Researching photographers :
Alex Sturrock
I really like how these photographs have been taken in a similar style, both the subjects have been photographed in a similar place in the composition (central) with a narrow depth of field being used making any other people in the background appear blurred/out of focus. Both images also have leading lines because they have been taken in the middle of a street/walkway with fences/buildings on either side of the subject which then fade into the background behind the subject. This makes the images aesthetically pleasing.
Alex Sturrock uses flash to light his subjects to make them stand out from the background. For these images Sturrock stopped interesting looking individuals in the street and took their photograph, showing their personality. I really like how he lights his subjects, he manages to separate them from the background so you are immediately drawn to their character. This is done by using a narrow depth of field and lighting the subject with flash whilst slightly underexposing the background of the image.
August Sander
August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. He has been described as the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century. Sanders approach to documentary portraiture is to ask his subjects to look into the camera with a dead pan expression. The only way we as an audience can work anything out about the people in the photographs is by what they are wearing. For example there is a pilot, a soldier, a brick layer. We can work this out just by what they are wearing/props in the image.
Phillip Lorca DiCorcia
These 4 images by Phillip Lorca DiCorcia were taken in Hollywood. They are all of washed up actors who have gone to Hollywood expecting to get a break into the acting world but haven't been so lucky. In this case, DiCorcia has set up the situations and picked the perfect composition and lighting and then asked someone to come and model for him. Rather than stopping people on the street and taking their photograph he has controlled pretty much everything in these photographs. Modelling in these images is a taste of fame/acting/work for these people as they haven't been lucky achieving their dream.
In these images DiCorcia has again chosen his location and set up his camera and lighting, this set of images is different because the people in them are unaware that their photo is being taken. They have walked into the frame of his camera and he has pressed the shutter. To do this DiCorcia set up flash guns which were attached to some scaffolding, and connected to his camera which was positioned on a tripod pointing at an area where lots of people walked.
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. His career spanned from around 1944-2000. He took photographs of both normal people/citizens of America and celebrities and famous people. He took them both in the same way which was interesting because he showed that they were all human beings and everyone was equal regardless of their status, wealth or popularity. His most famous body of work was his project called 'In The American West' which consisted of photographs of normal people shot in a studio with a white background, revealing something about themself by what they are wearing/props. I like the way Avedon had information about all his models/subjects and what date they were taken underneath his images. For example, he would have "Marilyn Monroe, Actor, New York, May 6, 1957" and he would also have "Sandra Bennet, Twelve Year Old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, August 23 1980" This gave his models more personality than just being a model and gave the viewer some information about the image they were looking at.
Clay Enos
Clay Enos often takes photographs of people on a white background. When I look at his photographs displayed like this I don't personally like his style of photography, I think it looks quite mish-mashed and not very organised without a style running through them. However, this is intentional because Enos said that he doesn't want to be pigeonholed into one type/style of photography and would like to be open to all kinds of work. I quite like the idea of taking a model/subject out of context and placing them in front of a white background and having lots of different types of people on the same background. This would make the viewer wonder who the person is because of what they are wearing / what they look like rather than their surroundings - similar to the work of Richard Avedon.
My Test Shots :
This is my first test shot taken against a plain white wall. I did this because I thought that it would take my subject away from the surroundings so the image is based on the person's personality and clothing alone, and there is no background to set a scene. I have asked my model to be dead pan in this image, this is interesting as the eyes pierce into the viewer and they are left to work out what the person is like. Unfortunately this image is slightly out of focus and is more crisp around my subjects jacket rather than her face.
Here I tried to separate my subject from the background by underexposing the image and using the flash so the background was dark and my subject was lit up. However when I took the photograph I realised that the flash almost washed my subject out and was far too bright for the underexposed background.
I then shot the image again using the same settings but put a tissue over the flash to diffuse it. This worked in making the flash less harsh on the face as you can see between this image and the one above. However, I think that I underexposed the image too much before I introduced the flash which didn't separate my subject from the background but completely took the background out altogether by making it black. For future reference I need to expose the background more before introducing the flash so I get a similar style of image to Alex Sturrock's work which I have shown above.
I really like these photographs because they look a similar style because they were taken in the same place meaning the same lighting conditions. I also like them as a set because I have shot them from the same angle and asked them to stand in the same position both with a dead pan expression. I think this style of documentary portraiture is really interesting because the person has no expression and the viewer has to work out what sort of a person they are like because of their surroundings and clothing.
I don't think this picture works as well as the two above because it is slightly blurry, whereas the two above are very crisp and draws the viewer into the image to think about what the people are like. This image was also shot in a different place where the lighting conditions weren't brilliant making the colours seem quite dull and yellow toned, this may also be due to my white balance settings on my camera.
I like this picture because it is more crisp rather than the one above. I like this image because the person I stopped to take their photo is very interesting to look at with his bright green and blue spiky hair. What I don't like about this image is the notice board in the background with the coloured pieces of paper stuck onto it. I think this is quite distracting from my subject and I should have asked him to stand in a different place with a plainer background. I also think that the image is slightly awkward because my subject looks quite nervous to be having his photograph taken, this could be his personality, or I could have talked to him more which may have made him less nervous.
I don't really like this image, it doesn't really fit into the set because my subject isn't looking at the camera like in the rest of my photographs. He is also smiling rather than having a dead pan expression.
Here are a couple of images I took of people taken out of context as they are shot using the same background. We were asked to go into Leeds and photograph people in front of a white background, however it is very difficult to find a plain white background in the middle of a city centre. I still like this background because it's pale even though it isn't completely plain and white. I found this task very difficult because it took me a while to pluck up the courage to ask people to pose for me, and when I finally did, I had so many people refusing to do it. I was out asking people for around an hour and only one person consented to posing for me. This is disheartening and I would know for future reference that doing a project like this is time consuming. Luckily for my project I intend to photograph tourism in York, so anyone I ask to pose for me will be used to having their picture taken if they work in tourism. Although I like the background of these images, I think it is slightly distracting that the horizontal lines are in different places in each image because my models are different heights.
Here are some images that I took about a year ago trying to recreate Richard Avedon's work. These link to my theme of documentary portraiture because they involve people looking dead pan into the camera and the only thing we know about them is the facts that are underneath their image.
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