Context

The brief for portraiture was to take three photos, of three different, specific people. The people we had to photograph were someone familiar to us, a stranger and ourselves. The first image was someone familiar, so, I decided to photograph my cousin’s 1-year-old baby, Henry. I decided to photograph Henry because I believe he is a very cute baby, and gives a different insight into portraiture that is very different to capturing photos of adults. Firstly, I was unable to actually tell him what to do, so I had to capture him at very specific moments as he was reacting to his surroundings. Secondly, he has obviously not fully developed yet, so his facial features are a lot different to those of adults, giving another varied and interesting aspect.

The second photograph, of a stranger, was perhaps the hardest one to take – I had to try overcome my fear of speaking to strangers and approach various people, asking if I could take a photo of them for the assignment brief. I began by going into my town centre at home at lunch time, when it is at its busiest, and approaching various people. I decided to ask older people, because I thought they would be more inclined to help – they are also a lot easier to talk to and approach, but they were not very interested. After a few rejections, I decided to try the local Grammar school, as it was lunchtime. Luckily, I approached a girl and asked her if I could take a photo of her for my project and she decided to help me.

The final image is a self-portrait. To achieve this picture, I decided to use a tripod. I set up the camera with all the correct settings, framed it how I wanted it to look and went to stand in front of the camera. I then set the self-timer to take nine photos, with ten second intervals between each photo.

Influences

As our brief states, we must photograph three portraits; a family member or a friend, a stranger, and a self-portrait. To aid me in completing this process, I decided to look at three different portraits by three different photographers, in order to reflect the requirements of the brief in my research.

The first portrait I looked at is a very famous 1984 photograph, taken by Steve McCurry, entitled ‘Afghan Girl’. The photo, which can be see above, features a young Afghan girl staring into the camera, and is often likened to Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Mona Lisa’; so much so it has been called ‘The First World’s Third World Mona Lisa’. This image stood out to me, mainly for the fact that despite the girl having a blank face, there is lots of expression shown in the photograph. Her eyes, in my opinion, show both fear and strength, that in a way she’s frightened of what is going on in her life, but that she is almost getting used to it. The eyes are wide open and they are what stands out the most in the picture; they contain huge amounts of detail and the green colour of the iris contrasts with the red of what the girl is wearing, but is complimented by the green background. Despite this photograph being over thirty years old, it is still highly relevant; refugees and war will always be around, but I believe this photograph is even more effective due to the modern-day Syrian refugee crisis.

The second photographer that caught my eye is a fashion photograph called Albert Watson – one of the world’s most successful fashion photographers, due to the fact his photographs do not conform to any simple categorisation; Watson was a graphic designer, which often heavily influenced his work. My personal favourite image of his was a photo taken in 1992 of Mick Jagger. The photo was to be for the Rolling Stone magazines twenty-fifth anniversary issue and features Mick Jagger as a leopard. Due to my personal interest in manipulating photograph, using Photoshop for example, I find this image outstanding. To create the image, Watson first photographed a leopard and then used a marker pen to draw the leopard’s outline on the viewfinder of the camera. He then photographed Mick Jagger by using the same piece of film and double exposing it. Nowadays, this image can easily be done by collecting two photographs and editing them together.

The third and final photographer is a Swiss man called Marco Grob, who his famous for his portraiture in magazines such as TIME and Vogue. My favourite image of his is a photo of Steve Jobs that appeared on the front cover of TIME magazine. Despite the photograph being an ordinary portrait, I believe the lowkey lighting, that mainly lights up half of the face, and the black background, makes the subject stand out. All of these elements combined, as well as the subject himself, help showcase Steve Job’s greatness in a single frame. Macro Grob’s portraits of Steve Jobs, also happened to be Job’s last portrait sitting.

Having looked at these three specific pictures, I decided to approach the brief in a way that focuses mainly on the subject’s face and expression, rather than the background imagery, or another object situated within the frame. The three photos all showcase the subject as the main body of the photograph, so all attention is given to them.

