Kirsty Doran FD photo media: people

Human Condition

Learning outcomes assessed in this assignment :

Liaise and communicate with individuals when shooting portrait and human based photography.
Idenitfy and analyse a broad range of situations where 'people' are the primary photographic subject.
Understand the importance of suitable camera systems for a given purpose.
Select suitable processes and techniques for given photographic opportunities and produce imagery for that purpose.

Task

Background

" It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are eiher charming or tedius" Oscar Wilde

As humans, we are obsessed with other humans - it is part of the human condition.

From cave paintings to modern magazines, the evolution of homo sapiens has been scratched, painted and photographed ad-infinitum- but we still crave more. What makes an image of a person? Their face; clothing (or lack of); enviroment; hairstyle; pose; expression; prop... the list is seemingly endless.

How, as an artist, do you use photography to repreent the human condition? There are myriad methods which can be explored and exploited to give the individual their individuality - from lens and format choice to lighting, and onward to post production techniques and even paper/substrate at the printing stage _ if indeed printing is the preferred delivery medium.

A slight change in any of the fore mentioned, will give arise to a sea-change in the final outcome. Wise choices will create strong and personal images.

Lighting Workshop febuary 2013

For the first lighting session, the class was split into to groups and both groups were shown a few different portrait lighting techniques.

For this image we placed two UV light tubes either side of my model, this highlights both sides of the face. For lighting the front of the face we used a beauty dish , a beauty dish is in between a parabolic reflector and a softbox, you can see more definition between shadows and highlights and a circular catch light which is great for capturing the detail in a persons face and putting that shine in a persons eye.

The diagram above represents the lighting set up i used when creating the image above.

For this you can see that i have just one light which is the beauty dish and i have the beauty dish illuminating his face up and you can see this is a very soft light on his skin but good definition.
This diagram below shows how i lit my subject with one light.

Contacts

Lighting Techniques 2

Shooting into Natural Light using Artificial Light

Usually if you shoot towards the sun at your subject you will get dark shadows and just a strong back light and your subject darker with a lot less contrast and you tend to get lens flair like below.

But just by adding one light set out like this diagram below

I get this result below which lights

For this shot above my f stop was at f./16 my shutter at 1/125 and ISO 100.

As you can see the right side of his face is lit and gives the right side of him more definition and lighten shadows, so to lighten up the darker side of him we placed another light slightly in front of him to the left of the photo, which lit him as below

For this shot above my f stop was at f./16 my shutter at 1/125 and ISO 100.

As you can see the shadows are lightened and less harsh on the face, chest and legs. This would be the lighting set up you would use when shooting into natural light.

Contacts

White Balance

White balance is basically colour temperature of light (kelvins), so if you had a cloudy overcast day you would set your white balance on your camera to the cloudy day icon. This chart below helps you to get the idea of what you should have your white balance set to at what time of day or type of light source you have or are using.

http://www.exposureguide.com/white-balance.htm

This image below was taken outside at different kelvins, look at the difference.

This shows the different white balances that are set on all dslr's

What the white balance screen selection looks like on my canon 7D.

Here is what it would like like with a person in the frame

Lighting Ratio's

Ratio is the difference between the key light and the fill light

1:1 ratio is even lighting and has no ratio but is very flat.

2:1 ratio is 1 stop usually used for colour photography

3:1 ratio used for black and white photography

4:1 2 stops used for low key lighting

8:1 ratio is low key dramatic lighting 4 stops.

To measure lighting ratio's on your subject you need to meter the lights separately. The best way to take a meter reading is switch off your fill light and meter your key light, then turn of your key light and meter your fill light, do the same with each light if you have more lights.

An easier way of understanding light ratios is to imagine photographing a white ball using two lights, you would need to set your key light to he right of your camera at a 45 degree angle directing on to the ball, only a portion of the ball is lit by the light from the camera's perspective. So with this set up you need to take an incident meter reading of the front of the ball with only your key light firing flash, the key light lets say metered at f/11.

