore and learn about all four of these. Each
of these will represent an assignment itself and is intended to
provide a breadth of study discussed in the unit background.
These are:
1. The
Environmental Portrait
2. Candid
Photography
3. Fine Art
Portrait
4. Corporate
Portrait
Students should
utilise both studio and location environments.
The subject may
well be defined to a degree by their environment, so it is crucial to
experiment with both studio and location. You might find that in the
studio, you the photographer, will need to give direction to the
subject, whilst when producing an environmental portrait the subject
will might determine the nature of the outcome. Experimentation with
a wide variety of equipment such as lenses, filters and lighting will
give you better knowledge of how to approach different individuals in
a suitable manner – for example, certain bone-structures are
emphasised by specific types of light.
Lighting
considerations:
Ambient –
using reflectors (cloudy and sunny days).
Studio flash –
single and multiple source (can be used on location).
Continuous –
tungsten/halogen/florescent (existing light sources, such as street
lighting).
Mixed lighting
– combinations of the above.
Document your
assignment in a way appropriate to the programme.
Most commercial
photography is now delivered electronically, therefore the preference
will be for the documentation to be delivered in blog/online form.
Contact sheets
in the form of online galleries (linked from the blog) will be
expected.
Please provide
evidence for the stages of pre-production, production and
post-production.
You may wish to
plan ahead for each production (pre-visualise) and match each study
area with one or more of the lighting techniques listed above.
The most
obvious way of developing skills in this subject area is to study the
work of other photographers you come across during the research
stage, then attempt to re-create the technique for yourself.
Julia
Margaret Cameron (1815–1879)
Julia
Margaret Cameron's work is based deep in religion as she herself was
a deeply religious woman. She took inspiration for her photographs
from the painting of the time like, The Madonna between St. John the
Baptist and St. Sebastian By artist Pietro Perugino 1493.
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Beatrice
– 1866
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Rachel
Gurney: "I Wait", 1872
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She
also too inspiration from Raphael Sistine madonna-1513
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http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/camr/hd_camr.htm
Richard
Avedon 1923 – 2004
Richard
Avedon is well know for his portraiture pictures of celebrities, he
brought a sense of sophistication and authority to the portraits with
his minimalistic back ground and contrasting lines and contours of
the celebrities.
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Jean
Shrimpton 1968
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Marilyn
Monroe 1957
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Elizabeth
Taylor 1964
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“More
than anything, it is Avedon’s ability to set his subjects at ease
that helps him create true, intimate, and lasting photographs......
Throughout his career Avedon has maintained a unique style all his
own. Within the minimalism of his empty studio, Avedon’s subjects
move freely, and it is this movement which brings a sense of
spontaneity to the images”. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/richard-avedon/about-the-photographer/467/
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Brigitte
Bardot taken 1959
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Twiggy
1968
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GMB
Akash will be my last choice http://www.jamienelson.com
was a close second.
“GMB
Akash, 1977, Bangladesh, is a socially-engaged documentary
photographer focusing on people at the edges of society, often
photographed in bright colors. Many of his stories have been made in
his home country, but he travels extensively throughout Asia to
document various tales of socially isolated groups. He has covered
prostitution in Nepal, child labour in Bangladesh, the high suicide
rate amongst cotton farmers in India, seasonal workers in Pakistan
amongst many other confronting stories. GMB has won numerous awards
and his work has been published in countless magazines throughout the
world as the National Geographic, Time and Stern. In 2002 he was
selected for the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. His work
is important and confronting, however it also shows the strength and
resilience of the human being. The following images come from the
series Stone Scavengers of Jaflong,
Survivors
and Nothing To Hold On To”.
http://500photographers.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2011-06-30T00:06:00%2B02:00&max-results=20&start=120&by-date=false
6th Feb 2013
Todays lesson is about lighting techniques, simple lighting used on different face shapes and tones, so we used Matt for a strong facial structure and Zabir for a soft one.
We started off with basic lighting,
one light in front of the person and tried it on light and dark skin
so we used Matt at Zabir as models.
----- We used a single 500 watt bowens-----
Looking at face shapes Matt's is
quite defined and Zabir's is round.
Using the flash sink
This set up created a shadow on the
back drop and suited Matt but it bleached out Zabir a little.
Then the set up was two lights just
behind them which created shadow and defined bone structure by
highlighting protrusions from the face.
I did not get a shot of Zabir
apparently?
Then we tried one light to the right
side of the model with a piece of card acting as a barn doors.
Ok, it's not quite a portrait but it was the bast that I could come up with,
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| Natural light with flash/constant ring LED Light |
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| Natural light |
It shows how the flash fills in the shadows and highlights the subject while still retaining some warmth.
Arnold Newman I'm not going to pick out any photos of his portrait collection as they are all so brilliant, I could help but be in awe of them all. I looks as though Mr Newman has traveled to where ever the subject is most at home and capture them in their element with the light that is given.
Lewis Hine
Just a few of his photos to demonstrate a photographer with a serious agenda and a brilliant eye, he's great at singling out a the human element. I also learnt whilst doing my contextual essay that Lewis Hine took Paul Strand under his wing.
Jane Bown
It looks as though she rarely dose traditional portrait shots, with the subject straight on, she seems to catch some in a candid pose. Using natural light to one side of their face and leaves the other in shadow which gives depth to the profile.
