Photography Project: Studio Portraits

 Yesterday we went to the photographic studio to take studio portraits. In the studio we used continuous lighting with a four light set up.  We took black and white and colour photographs and we used a black backdrop and a white backdrop.

We used the model Billie and a variety of poses for different composition.  Once I complete the shoot I created contact sheet on Photoshop.

We started with a high key set up on a white background.  The model was wearing colourful clothes and this should have been bright and sharp images. The first image I has chosen to show is this medium shot below

In this image the F-Stop is F4.5 so the aperture is wide open and the image should be clear and sharp.  With the lighting here the shutter is only 1/80 which is quite slow and actually the image is soft and really more light was needed to make this much sharper. I could have improved this image by over exposing slightly and this would have also increased the shutter speed or I could have added extra physical lighting or changed the ISO to 800 (however this would have added more noise, so not a good solution). 

We looked at lots of poses prior to the shoot and this shot by David Bailey has some similar ideas 

It is also a medium shot and uses rule of thirds, Bailey's image uses natural light and the hallway to frame the model.  In my shot there is a clean white background and the colour lifts the image to make it bright and clean.  In Baileys shot the domestic environment is more low key and the black and white changes the mood and feel of the image with the woman alone in the house.  My own image is very much like a classic fashion shot, the model's identity is unimportant.  Baileys shot is obviously far more compelling.   

The next shots I chose were these two sitting poses one in black and white and one in colour - this is partially so I can decide which works better as a shot and to think about the sharpness and lighting in the shots.  

The setting were exactly the same and again these images are soft and the shutter speed slow.  The exposure compensation is overexposing slightly and I think this really needed to be slightly less over exposed and more light added through physical lighting or I needed to be closer to the model to ensure that the shutter speed was higher.  I preferred the black and white but this does need work as I explained here. 

I looked at these shots by Bailey and the sitting pose here uses the bend of the leg and the arm to create the triangle shapes that really make this shot work.  The image is sharp and if my shot over less over exposed and had deeper shades and tones it would have looked more like this in terms of the look of the image. 
 

The next photograph was a seated pose on a box, this pose worked quite well and filled the frame with the triangular shapes and rule of thirds.

On the photograph the shutter was a little slow at 1/30 but there is no blur but it is a little soft.  It is slightly overexposed at +1 exposure compensation but overall this is okay - I would have changed the settings slightly to ensure the shutter speed was higher if I did this again  - I could have changed to Shutter priority.

The image above has some similarities in poses in the  seated position with her hand touching her hair and similar shapes to fill the frame 

The last one I will share here is another seated position , I liked the elegance of this pose, again a little soft but the positioning of the models arms and legs worked well to create a rule of thirds low key shot

The setting here are again a slow shutter making the image softer than I would like.  It was on -2 exposure compensation to ensure the blacks came out black and the shot was low key.  The high contrast of black and white is good and works well here.

Similar idea in this pose however this one is grey shades so the contrast is less stark but the full body shot with the legs taking centre stage and rule of thirds is what we were aiming for in our own shot. 

Reflection

As I was teaching, again I was just doing test shots so these all need adjustments and in a real shoot I would taken far more images and adjusted the setting further to ensure crisper cleaner shots overall. There is a good mixture of poses and low and high key shots here and as a practice it is satisfactory.  In my own work I will be taking far more time and care over the process as this will ensure better shots.

Photography Project: Natural Light Portraits

 Today we were looking at the portrait in class and different compositional techniques and different ideas about the portrait and what it means.  We looked at shots by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, shots from Life Magazine, Bill Brandt, David Bailey and Annie Leibovitz.  I was most interested in the Life magazine images and so i went to the archive online and found this from 17th March 1972.  The article was titled 'Dropout Wife'  so I couldn't resist and this was about a woman who left her family to pursue her career and left the children with their Dad. This was at the time of the second wave of feminism and the story was about her life and attitudes.  The Photographs here by Michael Mauney.  I really liked the images and the story and i shows the importance of expressing different point of view of the time.  the photographs make this stronger and more relatable.  

'Drop Out Wife' (17th March 1972) Life Magazine

In class we then went out to take natural light portraits with our model Billie. I took around 300 shots and I started with e the setting of aperture priority F4.5, ISO 200.  These are the contacts from the shoot. 

I completed all the contact sheets both on Photoshop and on Contact sheet generator above - Photoshop contact are superior as it is much easier to read the numbers and check the images.  

In this shot the light was really good in the image with the gentle shadows of the trees on the stone and model.  This gave a kind of mottled look to the image. The aperture was wide open so this is sharp throughout and the shutter speed perfectly balanced for this shot.  I chose this shot as it uses good rule of thirds and the movement of the model as se moves her hair work well as she looks down and the sunlight hits her hair.  