First Attempt

My first attempt at portraiture was done in the photo studio, using two different light settings and different coloured backdrops. The first, seen on the pictures on the right, was a high key lighting set up, with a white backdrop. After looking at the photos I had personally taken, along with the ones of me taken by the rest of the group I practiced with, I did not really like this specific set up. Firstly, due to the backdrop being a sheet of white paper, the lights had to be really bright, in order to allow the backdrop to be pictures as white as possible – unlike what can be seen in the examples above. If the lights were not bright enough, the backdrop would come out as a dull grey colour when photos were taken. Secondly, due to my skin being a light colour, the bright lights made me look extremely pale and made my face look shiny, which I personally feel is not very flattering. Once the photos were taken, I tried playing around with them in Lightroom, in order to try and make the background as white as possible and try and make the subject (me) a lot darker, so that I looked more natural. However, I failed to do so and either had to have a very bright subject to make the background white, or a very dark background to make the subject look natural.

The low key lighting set up, which is featured in the photographs on the left, was my personal favourite. As can be seen, the black backdrop looks completely black without any post production work and looks a lot better than the grey background in the high key lighting set up photos on the right. I also like the light that is upon the subjects; I believe having half of the face lit, and the other half shadowed, is very effective – it may be something I utilise in my final portraits.

Although I am fond of the lowkey lighting set up, I am not sure whether I will be photographing my subjects within the photo studio; I would rather take my portraits in specific, interesting environments to add even more depth and detail to the photographs.

Second Attempt

My second attempt at portraiture photography was when I shot the final images for the brief. Due to having already practiced in the studio, I felt what I had done so far was enough to begin capturing my final images. However, obviously not everything is as easy as that, nor does it run so smoothly. One of the biggest problems I faced during the final shoots was the difference in light in comparison to the studio. Because lighting set ups were used within the photo studio, we could control the light ourselves, and quickly adjust the camera settings so they worked in harmony. But, when relying on natural light, it is a lot harder to capture photographs that are correctly lit. The correct settings for the level of light at the time must be found. An example of this problem can be seen in the photo below, when photographing someone familiar to me.

The photo above is my favourite photo from that specific area of the brief, as it perfectly shows Henry’s reaction to a camera being put in front of his face. However, as it was one of the first photos I had captured, the settings were not yet correctly set up for the amount of light that was in the room at the time, so the photo is underexposed and the detail is lost in shadows. Nonetheless, I decided to try alter the photo in post-production.

Even though the photo is a bit brighter, allowing it to be seen more clearly, most of the detail was lost and so the photo quality is poor and appears grainy. I spent a few minutes fiddling around with various settings to get it as good as possible. However, this is as good as I could do, and sadly the quality is too poor to hand in as a final photo.

For my first attempt at photographing a stranger, I decided to get a long zoom lens (70mm – 300mm) and sit, looking outside the window, waiting for pedestrians to walk past. This was originally going to be my final idea for this aspect of the brief, but, after having taking a few photos, I decided to pursue a different idea, as this one did not work entirely well.

As can be seen in the photograph above, it is not entirely clear who the person is or what they look like, making it hard to capture their expression well. The person I photographed was someone who lived just across the road, but I do not know them, nor have spoken to them. The day I took this picture it was very foggy, making it even more difficult to capture a photo worthy of submitting.

I was disappointed with the photos I had captured, as I quite liked my idea of capturing a portrait from distance. But, as can be seen in the photo (which is the best out of the ones I had taken), it was not successful. Nonetheless, I resulted into leaving the house and asking strangers if I could take photos of them, instead of taking photos without people knowing.

To capture a self-portrait, I initially decided to take a ‘selfie’ in a mirror, using a camera. I felt this was a good idea; it allowed me to be more comfortable, as I was technically still behind the camera rather than in front of it. Below is the best photo out of the select few I had taken.