Horst P Horst
Just a few of his photos to demonstrate a photographer with a serious agenda and a brilliant eye, he's great at singling out a the human element. I also learnt whilst doing my contextual essay that Lewis Hine took Paul Strand under his wing.
Jane Bown
PJ Harvey, 1995 David Hocney, 1966 Sylvester Stallone, 1979
Queen Elizabeth II, 2006 Marcello Mastroianni, 1969 Jeanne Moreau, 1967
It looks as though she rarely dose traditional portrait shots, with the subject straight on, she seems to catch some in a candid pose. Using natural light to one side of their face and leaves the other in shadow which gives depth to the profile.
Horst P Horst
The pictures speak for themselves, this man was was a genius with lighting techniques.
The way the light falls and the shadows are created is brilliant!
Tomas Ruff
"In his studio between 1981 and 1985, Ruff photographed 60 half-length portraits in the same manner: Passport-like images, with the upper edge of the photographs situated just above the hair, even lighting, the subject between 25 and 35 years old, taken with a 9 × 12 cm negative, and because of the use of a flash without any motion blur".
http://blogasmenas.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/thomas-ruff/
"In his studio between 1981 and 1985, Ruff photographed 60 half-length portraits in the same manner: Passport-like images, with the upper edge of the photographs situated just above the hair, even lighting, the subject between 25 and 35 years old, taken with a 9 × 12 cm negative, and because of the use of a flash without any motion blur".
http://blogasmenas.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/thomas-ruff/
Francesca woodman (love her)
Francesca Woodman is fantastic, I love her expression, experimentation and exploration of herself.
Look for difference in intention, fine art,
identity, fashion, .........................
Fine art and self portrait
Today was about fine art and Self portrait shots and we got paired up with someone that we would not normally work with, so I got paired with Tom. We instantly occupied the day light studio as there were lights already set up with a portable curve backdrop, I thought try i'd to get a silhouette effect of my hair. There were Bowen's lights all around but I turned them off and just used the builder florescent light behind me, Tom also wanted to put a light in front of me as well but I did not use that in the final image.
This was to be my fine art shot.
For Toms shot we turned a Bowen's light on to the left of him and kept it simplistic again, he kept his hat on and gave a very moody, serious and quite pensive pose, thinking about it my editing did not suit it but I liked it at the time.
Yet the one I like of Tom is this candid shot at his computer.
For a self portrait I stood in the dark class room, in front of an half opened blind on a cloudy day (the blind that Tom is sat in front of), I pointed the camera at myself and took this picture. I intentionally had the camera lens zoomed in as I wanted a picture, mainly, of my eye as that is unique to me.
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| Final with a little editing the WB was Sunny |
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| Original |
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| Raw with better IOS |
Yet that really didi not work, I took so many screen shots but they have been lost in the ether, this creepy one is the only one which remains. I was playing around with different presets in the black and white option, some brought out my freckles some just flatted my face but i'm glad I kept it in colour.
Studio Corporate
Studio corporate shoot day, we were told that we would be raking pictures of members of staff, to which we were all very nervous but I feel as though it went well. First we had to set up the studio, Andy let Keith have a go at setting up the studio as he felt that it had been set up wrong for the background lighting as the picture we were looking at looked like this one (I don't have the original).
Before the lesson started we talked about ratios of the lighting and how it will effect
"Studio lighting intimidates a lot of photographers, but there’s really no mystery about it at all. It comes down to two aspects of lighting: exposure and shadows. Of course, other things come into play, like color, background, composition, hair, and makeup if you are doing something like shooting a model. But these factors are present with pictures you take in any environment. In the studio, you’ll want to pay special attention to the exposure relationships between the various light sources, as defined by ratios, and then you will want to place the lights so that they make the subject look good. That’s where shadows become important."
More on the web site.
This was how Keith set up the system and how we took our first lot of photos
This was the result, it look quite flat with little shadow and no halo effect.
So when the next person came we kept the lighting pretty much the same but we were
encouraged to direct and have interaction with the model.
So I asked her to turn to the side, I did mean only slightly but I was to scared to direct
anymore but it works.
Then after everyone had their shot and the had model left Andy set up the studio as it should be and had Meg as a model, he also told us to turn our contrast up on our cameras.
The result was brilliant, I loved the high contrast look of this it really works.
Observation day
Today Andy was being observed by a fellow teacher in a different department which meant that it was a very rare class lesson today. We had received an email earlier that day to explain what we had to do, firstly we had to edit an image, this one.
We had to make it look as natural as posable as it would be subjective to each individual and the teacher observing would decide a winner. This is how mine looked;
And I won, along with Anessa (I think)
We were also asked to do a lighting diagram on Creator.lightingdiaggrams.com to show how we think the lighting was set up in this shot. I came up with this but I should have know a little better from the shoot we did with Matt the other week. The correct answer was a reflector on his right hand side as well.
Album cover 1st May
We were told to write our favourite song down and then make an album cover for that song, I chose Simple man by Deftones Originally done by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
I did not know this when I went to go and research album covers and just did a general search and came across these which I picked out and fell in love with Ken so it had to be recreated, using Phill.
I was working with Anessa at the time as she could not come up with a suitable song for herself and I was busy trying to edit my pictures for the brief so she went home and did it.
This is what she came up with (bless her).
But she didn't make it the dimensions of a CD cover which is 12 by 12cm.
From an option of these photos,
With an option of these back drops that I had downloaded for her.
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