I chose this shot for the low key look, its moody and sultry and this works really well with the rule of thirds landscape composition and triangle of the arm leading the viewer to the models face.  The light hitting right side of face contrasts really well the dark left side and textured stone works well as a backdrop as it does not distract from the models face.  the setting here was a wide aperture at F5.6 and fast shutter so the image again very sharp.  I have underexposed with a -1 exposure bias so create the low key look. 

I chose this image for the depth of the colours, the sun was very bright and so by underexposing by -1 I deepened the colour  as otherwise it may have looked over saturated or over exposed and detail would have been lost. Liked the pose and the angle, good sharp, clear shot

In this image again I underexposed slightly as the sun was bright and I wanted to deepen the shades and tones in black and white.  Really liked the angle and with body as leading line through the shot.  good focal length so the background drops out and the focus on the model  is perfect. 

This one I chose as it is a good rule of thirds and I wanted the river in the background, this again is nicely dropped out and softened so the focus is the models face.  In this shot she has a slight Mono Lisa smile and her look into the distance works well. 

I will finish with the shot, this has a really iconic model look to it the pose really works well and in a medium shot it is perfectly balanaced.  Again the aperture is wide and the image is sharp, with a fast shutter as it was bright sunlight I underexposed this time by -1.3, this bought out the darker shades and tones and worked very well to create a great shot. 

Reflection

I am very pleased overall with this shoot, the sunny day really helps and we managed to get some great shots.  I think the adjustments worked well.  i could have dropped my ISO to 100 but as we moved to lighter and darker areas I thought the exposure compensation would be easier to adjust and it meant more control over each shot.  We did have issues with the sun and angles so it was not directly into the camera or directly into the model's eyes!  However we worked round and changed positions as necessary.  As always some poses worked better that others but I really thought there were some great ones here.  very pleased with shots. 

Photography Project: Above & Below

 For this quick photography practice we began by looking at the work of Corrine Day and Terry O'Neill.  We were looking at the composition and framing of images by these photographers and we were particularly looking at the high and low angle shots and using rule of thirds in images and how this works. I choose this image of Kate Moss by Corrine Day as it is a high angle shots looking down on the subject.  I like this image as the background has a dilapidated wall behind which is quite neutral.  The image is in three thirds, the ground is the first third and then the model and the last third the wall.  The shot works as the subject, Kate moss, is young, and there is a naivety and natural exposure that has the spontaneity and carefree nature of youth encapsulated within the frame. 

Kate Moss (circa 1991) By Corrine Day

I then went out with group and created high and low angle shots.  I was using a Canon 700D, I set the settings to Aperture Priority and so the lens was wide open I set this to F4.  I then set my ISO to 100 as it was a bright sunny day and I checked my exposure compensation was on '0' to begin the shoot. 

Once I completed the shoot I made contact sheets on Photoshop File-Automate-Contact Sheets).

I am just to look at a couple of the shots and how they were taken to discuss whether they worked and what could be improved.

I really like the rule of thirds, the low angle and the lines from the roof.  The shot is good in composition however it is slightly soft.  This is because ths shutter speed was only at 1/50 and I needed to add more light by probably adjusting the ISO to 400.  I chose to do these shots in black and white and colour so I had different choices for curation.

This colour shot was at a high angle and the F stop was nice and wide open and this is a crisp, clean shot with lots of detail, good close up with fast shutter speed and no exposure compensation.  

I then went Photoshop and just put the two shots together on a black canvas at 300dpi.  This was to exemplify the high and low angles used in the shoot.

Reflection

I did not get many shots for this as I was teaching, and if I was doing this with a little more time I would have set up the location and subjects better and considered better composition aspects for the shots.  The final piece is okay for a practice. 

Creative Media: Object Lesson

 In the first week of Creative Media Production, we are doing an object lesson.  This is our first project for assessment and is a one week project.  I have chosen for my object a postcard called 'From Pretty Woman, Tokyo, 2017 by Daido Moriyama.

I was drawn to this object as I loved the reflections of life in the glasses lens, the distorted people and the photographer taking the shot inside the lens of the glasses. The image is striking of the mannequin's head with bright red lipstick.  The shop dummy, the plastic doll these drew me to this image.  The plasticity and materiality of the image - what could I do that is about perhaps materiality. Or maybe it is about the post-modern portrait and the photographer within the image.  The passersby look up into the reflection and see themselves within the mannequins 'eyes'.