At first, I had set the camera to autofocus, but soon found that because I was photographing in a mirror, the camera struggled to focus and took a while to take a picture. This meant that I was often blinking or moving in the final photo by the time it decided to take. So, I had to resort to manually focusing the camera; resulting in the camera lens being the only part of the image in focus, which was what I had intended.

However, once I reviewed the photos I had taken, I decided I did not like it at all. I had chosen to take the photo with me on a third, but because of how my house is laid out, it left a lot of open space that is out of focus and not interesting to look at. Also, the camera and my hand is covering the majority of my face, along with it being intentionally out of focus, meaning my expression cannot be seen at all.

Nonetheless, this image could have probably been good enough to submit, due to some people liking the way it was photographed and framed, but, I decided against it because I personally did not like it – I decided to change my idea. For a first attempt at a self-portrait, I felt it was quite successful, just not what I had entirely envisaged it to look like.

Reflection

The first of three images we had to produce to meet the requirements of the brief was a portrait of someone familiar to us. As previously mentioned, I decided to photograph my cousin’s 1-year-old baby, Henry. I am quite fond of the photo I managed to capture, but it is obviously not perfect. In hindsight, I wish that more of Henry’s face would be in focus. The main point of focus on him is his right eye, resulting in lots of detail and colour being shown. However, the toy he is playing with is also entirely in focus, resulting in his other eye not being in focus. Although some people may think this looks good, I would personally prefer it if the majority of the toy is out of focus, and all of his face is in focus. However, this may have not been possible to do, especially as it very hard to photograph children, hence why they say to never work with them. If I were to re-do this aspect of the brief, I would perhaps work with a familiar adult, rather than a baby. I feel like I could then produce a better photo, as it would allow me more time to frame and position the subject. But, on the other hand, I believe it is more impressive to capture the expression of a baby rather than an adult, because you cannot tell a baby what face to pull.

The second image we had to take was of a stranger. As previously mentioned, my final image is of a local schoolgirl on her lunch break. The photograph was taken just outside of the school, against a textured wall. My favourite part of this photo is in fact the textured wall – it gives the image an extra aspect for the viewer to look at, as well giving a contrasting texture, something not often seen in portraits, because they are often taken against solid coloured back drops.

Even though the girl decided to help me once I had asked her, she was still quite nervous when I was capturing the photographs. I told her to relax and pose how she wanted, as she was unable to look directly at the camera and smile, due to being shy. The final photo I chose was when she did not even realise I was taking a photo; I told her to compose herself and breathe as I was not in a rush. While she was composing herself, I took a picture without her knowing. In the end it resulted in me capturing great expression of her staring into the distance.

The third and final image is a self-portrait. After deciding to change my idea from a ‘selfie’, I learnt how to use a self-timer on my camera. Once I had a practice at taking photos on a self-timer, I framed the background how I wanted it to look. Sadly, in my house there are no blank spaces that I could use for a plain background. So I decided to use a door, as it gives the image another texture and different colours, in a similar style that of the background for my stranger portrait had.

As previously mentioned, I set my camera to take nine photos, with a ten second gap between each photograph. The final image I chose was in fact the first image that was taken. I was unsure how I was going to pose, so I began my sorting out my clothes and straightening them out. As I was doing this, the first photo was taken without me realising. This resulted in a candid photo of myself that can be seen above.

I was quite pleased this photo was captured, as I had no idea how I wanted to pose. Thus, capturing a candid photo without me knowing was perhaps the best way in which to present my self-portrait. Despite choosing a textured background, based on my stranger image, I do not like the one used in the self-portrait. The way the door is makes the image look too busy and at an angle. However, it is the best place I could think of in my house to take a photo.

Overall, I am satisfied with the photos I am handing in to complete this brief. Out of the all the briefs, I found this one the most challenging, as I had to rely on other people, such as strangers, in order to complete it. But, I was able to get all of the photos taken in a way I had intended; capturing the expressions of the subjects well.