Now you need to set the fill light up, set the fill light directly in line with the camera lens aimed directly at the ball, now you can see that every part of the ball the camera see's is lit. Take a incident meter reading of the front of the ball pointing towards the camera with only the fill light firing, this meters out at say f/11.

Then think about when both lights are fired on the ball together, the part of the ball that is lit by the key light is also lit by the fill light giving an exposure of f/16 which is twice as much light as f/11. The part of the ball that isnt lit by the key light is only lit by the fill light. So if you think about it one side of the ball gets 2 parts light which would be the key light and the fill light, and the rest of the ball seen by the camera is one part light the fill light which is a 2-to-1 light ratio. So to properly expose this ball you would have your f/stop at f/16 meaning the dark side of the ball will be one stop below the bright side of the ball. As you can imagine this doesn't just work with a ball the same rules would apply to photographing a persons head.

Corporate Portraits

In our groups we had a lighting session on corporate portraits were had to use key lights and fill lights and being shown how to do a good exposure. So we placed a black board behind the subject and placed a key light to the right and a fill light to the left, to meter the light on the subject it is best to meter with one light first which would be the key light, this metered it out at f.8 and then we did the same with fill light on and that metered out at f.8 so with both lights on on put our aperture to f.11 and the shutter at 1/160 and ISO at 100, as we decided this would be the correct exposure for this portrait. If id of left my aperture at f.8 then her face would have two parts light key+fill and the rest of it seen by the camera would get one part light the fill at a 2:1 ratio, Here is a diagram that shows how we had the lights set up.

Here is the result i got

If i had set my lights to the same ratio my subject would appear flat.

Equipment used in this corporate portrait

Canon 7d

Continuous light source with honeycomb fill light

large honeycomb key light

For the second lighting set up we added another two lights to the set up, so we had the honeycomb pointing at the back of the subjects head lighting the right side of her face up, a beauty dish directing down on the front of her face, another light to the left of my subject lighting up the blackboard behind her leaving a halo like light around her head which catches the viewers eye and gives a feeling of depth and a soft box on the floor pointing up at her to lighten the shadows underneath her chin like below

Here is the result i got with my f.stop at f.11 my shutter at 125 and my ISO at 100

Contacts

Candid Photography

Candid photography is basically taking a photo without them realising the photographer is taking a photograph of them, it is usually with out there knowledge or just as they have looked at you. I usually find when doing candid photography that it is good to shoot in live view mode as this means i am attracting less attention to myself. I quite like candid photography as you tend to capture peoples natural expressions and natural poses, if they do notice you ive had peoples posture change completely and they become more self aware.

Research

I think its fair to say that Henri Cartier Bresson was the master of candid photography, he seemed to have the knack of capturing an image at that perfect decisive moment, some of these works in my opinion are master pieces in their own right. For example this image below, (one of my personal faves) this has to be one of his best images it really is about that decisive moment, he must of stood at the top of those stairs and waited for the decisive moment for this fantastic candid photograph.

And another of my favourites

I love how he has managed to capture the old lady pulling her face because the younger lady has a mini dress on, i think its great.

My Images

Using my standard 18-55mm lens with my canon 7D body here are some of the results i got

This was shot using my live view mode at f.6.3 shutter at 1/160 and my ISO at 100

This was shot using my live view mode at f.6.3 shutter at 1/160 and my ISO at 100 at a focal length of 55mm

This was shot using my live view mode at f.7.1 shutter at 1/160 and my ISO at 100

This was shot using my live view mode at f.5.6 shutter at 1/160 and my ISO at 100

Contacts

Environmental Portraits

Environmental portraits are portraits of people in their own environment like work or home or at friends that type of thing, you usually find when there in an environment they feel comfortable you get more at ease photographs you are taking and you can see they are more comfortable with it.