I created 20 ideas in 20 minutes, and this is the result

I actually have lots of ideas here that I really liked and would love to make.  However the ones I enjoyed the most were 'Artist in the Image' as I really like this idea of appearing in art in a subtle or interesting way.  I also liked the idea of 'Strangers through the Looking Glass/Alice in Wonderland (through the looking glass)'  Stranger reflections in glass could be really interesting and also a wall of reflection could have great impact as a final piece.  The last one I liked was materiality and making something highly reflective as a 3D sculpture, I love making 3D objects - it is whether this one is possible within a week.

I will start with artist within the image, the first thing that comes to mind is Édouard Manet's Bar at the Folies Bergère (1882).  The artist appears in the mirror at the corner of the image, some say it is the artist, there are other sources that state he was too ill to be there and worked from his studio; 'Manet was too ill to paint this picture in the Folies-Bergère itself. Instead, most of it was completed in the studio, where he had an imitation bar installed. As a result, the details in the foreground were painted with careful precision. Manet even added his signature to the wine bottle on the left' (Zaczek, 2011)  However, The Aesthetics of Photography state; 'A mirror behind her reflects her image, as well as the image of the public, and also that of the artist on the other side of the counter, to the right of the picture.' (Aesthetics of Photography, 2020).  I believe that the man is the artist and that he wanted to appear as soon he would not be there at all, all artists want to be present in some way in their images. 

A Bar at the Folies Bergère (1882) by Édouard Manet

The Jeff Wall's post-modern recreation 'Picture for Women' (1979) is interesting as much is written on teh creation of this image, is it a montage? The people, although they are by a mirror, are not reflected.  The Aesthetics of Photography states; 'More likely, one can think that the totality of the image, including the young woman and the counter, is composed of the reflection coming from the mirror. We would therefore be faced with an entirely specular image, in which all the objects and characters would have been captured indirectly by the camera, according to the reflections coming from the mirror.' (Aesthetics of Photography, 2020).  This was a carefully set up image and the idea that they are just the reflections I really like in this image.  The three panels do create separate spaces in the frame and these are distinct and all hold their own meaning.  I like the idea of using a triptych this could also work really well with differing stories and reflections.

Picture for Women, Jeff Wall, 1979

I also like the idea of strangers in images and capturing strangers (an area many photographers have been in trouble for doing).  Philip Lorca Di Corcia was taken to court for taking images of strangers in Times Square, Di Corcia created these images with a hidden camera between 1999-2001 and then he exhibited these images and sold prints from the exhibition.  It was not until 'March 2005 that the man, Erno Nussenzweig, learned about the photograph [of himself]. He sued, arguing that the artist had violated his privacy rights and that the use of his picture violated his ultra-orthodox Klausenberg sect’s prohibition on graven images.' (Chan, 2017).  The court dismissed the case and did skirt round the privacy issues involved, i.e. do we have a right to privacy when we are out in a public place? The court citred procedural grounds for tah case to be dismissed. Di Corcia took thousands of images in Times Square (he only ever chose a small selection for exhibtion) he took them by mounting, 'his flash unit on some scaffolding under which people constantly walked by. He marked a barely perceptible spot on the ground and mounted a camera with a strong telephoto lens some distance away. Each time someone who interested him walked over the spot, he released the shutter.' (Deutsche Boerse Foundation, 2025)

Philip Lorca-Dicorcia Head #23, 2000

The set and the images are stunning, the isolation of the 'Head' from the crowd to bring attention to that moment with that face, when they are completely unaware, these are striking images and Dicorcia chose when to press the shutter i.e. which people he selected for his images; 'diCorcia was not aiming to photograph types, but individuals who produce a certain effect by themselves, by dint of their character and charisma. “There are people who attract our attention more than others because they are something special,”' (Deutsche Boerse Foundation, 2025)

Philip Lorca-Di Corcia Head 2000 

I like the idea of picking strangers from the crowd, or walking alone in a street.  This could be possible and perhaps in reflection even more possible if it was just taking the reflection and my camera pointed to this. 

I think I have decided that I will take images, these will be more though in the manner of painting like a triptych or as I said in the original 20 ideas a wall of strangers as reflection.  This will be an interesting one to set up and probably will require some patience.  I will add my plan for these shots when I have worked out location and I may try to do a quick test shoot to see if it will work - with the longer days this will make this a lot easier and evening sun could good as it is a softer evening light.

After consideration I started to think further about reflection and I wanted to actually break the glass reflection, destroy it and so I began thinking about images of Man Ray and Moholy Nagy, the photograms of Moholy Nagy were fragmented pieces of things so I thought I could perhaps use this idea with my own face. 

