The Body: Test Shots

Wow, I look weird...

I got the honour of having my ugly mug snapped during one of our portrait workshops the other day... So yeah that's my face plastered over there to the left. :)

This blog post is really for me to show some of the various ideas I had for my portrait shoot.
I had a lot of ideas regarding a concept, but the one thing I really wanted to focus on was the idea of a portrait being a literal representation of a person. So a photo of someones face for example.

I was very interested in showing the differences between human facial features, thus started looking at the work of Martin Schoeller. His work inspired me to think about the idea of taking a straight-on photograph in order to show the person for what they are when they look at something/someone.

As good as this idea was, I felt that the photos themselves didn't look as natural as I wanted, in regards to the way they were lit, so I decided to experiment with simple Rembrandt lighting setups using my DSLR and off-camera wireless flash.

I experimented with this simplistic way of lighting, using my mother as a test model at home in my kitchen, I also tried using natural light instead of strobe flash to compare the results. I prefer natural light, but I have to use studio lights for this shoot. Bummer :/

I've always liked the idea of using multiple photographs in a 2x2 "quadriptych" style because it allows you to present more within a space rather than say one single photograph. I thought this would be a good idea because people often have different sides to their personality which sometimes cannot be captured within a single photograph. Doing it this way allows me to showcase more of each person at the same time.

I experimented again at home to try and figure out how I was going to light my shoot, because I'm planning to have the photos in a quadriptych, I want to keep them simplistic and almost identical. The shot below and left is, I think, to bright and lacking in tone because the subject's head is hiding the majority of the shadow behind to the right. To overcome this problem, I switched the light position to the other side and the result is a significant improvement, as seen in the photo below and right.

The decision to move the subject's head round slightly wasn't one that i took lightly, but I wanted a more human, and realistic shot instead of a mugshot that lacking in life. The shot below and right is a fairly accurate representation of the lighting setup, composition & overall look that each of the four final photos will be, just with a different model.

The lighting setup I will hopefully be using for this shoot will mainly focussed arount Rembrandt's famous style, I will be utilising a large softbox for my main light source, this will be located on the subject's left (camera right). This will hopefully create a very dispersed, soft light that will look very nnatural and compliment a woman's face. On the opposite side I will place a large white reflector to help give some bounce-back light into the shadow areas to try and lower the amount of overall contrast in the shot, but not too much as to wash out the shadow. I will also try to create an evenly lit, white backdrop using two matching light sources from either side of the shot, but out of frame.

Ralf Uicker

First off, I love Ralf Uicker. I think he's a brilliant photographer with a real eye for urban landscapes. I like him so much that I have one of his photographs framed in my room ready to go up on the wall. Ralf captures a wide variety of street life, in various cities around the world, often simply from a normal person's point of view. He almost exclusively works with Black & White film, but has recently started to adopt digital colour photography.

This photograph of the New York skyline was very inspirational to me and I hope to be able to create something similar from the buildings of London. I want to be able to photograph the idea of "A city that never sleeps" But due to travel cost and time I can only really venture anywhere as far as London, oh well London'll do :)

What I really like about this photograph is the use of water to reflect the building's lights, yet not exactly mirroring them. I also like how Ralf has shot it so that the sky is almost pitch black, showing that it was late at night when there is very little light in the sky from the sun. It is truly at night.

The use of Black and hite enhances this photo as it gives a sense of sophistication and gives the building added majesty and grace with the way they tower over the city like guardians or watchers.

Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller is a photographer that really caught my eye whilst I was looking for inspiration for my Body shoot. One area of his work particularly focuses on straight on flat photographs of people looking straight at the camera. He uses a very small depth of field from a large aperture lens, and almost always focuses on the subjects eyes. He keeps his backgrounds simple and plain as to keep the viewer's attention fixed solely on the subject. This use of small depth of field creates a kind of veil around the parts of the photograph that are out of focus, making us look at the subjects eyes more and more. It's a very clever technique that I would love to include in my work somehow.

Martin tries to keep the Portraits he takes quite similar, but occasionally adds in extra things within the frame, such as a prop specific to the subject or allowing them to pull a certain pose during the shoot. Because he sits and talks to the people during the shoot, they never really know when the photograph will be taken so they cannot really prepare for it and add any kind of fakery to it. What is captured is a very accurate representation of their personalities and lives.

Rembrandt Workshop

We recently had a workshop session in-studio about the use of Rembrandt's Lighting technique.

Rembrandt lighting: Quite simple; one light on one side, one reflector on the other. That's pretty much it.

The workshop went great and was a lot of fun,It was a good chance to get to grips once again with studio light setups and I got to use a Bronica medium format camera for the first time, now I just wish I'd checked the focussing more closely...

Every single shot on the roll of film from the workshop that I took was slightly out of focus, primarily due to the fact that I was unfamiliar with the camera. But this was only noticeable when in the darkroom printing the pictures, because the slight mis-focus was not visible on the negative itself.

The day was not a complete failure however, because with my being typical me, I had my 7D with my also for any other shots I wished to take, I was lucky to one portrait in particular which shows Rembrandt lighting rather nicely:

Yes it's colour and yes it's digital, but the fact of the matter is, it's still a portrait. And one i'm actually proud of at that.

The Body: Simple Potraits

^^ That's George.
<-- And that's Nicola.

Two people that were happy to model and stay still as long as they could for me as a fumbled around for far too long composing, metering, focussing, then composing again, then checking again. And again. And again as I struggled to take a photo before it took too long.

I got there eventually both times however, and I'm very happy with these results. The idea behind these two portraits was to mimic the traditional type of portrait, where the model simply sat for the photographer, without the shot being too fancy or complicated. simple outdoor daylight with exterior backdrops give a natural sense to the pictures that I think just works.

Sticking this idea of simplicity, I would like my Portrait section to feature clean, simple portraits, with very minimalist backdrops to help maximize attention on the subject. I am as of yet undecided as the the specifics of what I would like to do for my Portrait studio shoot, it depends on who I am able to get to model for me for the specified allotted day.