Individual Practice

Tutor: Katy Suggitt/Martyn Pearson

Learning Outcomes Assessed in this assignment

LO1.    Evidence of a professional level of knowledge and skill within a particular area of photographic practice.

LO2.    Ability to construct a professional portfolio of images influenced by the outcomes of Module 13 [Individual Study].

LO3.    Employ practical study and tutor/peer feedback to enhance the development and production of photography, appropriate to your specialism.

LO4.    Utilise professional standards of portfolio presentation, relevant to the particular specialism.

Task

Background:
Having identified an area of study within the broad field that photographic media covers, you are now expected to generate project ideas, identify opportunities and explore practical techniques relevant to this sector of the industry. 
Through your written Individual Study you will have discovered practitioners whose work you consider to be successful and analysed the personal and creative attributes necessary to produce these images.

Brief:
Through a combination of methods including setting personal goals, project development, tutorial, group critique, image review and practical exploration you will develop a professional portfolio of images that demonstrate your ability in your chosen specialism.
You need to consider how ideas are generated and how opportunities are created. What are the technical and creative benchmarks in this field?

_______________________________________________________________________

Starting point

Since the Research Methods module in my first year, I have had an understanding on what sort of images I wanted to produce. For the Research Methods module, I created a presentation on my initial idea and the inspiration and research from it - the first photographer who inspired me to focus on people and their possessions is Sophie Calle with her Hotel series. Secondly, I discovered photographer Gabriele Galimberti and his sobering project entitled Toy Stories, where he travelled around the world to photograph children from completely varied socio-economic backgrounds with their toys. From this artist research, I decided that my project was to be a series of portraits in which people are photographed with one possession of the subject's choice, that is important or significant to the person in any way. I wanted to do this because I felt it would allow me to explore and discover how objects can often reflect people's personalities, as well as show a visual narrative and theme through the images.

My initial proposal, May 2013

During the Individual Study module, I wrote an essay on portraiture and documentary photography - discussing the above artists who initially inspired me, as well as other artists whose work falls in these categories - Sally Mann, Martin Parr, Mary Ellen Mark and William Eggleston. I decided to write the essay about both portrait and documentary photography as I felt my project is a crossover somewhere between the two, and so was interested in beginning to understand the ins and outs of each genre.
In this essay I also explored genre requirements - such as equipment, personal attributes of the photographer, ethics, timing, money and consideration of output format. I found that this essay gave me a channel to show my development and allowed me to gain an understanding of what it takes to be a photographer in these specific fields. 


Practice shoot

Practice shoot feedback

• Subjects too close to background (studio session with tutor to better lighting techniques)
• Keep hands in images, good aspect of images
• Blank expression best, stop subjects from smiling
• Good quality portraits - connection between subject and viewer

Further Artist Research

Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon (1923-2004) was the driving force behind photography's emergence as a legitimate art form during the 1960s, '70s and '80s. As well as fashion photography, the American photographer was best known for his minimalist portraits in which he captures the essential humanity and vulnerability of his subjects, often by seeking out and photographing various subcultures of people. I am taking inspiration from his In the American West portrait series, for which he travelled around for five years meeting and photographing the people in the West - ranch workers, oil workers, bar girls, drifters and gamblers. Through research, I have learnt that his infamous style of flat, harsh lighting, white background and isolating the subject from any context was inspired by his past experience of taking ID photographs for the US Navy during WWII.
Information & images taken from: http://www.richardavedon.com/
http://photo.net/photography-lighting-equipment-techniques-forum/00AHHx

Richard Avedon lighting

Natural lighting: Using a natural skylight in his New York City studio, Avedon was one of the first fashion photographers to use natural lighting for commercial purposes. According to the website of one of Avedon's assistants, Earl Steinbicker (Life's Little Adventures), Avedon started his fashion-art photography career using only a large frosted glass window facing south and an overhead skylight to light his photographs. The two natural lighting sources produced a naturally occurring white background with enough light in the foreground to illuminate his subjects. Avedon and his assistants added large reflectors to strengthen the sharpness and contrast in the model's face, eyes, hair, clothing and other small details, like a pearl necklace.

Beauty lighting: Avedon used a 1,500-watt Saltzman lammp-head with spun glass on an aluminium stand for a large amount of diffusion for his portraits. an assistant could move the hand-held, but heavy, lamp around as Avedon moved with his models. Avedon and his assistants kept the lamp just outside of the camera's field of view, which let heavy light fall on a subjects face and body. Because Avedon worked with fashion, he could highlight that part of her body.

White backdrop: Avedon's photographs are recognisable for being generally well lit and the signature white backdrop. Practicing minimalism in terms of no extra props or backgrounds and a minimal lighting system, Avedon let his portrait-subjects move as they wished and he moved the key lights, filters and natural lighting sources to fit their movements, not the other way around.
Taken from: http://www.ehow.co.uk/list_7737772_avedon-lighting-techniques.html

Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus (1923-1971) was a black and white square portrait photographer infamous for her exploration of and photography on the 'degenerates' of society - such as carnival performers, nudists, transvestites, people with mental disabilities, eccentrics and everyday people on the street. Like Avedon, Arbus transformed the art of photography by photographing the most unlikely, unconventional types of people and subcultures. 'In 1962 - while searching for greater clarity in her images and for a more direct relationship with the people she was photographing - Arbus began to turn away from the 35mm camera and started working with a square format (2 1/4-inch twin-lens reflex) camera. She began making portraits marked by a formal classical style that has since been recognised as a distinctive feature of her work.'
A troubled personal life led to her suicide in 1971, which further explains the brief, intense relationships between photographer and subject. I realise that in her choosing these unconventional subjects, it is a comment or representation of herself, meaning that the photograph is just as much about her as the person in the frame.
'Many of her subjects face the camera implicitly aware of their collaboration in the portrait-making process. In her photographs, the self-conscious encounter between photographer and subject becomes a central drama of the picture.'
Information and images taken from: http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/d/diane-arbus/
http://www.atgetphotography.com/The-Photographers/Diane-Arbus.html

Mexican dwarf, 1970

Man and wife at nudist camp, 1963

Young man in curlers, 1966

Child with toy hand grenade, 1962

Albino sword swallower, 1970

Identical twins, 1967

August Sander
August Sander (1876-1964) was a German portrait and documentary photographer. His major project was to photograph farmers and peasants who he saw to constitute the basis of society. However, the theme of this project grew out of the portraits when he began branching out and photographing each class 'layer' of society, the next being skilled workers (the foundation of civic life - from lawyer to member of parliament, solider to banker), followed by intellectuals: artists, musicians and poets. The cycle closes with the insane, gypsies and beggars.
This act of separating people and deliberately categorising and photographing people in genres or groups shows a running theme from the previous artists, showing that the photographers have considered their reasons for doing this. Avedon's being simply to take a different direction in his work, Arbus' being a reflection on herself and Sander to photographically portray the systematic and philosophic classes of society.
Sander's being his strict documentation of his view of Man and society in post-war Germany
Information and images taken from: http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=5145

Police Officer, 1925

Young Girl in Circus Caravan, 1926

The Mother in Joy and Grief, 1911

Peasant Woman, 1913

The Earthbound Farmer, 1910

The Wise One, Shepherd, 1913

Lighting

• 2 Bowens flash heads with umbrellas.
• 1 translucent for shoot-through, 1 with black/silver reflector cover for bounce.
• Black/silver situated around 40 in front and to the left of the subject.
• Translucent situated approximately 180 to the right of the subject.
• Used to create shadows across the face and arms/hands of subjects.

Post-production
As can be seen, the changes I made in post-production are minimal to retain as much truism, realism and humanism in the images as possible. The minor alterations were slightly increasing shadows and clarity, whilst the biggest and only other changes I made were occasionally removing the odd blemish with Spot Removal and selecting the subjects eyes with the Adjustment Brush and increasing exposure to create an even stronger focal point of the mode of address.

Final images

Evaluation

Portrait images

Camera/lens: Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 50mm f/1.4

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/4.0, f/4.5, f/5.0

Shutter speed: 1/125 sec

Lighting: Bowens 400w flash head, translucent umbrella

Possession images

Camera/lens: Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 50mm f/1.4

ISO: 100

Aperture: f/4.0, f/4.5, f/5.0

Shutter speed: 1/125 sec

Lighting: Bowens 400w flash head, translucent umbrella

I began this small project wanting to simply photograph people with one chosen possession to create a set, but I feel I have learnt much more than I realized I would. What I considered to be relatively simple aspects of an image are so much more vital in making or breaking an image than I first thought. For example, the pose and facial expression of the subject. I started off in my practice shoots by photographing the subject holding their possession in whatever way I saw best based on the size of the object, and left the facial expression to the subject and whatever they felt comfortable with. Through reviewing my first images and tutor and peer feedback, I realized the importance of having more regiment when taking photos, to ensure of a solid set of images that ‘work’ together. I also now understand how important it is to research a range of practitioners similar and different to yourself, to gain a thorough comprehension of new techniques that you would have never thought about adding into your own work before exploring the artistic and technical possibilities.

The lighting I used was two Bowens 400w flash heads with umbrellas – one bounce with silver/black cover and one translucent shoot through – consecutively, shoot through for the possession images and bounce for the portraits. The light I used for my portraits was high up and situated around 40° in front and to the left of the subject sat on a chair, to create a bit of depth and shadows. The subject had their shoulders and head facing towards this front light, whilst their eyes were to me. The translucent umbrella I used for the object images was situated 180° to the right of the subject – this was again to introduce shadows on and around the subject’s hands to create depth, whilst avoiding the forensic photography look. I used a plain white backdrop, which was around five feet away from the subjects sat on the chair.

In post-production I made very minor changes, occasionally slightly increasing shadows and clarity. The biggest change I made to all of the portraits was selecting their eyes by using the Adjustment Brush and increasing exposure. This was to make them ‘pop’ and give a strong focal point.

When starting this module, I initially felt that my idea would be more about the concept than the aesthetic of the images, but now I feel that to combine both artistic ideas with technical ability is the best way to produce a series of photographs with a strong theme throughout, however simplistic. This has also resulted in me bettering my technical ability and understanding more about technique and approach to style. Although it is a simple concept, I feel that the vacant expression of the subjects are relevant so that the focus is more on their possessions, as it is them that tell the story. I hope the viewer would agree that I have succeeded in producing a set of images that, although changeable in subject and object, is unified by regimented aspects of the images to visually bring them together. As a photographer, my primary interests and passion lies in photographically documenting and in general, people. To be able to apply both of these to a self-generated project has been hugely exciting and has served as a welcome platform for essentially doing what I love whilst learning and bettering my practice.

Final prints