portraiture

Portraiture

A portrait is a painting, image or sculpture, or any other artistic expression of a person, with the intent to display said persons mood, personality and likeness.

< I chose this image to show an example of my definition because it shows the subjects emotions and represents their life.  This image suggest that the Mother is worried about the care of her children who appear to be ragged.  We know this because her hand is on her chin and the drawn expression of her face.

this image is an effective portrayal of portraiture as it shows a creative side to the medium through the strip of colour on the subjects face.

< this image shows the subjects personality as quite timid and shy yet adventurous and quite a bit of a daydreamer due to the curled hands on the face.

Yousuf Karsh

Karsh's portrait of Churchill shows the mood due to his facial expressions of anger and power with the hand on the hip which shows that his personality shows elements of determination and seriousness, his body language suggests that he is a confident businessman.  Technically the image connotes strength as the lighting shows a lot of contrast making the subject look bold, serious etc. 

Amanda Lepore

Lepore's take on life and photography as a trans woman is shown within her images as she shows her confidence in her body and the way she displays herself, as a strong and powerful woman, which is shown throughout her images.

Annie Leibovitz

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz (born October 2, 1949) is an American portrait photographer. She photographed John Lennon on the day he was assassinated, and her work has been used on numerous album covers and magazines. She became the first woman to hold an exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery in 1991.[1] images are powerful because they capture the style of the individuals and their professional nature.

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been described as “a master of edited and reimagined images”.

Ruff shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with other German photographers Laurenz Berges, Andreas Gursky and Axel Hütte. The studio, a former municipal electricity station, includes a basement gallery. The series of images show a more simplistic look towards portraiture.

David Lachapelle

David LaChapelle (born March 11, 1963) is an American commercial photographer, fine-art photographer, music video director, and film director. He is best known for his photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. His photographic style has been described as "hyper-real and slyly subversive" and as "kitsch pop surrealism". Once called the Fellini of photography, LaChapelle has worked for international publications and has had his work exhibited in commercial galleries                                                                                         and institutions around the world.

Alec Soth

Alec Soth (born 1969) is an American photographer, based in Minneapolis. Soth makes "large-scale American projects" featuring the midwestern United States. New York Times art critic Hilarie M. Sheets wrote that he has made a "photographic career out of finding chemistry with strangers" and photographs "loners and dreamers". His work tends to focus on the "off-beat, hauntingly banal images of modern America" according to The Guardian art critic Hannah Booth. His work has been compared to that of Walker Evans and Stephen Shore. He is a member of Magnum Photos.

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon (May 15, 1923 – October 1, 2004) was an American fashion and portrait photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century"

Image bank

the following images were added as part of my visual research

This above collection of photographs(/pictures/paintings by other artists/photographers) represent some of the images that I felt I could capture within a studio the images are also closely cropped and shot in black and white (I decided that I would adopt a similar approach for my work).

Contact Sheets

Best images / edited images

Inspired by Thomas Ruff

Final image

improved edit

to improve my edit, i scaled the image of Sam ( blue and purple background) so that they were more in proportion to the other images.

Inspired by Richard Avedon

Image one

Image two

Inspired by David Lachapelle

 

Inspired by Alec Soth 

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

(Here you will discuss how you developed your work based on your research of e.g. artists/photographers, etc).

I was inspired by the work of R. Avedon for the following reasons... 

• His work uses a wide range of tones
• He captures natural expressions within people
• his work is simplistic yet effective

and David Lachapelle for his use of lights and bold colours as a background, and yet attention is still drawn to the subject of the portrait.

The artist research was very useful during these shoots as I had some inspiration on how to tackle the subject from a range of backdrops. My research of all the artists helped me to focus on the details of the subjects and their positioning. I found this helpful because I have a lot of opportunities to photograph different mediums including the forms of portraiture due to the availability of a studio and a wide range of equipment like soft-box lights and snoots*. The research on portraiture was helpful to this study and I feel that I shot some good photos that had enough bold subjects to draw the viewer's eye to the object.

*a snoot is a tube or similar object that fits over a studio light or portable flash and allows the photographer to control the direction and radius of the light beam. These may be conical, cylindrical, or rectangular in shape. Snoot's can isolate a subject when using a flash.

(It is important that you show a progression of your work… which may mean revisiting a subject area and adding additional images showing a development of your ideas or refinement of the final images through).

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

My idea for recording portraiture was to photograph the different styles or portraits, like all the artists, and to focus on the different forms i can produce of portraits. I was inspired by the work of all the artists by his method of taking photos, and by what he captured within some of  his photos. All my images created were inspired by the researched artists works and the images of theirs that i added as part as an image bank, which i later created my own twist on. An example of this is the glitter effect in my image which was inspired by Lachapelle's portrait of reality TV star Kim Kardashian : 

To create this image i actually added an image of bokeh* lighting as a background and also layered it again on top at a lower opacity to gave the look that it was being reflected onto the subject.

*In photography, bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens. Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light". 

      With reference to my best images, I feel that although I could not create photographs exactly like the other artists photos, I did create a set that was in the style of his work. I am happy with the overall outcome of my images and feel that they all show the many ways that different portraits can be captured within a photograph both with and without editing.

Analysis of my own image;









This image shows a more serious side of portraiture, the plain coloured clothes draw the attention more to the face, the range of colours used adds a more pop arty aspect to the image which is inspired by Thomas Ruff, when editing i ensured to create a crisp and sharp image yet to improve it, i would add a border between the images to separate them and make the different sections more individual.

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

I used a Nikon D3400 for all the shots taken. I tried to increase the aperture setting to as high as possible so that I can have a sharper picture.in the studio I used the following cameras setting 1/125 iso 200 f 9- ff11 for all my images taken, which were in a studio with two soft boxes and the subject placed at a 45 degree angle to both soft boxes they were taken with a white background but due to light drop off, the background appeared more grey.

These images below show how i manipulated the originals to produce the final product within photoshop as some photographic effects were not achievable within a studio setting.

       

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements.  

(At the end of the entry you will discuss whether you have produced a personal and meaningful response, this means  (are my images creative/relevant to the subject area studied/connected and influenced by any research undertaken). 

I believe that I have produced a strong series of images inspired by my research of portraiture and all the artists. The final images were refined by developing the contrast and changing the brightness.