László Moholy-Nagy, Untitled, c. 1940, gelatin silver photogram, 50.1 x 40.2 cm

I created this my fractured and broken face, I liked the effect I used Photoshop to fracture into the pieces that I wanted after I have overlayed the broken glass.  

I enjoyed this exploration of reflection and from the beginning postcard as object, I do think this idea has really evolved into something rather different.  I would do more of these if this were a longer project and I would experiment with images on glass and through glass as that would be really quite interesting dependent, of course, on the concept.  Overall, this gave me further ideas and questions about work I could do next, there is a spark of a greater idea here. 

References

Aesthetics of Photography (2020). Picture for Women, Jeff Wall. [online] Aesthetics of Photography. Available at: https://aestheticsofphotography.com/jeff-wall-picture-for-women/ [Accessed 1 Apr. 2025].

Chan, S. (2017). Case Over ‘Heads’ Photo Is Dismissed. [online] City Room. Available at: https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/16/case-over-heads-photo-is-dismissed/ [Accessed 1 Apr. 2025].

SINGULART (2024). Picture for Women by Jeff Wall: A Blend of Art and Critique. [online] Magazine. Available at: https://www.singulart.com/blog/en/2024/04/04/picture-for-women-by-jeff-wall/[Accessed 1 Apr. 2025].

Zaczek, I. (2011). A Bar at the Folies Bergère by Édouard Manet. [online] Britannica. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/A-Bar-at-the-Folies-Bergere [Accessed 1 Apr. 2025].

Welcome to Summer Term 2025

 As one term ends, another begins and there is so little time to reflect!  So I will dive right in and discuss what I have been looking at over the 'break'.  I was searching Carl Laszlo, one of my favourite art collectors and artists.  Laszlo discovered and promoted amazing, unusual and daring artists and was the founder of Panderma a publication celebrating neo dada and outsider art.  I found a book from a Panderma edition called 'Mondgeistfahrt' (Moon Ghost Trip) by Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern.  I now have it sitting right by me on my desk, a strange beautiful thing by a truly eccentric man!.

Untitled (1961) From Mondgeistfahrt, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern

Sonnenstern (which means Sun+Star) 'lived a peripatetic life [this means he travelled around a lot] marked in large part by ineptitude, indecency and insanity. He was a dairy farmer, a circus performer, a cigar seller, a horse thief, a blackmailer, a cult leader, a penal camp prisoner and a habitual asylum internee. Yet it was only after World War II, when Schröder-Sonnenstern was in his 50s and living amidst the hardships and deprivations of a splintered Germany, that he finally sank to his lowest level and became an artist.' (Pendle, 2025) I thought this was a great way to describe the man, a man who was often considered to be mad, but not all thought so; 'Kort [Pamela Kort [Writer of Art Books and Essays]  'Kort asserts that he was not truly mentally ill in his later years, but simply exaggerated his mental problems in order to get his work noticed by other artists.' (Karlins, 2024). Whether he was mad or not is is amazing he evaded the Nazis as he was very much an eccentric outsider.  Sonnenstern himself, 'always denied he was mad. Instead he explained that he had learned his style from an insane painter he had met while in an asylum.' (Pendle, 2025)

Sonnerstern's (1892-1982) works are so very interesting, so unusual and great examples of Outsider Art. The image above of a strange bull/cow with a distorted humanesque face, with tears of what could be blood and a look of anger/pain could be a reflection on the destruction of war, the aftermath of the strange and devasted world Sonnenstern lived in in Berlin.  He sold firewood after the war that he scavenged to survive.  The strange, massively-breasted woman, dragging it by its tail across a desert landscape, whose face and neck seem to have snakes living in it, goes beyond any explanation.  In the book this image is accompanied by a series of small photographs of Sonnerstern with his partner first arguing and then kissing.  The text states, 'I have been isolated since childhood; nobody wants to play with me' (Schroder-Sonnenstern, 1974:30).  The surrealists loved the work of Sonnerstern and feted him, as they themselves were own to considered be somewhat psychotic and they like him did not fit into the 'normal' world.  

“The Jealousy Tragedy”, ca. 1956

Colored pencil on cardboard By Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern

Sonnerstern's works contained motifs and repeated symbols, and as time went on, many related to the moon and had moon in the title. Karlins states, 'His drawings are loaded with unsettling sexual, religious and scatological imagery, yet their plush colors and beautiful palette are impressively seductive.' (Karlins, 2024) Many of his works are made with coloured pencils and there is a naive quality underlying quite complex symbology. The image above with the snake essentially eatings its tail with the woman's breasts being bitten does remind the viewer of the Tarot Card, The World, where everything ends and begins again. The woman here, again is strangely distorted with breasts for a chin and strange ducklike feet. In the book for this image, the text states; 'I simply can't put enough round shapes into my pictures - no sharp corners, for they would represent life itself.  All round forms are tokens of Perception.', (Schroder-Sonnenstern, 1974:20).  