Here are some environmental portraits i did.

Contacts

Histograms

An image histogram is a graphical representation of tonal distribution in a digital image, it works by plotting the number of pixels with each tonal value.A photographer can look at the histogram for a certain image and be able to see the entire tonal range of that image.

this is when an histogram looks correct

This is a histogram that is correct when it is not out the boundary's of the box you know that the tones and exposure are correct.

This is a histogram that shows that the image taken is over exposed

A perfect histogram should not be clipped at either side and should be as symmetrical as possible.

A perfect histogram should look a little like this one below

Individuality

An individual is either a person or an object and can be defined by their appearance, personality, dress sense and even as far as their own stamp with their own personal code on their fingertips, even down to their DNA. Every person looks different and has their own likes and dislikes. You find that people can have similar looks in a family but its their tastes and mannerisms but you can still distinguish one person from another even as far as identical twins you can tell who's who with their mannerisms, one person to the next is never the same.

On thinking about this we were asked in our class individually to try and photograph individuality based around people, so i decided i was going to photograph peoples hands.

I asked people in my class if i could photograph their hands but i let them choose the positioning of were and how they liked their hands to be placed as this is all part of the individuality theme, i also wanted to do it black and white so it is more about how they positioned their hands.

Every one of the images above if you look at their hands they sort of tell a story about that person if you in detail at their hands or what they have on their fingers or wrist give you an insight into that person.

Fine Art

Research

John Tisbury

John Tisbury is a Rushden Northamptonshire based photographer who has won endless awards, he is a member of the Royal Photographic Society were he achieved a fellowship distinction in 2013, the guild of erotic artists and the association of erotic artists. He has held exhibitions national and internationally. He also won erotic artist of the year 2010 awarded by JADE magazine. He is an artist who sells his prints and exhibits his work and works on commissions. The reason why i have chosen John Tisbury is i think he is a brilliant photographer who's work is very subtle but very attractive, His style and approach is brilliant and very good at creating images that are evocative yet he still manages to leave it up the imagination of the viewer. His images could be put into a few different genres such as fine art, erotic, fetish, sensual. Here are some of his images below that are definatley some of my fave images.

I love this image, i like how he shot in to the natural light giving a contre jour effect on the model but when you look in the mirror you see what she looks like, fantastic idea and aesthetically it works.

The subtlety of this photograph is brilliant it leaves a lot up to the imagination of the viewer

What attracts me to this image is the light more than anything, i love how his subject is lit, highlighting this beautiful female form thats very voluptuous curves and with the stairs being in the shot all rigid and straight makes a good juxtaposing image.

Edward Weston

Edward began using a camera at a very early age of 16 when he was given a camera of his father, so he always had an interest in photography but it wasn't until 1966 that he started to photograph a series of nudes on the beach and sand dunes in California, which are considered some of his best work which i think is quite possibly true. For me the attractive quality to this series of images is how he has positioned his models and the contrast between the sand and the model is beautiful. I also attracted to the positive and negative space in the images.

Igor Amelkovich

Igor Amelkovich is a photographer from Chelyabinsk Russia who didn't get interested in photography until 1999, before that he studied radio engineering, he is a self taught photographer and all his work is film based and likes to photograph lady's who are comfortable with there own beauty. He has achieved many international awards and exhibited all around the world. Here are a few of my favourite nudes by him.

My fine art photographs

For this set of images i wanted to concentrate my images around, form shape, light and shadow of the female form. I was aiming to achieve the delicate texture of bare skin by controlled studio lighting with the intentions to go on and create black and white images. But i didnt want these to be your normal nudes that you see so i decided to manipulate some of them in photoshop using the threshold tool which i thought gave me some good results.

For the two shoots i did for this part of the brief i used different lighting techniques, were i had the boom behind my subject witha large directional honeycomb and then i introduced another light behind my subject to the left. And for the others i used a softbox either side of my model
Contacts from shoot one