For this brief, I needed to research the work and practices of several portrait photographers and then use this as a basis for my final photographs. During the lectures and seminars we were showed some work by Rineke Dijkstra, who is a Dutch photographer. She photographed a series entitled Beaches in which she photographed young adults in their swimming costumes on beaches.
I don’t really like the photographs, as the subjects look very awkward which makes me feel uncomfortable when looking at them. I prefer the subjects of photographs to look more at ease and comfortable. Other than this, I do like the framing of the images as they adhere to the rule of thirds. I also like the use of backgrounds in the images, as they bring other elements such as colour to the photographs. The people in the images appear to be very harshly lit and this contrasts them with the background. This does make a few of the images to appear unnatural which I do not particularly like as it adds to the feeling of unease when looking at the images.
Looking at this photographer inspired me to shoot some of my photos in portrait instead of landscape, so that I could fit more into the image such as the body language of the subject.
Although this image is landscape, I tried to incorporate Dijkstra’s style of shooting a subject in front of an interesting background. I regret not having the background in this image in focus as I feel that this would have better represented her work but I like the colour in the image and the background is still visible. I feel that the subject could have perhaps adorned a more serious facial expression, but I like the emotion that this picture has. Also, as this is my friend, she was more comfortable in this situation as opposed to a stranger would be, so the body language would never have been similar to that of the Beach series by Rineke Dijkstra.
Whilst the top image is more of the style of Rineke Dijkstra, with the subject of the image looking slightly uncomfortable, I attempted to change the subject of the second image so that the photograph was easier to look at. As the subject in the second photo was smiling, and a friend of mine, she appears a lot more comfortable with me taking the photo, but I still shot the image in portrait as I was interested in the framing of the image. Both of the images deviate from the style of Dijkstra’s, as neither of the backgrounds are in focus, but this is what I had intended to do. I think that the background for both of these images was not vital to be shown, and I wanted the people in the images to be the center point of focus.
Other than learning of photographers in the lectures and seminars, I conducted my own personal research and came across the photographer Jane Bown. I found her images to be very interesting and they appealed greatly to me as her portraiture shots are almost always in black and white and naturally posed. I like this approach to portrait photography as I feel a lot more comfortable when looking at her images – as the subjects of the photograph look so at ease in them. She also only used natural available light for her images, which I think brings about a different vibe when looking at the images, as you feel like you understand the persons’ emotions. She concentrates on the subjects eyes, and this makes the images more personal.
Although Jane Bown likes to get closer to her subjects, I liked the framing of this image. I took this photograph of a friend during a conversation that we were having. I was trying to put her more at ease, and shot this image in the middle of her laughing at something that we were talking about. I like the spontaneity of the photograph and as this is an unscripted I feel like this image is more personal and you can really see the emotion that she is feeling. I prefer working with available light, as I like the natural beauty of an image – this is also why I prefer this image over the previous images, as I feel as though there is nothing more beautiful than raw emotion.
The images below are my experiments before I took my final photographs. I could not decide whether I wanted my photographs to be in colour, or black and white and whether I wanted the subjects to look at the camera or not. I knew that I wanted my final images to be shot in landscape, as I wanted to concentrate the focus on the facial expressions of the people in the images.
From taking these images I learned to focus on the eyes of the subject more than anything, and then from that point focus on the composition of the image. I kept my aperture as low as I could for my portrait images so that the only a select part of the image would be in focus – this being the eyes for all of my images.
Final images
Both of these photos were shot in the same area, as the subject in the bottom image is friends with my friend and I took both of these images at the same time. I used a similar technique to capture both of these images, which involved conversing with the people in the images and getting them to think of something that made them happy and emotional. Whilst the first image is more spontaneous, I got the person in the second to think of an object or person that they loved and directed them to look upwards towards the natural light. I wanted both of them to look towards the light as I knew that I wanted the eyes to be the primary focus of the photographs. The way that the light reflects off of their eyes almost brings out more emotion into the photograph which I like a lot. In editing, I tried to make as few changes as possible so that the images looked natural and untouched. I simply reduced the saturation and then altered the brightness and contrast of the images using curves on Photoshop.
For my self portrait I wanted it in the same style as the other photographs, so I took it with me facing the window to get the natural light. I again wanted a light reflection in my eyes, and I did not look at the camera as I wanted the image to appear more natural.
Tate (2016) Rineke Dijkstra born 1959. Available from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/rineke-dijkstra-2666. [accessed 26 March 2016]
National Portrait Gallery (2016) Jane Bown (1925-2014) Photographer. Available from: http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp07814/jane-bown. [accessed 26 March 2016]
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