I am thoroughly enjoying pouring over the works of Schöder-Sonnenstern, it fills me with joy to know that artists like him existed and must still exist out there. Long live this kind of eccentric beauty.

References

Karlins, N.F. (2024). Outsider Artist Friedrich Schr�der-Sonnenstern at Michael Werner Gallery - artnet Magazine. [online] Artnet.com. Available at: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/karlins/schroeder-sonnenstern-michael-werner4-14-11.asp [Accessed 29 Mar. 2025].

Michaelwerner.com. (2020). FRIEDRICH SCHRÖDER-SONNENSTERN - From Barefoot Prophet to Avant-Garde Artist - Exhibitions - Michael Werner Gallery, New York, London, Beverly Hills, Athens. [online] Available at: https://www.michaelwerner.com/exhibitions/friedrich-schroder-sonnenstern [Accessed 29 Mar. 2025].

Pendle, G. (2025). Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern. [online] Frieze.com. Available at: https://www.frieze.com/article/friedrich-schr%C3%B6der-sonnenstern [Accessed 29 Mar. 2025].

Schroder-Sonnenstern, F. (1974). Mongeistfahrt. First ed. Munchen, Germany: Verlag F.Bruckmann KG.

Swislow, B. (2012). Book Review: Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern - Interesting Ideas. [online] Interestingideas.com. Available at: https://www.interestingideas.com/book-review-friedrich-schroder-sonnenstern/ [Accessed 29 Mar. 2025].

Creative Media Production: Reflection

 This term we began with the Object Lesson which was about exploring an idea and maybe trying something outside our usual comfort zone.  My object was a postcard by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (2012) called Alias which was like a negative with a red filter.  I was quite excited about this project as I had the idea of drawing with photographs and ended up making a reverse drawing photographically of myself and my son when he was small.  I call this 'Mother and Child' (circa 2006) as that is when the original photograph was taken.  This was a short project (just a week) but it was good to do something really different using different processes and materials. 

The final outcome above I quite liked, the idea of just the reverse image, the trace of us.  This trace of a memory that now remains.  In terms of the process, this was all about the process from the simple tracing to the development of this piece and that was most enjoyable.  The outcome is perhaps not something I would frame or add to my website but with more development perhaps it could be.

The second project was a photographic portrait project. We had practised in class natural light and studio portraits and studied text about portrait photography, the text we studied was from 'Photography' by John Ingledew (Second Edition 2013).  We looked at the portraits/self-portraits chapter.  I very much enjoyed exploring the Helmut Newton image; "Self portrait with Model in the Hotel Bijou", Paris, 1971.  My own project was inspired by the images of Sunil Gupta's 'From Here to Eternity' (1995), I really was taken by these images as it was illness from HIV and clubs he used to visit (which look in the images abandoned or closed down). 

My idea was to create a similar concept, so I photographed doors that meant something to me, and these were to be paired with self-portaits.  Normally, I might share stories about these but there are multiple meanings to me, and like Gupta I want to keep these stories private.  The diptychs are for the viewer to connect, make meaning. 

These images if I had more time, I would have taken the actions again as I thought they could be improved.  The doors were exactly as I had wanted. The concept works for me and I was personally very happy with the concept outcomes.

The final project was the chapbook, and I had more trouble with this than any other book I had created.  I started with an idea which I quite liked about an old man with a secret from the cold war and the I liked the writing of the first chapter but after this I felt that I was not getting the chapters right, the second chapter I actually dropped entirely and changed the third chapter to the second chapter then wrote another third chapter.  After all this, I was still unhappy with the outcome. I felt the story did not flow as it should and that I should have started with the woman in Canada as this, I felt was far stronger than from the viewpoint of the old man.  

Most of the stories I have written previously, I was desperate to write more and more.  This story I felt needed scrapping and starting again, and the only thing I would save is the woman, Mika, as I had ideas about her, her life and creating another story, a better story. I comforted myself that it cannot always be a success and obviously, we learn much more from failure! So I would say this story failed, and next time I will spend more time structurally considering whether the story will hold up and making sure that there are real resolutions to the many questions that I poorly answered here in this narrative.  

I don't want to end on a negative, as I have learnt more from this than anything I felt was good.  In my reflection on Digital Arts project I was very positive about these.  For Creative Media this term I lacked something and it did not come together, next term I will be working much harder on a tighter theme and spending much more time testing and planning.