People-Fine Art-My Work

Because i had already used natural and artificial light in my other People portraits, i decided on this one to use studio lighting.

i used 45/45 lighting with an umbrella to the right and a softbox to the left.

Because i wanted these images to be a homage to victorian photography, but done in a modern style, i used a damask patterned background and a lensbaby to create a soft focus effect around the model.

I wanted the photographs to depict different types of people breastfeeding my winged doll, and i thought long and hard about who to include.

My first model was Hazel, who is an experienced model and has photographed with me many many times.
2nd was Leroy, a drag queen who dresses as a woman most of the time (and a very glamourous woman too!) who did 2 portraits, one as a woman, complete with fake breasts exposed, and one as himself.
3rd was my daughter Mia. Mia's was the only portrait with no nipple exposed as she is only 9 years old. I did debate quite a lot with myself whether i should use her at all but in the end i decided that 1) its not a sexual pictures and 2) if Witkin can cover the subject matter he does, then i can do this. I am pleased i did as i think her portrait turned out really well.
4th was my best friend Dan, who has a distinct look of jesus/charles manson about him, i think his portrait is probably my favourite.
5th was Molly, a good friend who isnt adverse to making herself look very unflattering on photographs! We smeared her makeup, and i love her pose, to me it creates a very uncomfortable picture.
7th was Natalie, a goth girl who has never posed before, i emphasised her dark tendancies by smearing her black makeup down her cheeks and asking her to widen her eyes to give it a creepier feel.
and finally 8th is Kylie, who is another who has never posed before, and who is also a breastfeeding mother. I decided when I thought of this idea that i wanted a breastfeeding mother to take part just because of the symbolism involved and i was very pleased when Kylie agreed to be involved.

Contact Sheets


These are the initial picks from the shoot, where i started whittling down the many photographs i took and picked the ones that stood out from the others.


my final picks for the 8 portraits, chosen for their composition, pose and focal point.



and my final pictures with 4 different editing styles, I wanted the photographs to have a vintage feel to them so i edited them in 4 vintage-style ways, firstly a black and white, then brown-tinted, then a colour wash and finally a desaturated green-toned image.

I finally went with the 4th option of the green-toned image as i felt it gave more of the sinister edge i wanted to the photographs. The lensbaby i wanted to give a blurred edge to the shot, which meant that in some of the photos the baby wasnt in focus-which i am happy with, as it makes the images less obvious-you have to look closely to see whats actually going on. The only negative thing about this is that on a couple of the photographs, the focus is actually ever-so-slightly off the eyes which is down to 2 things; 1) my inexperience with a lensbaby (this shoot was only the 2nd time i have used one) and 2) the screen on the back of my camera makes it very difficult to see whether its in perfect focus or not, but i'm not overly worried about it as i dont think it detracts from the images at all, as you can see in my final prints.

I also included a photograph of the doll itself, photographed by a window and given the same green-toned editing as the others to act as an anchor image to the other 8. The doll is much more visible (albeit with a shallow depth of field of F1.8 with the focal point on the wings) so you can see exactly what the subjects in the photos are breastfeeding.



All in all, i am pleased with the outcome of these photographs, I think the aim of paying homage to an older style of photography has been successful, the images are clearly modern in time but with elements of the past being brought in with it.
I love the concept behind them and i am satisfied with my fulfillment of the 'Fine Art' part of this brief.

People-candid

Candid photography is a style of photography that focuses on the moment rather than the technique. It is unposed, unplanned, catching moments of life rather than staging them. It is a notoriously difficult genre of photography, people are almost always aware of a photographer or camera being pointed at them, it is often not just the photographs that are the mark of a good candid photographer, but also their way of being unobtrusive around people and their ability to keep people relaxed.

It could be argued that candid photography is the purest form of photojournalism. There is a fine line between photojournalism and candid photography, Photojournalism often sets out to tell a story in images, whereas candid photography simply captures people living an event.

In the course of my research, i found a good article with help on how to take good candid photographs.

11 tips for better candid photography

well known candid photographers
by Alfred Eisenstaedt (which i love so much i recreated in my own wedding photographs!)


by Robert Doisneau. These photographs do come close to being street or documentary photography, but i think they do fall into the candid genre, due to the 'event' captured rather than the story behind them.

for my own candid photography i am very lucky in that i am a working wedding photographer. Candid photography is a large part of photographing weddings and I work very hard to catch those moments. Sometimes i catch them unexpectedly, whilst photographing i might spot something and quickly shoot to try and capture it (which doesn't always work!) and sometimes i lie in wait, waiting for the moment i am sure will happen. A good example of this is the shot of the groom waiting for his bride at the altar. No matter how confident, how relaxed the groom seems to be, he ALWAYS shows some outward sign of nerves at some point during this short (but, i am sure, seemingly very long) wait. I always try and make it seem as though i am photographing something else so as not to make him self conscious, or, if this isn't possible, i train the camera onto him and i literally wait. I know he knows its pointed at him, but if i wait long enough, a couple of minutes, he will forget i am there and will show that nervous side i love to capture so much.

i have below a few examples of my candid photography, and, if needed, a small explanation into the circumstances behind it and what lighting was used for each shot.


a typical example of a nervous groom! I had to lie in wait for this one. Natural light.

This wedding was organised in 2 weeks as the groom found out he had terminal cancer. I've never witnessed a more moving first dance, and the tenderness in this photo gives me a lump in my throat. Natural light.

One of those moments where you know the Best Man is telling some humiliating story about the Groom! Fluorescent Lighting.

I was following the bride downstairs and quickly shot this when i saw how beautiful and elegant she looked. Mixed lighting.

It never fails to surprise me how many cool, calm and collected brides break down during their vows. Yet another example of a moment that always makes me tear up. Natural light.

People-fine art-research

Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer as artist. It is a notoriously difficult and hotly-debated description, with many different sources having many different opinions on what fine art means. I perceive fine art photography as to be something that is made purely for the act of creating something to look at, a personal impression.

i put a lot of thought into this and toyed around with some concepts before i settled on my final idea. I did think about doing some photographs in the derelict Blackburn royal infirmary and even took a visit there to take some test shots (below)



i was toying with a concept of the story i heard of a security guard hearing the sound of a little girl crying in the childrens ward of the old hospital, the first picture was actually taken in the childrens ward and the model Sara is jumping slightly off the ground to make it look as though she is floating.
the second image i was going for a neo-victorian style cameo but with an odd twist, hence the mask and the strange hand pose.

then i thought about doing a series on a corset piercing i photographed being performed, but eventually decided that it would be great for a single or couple of shots but for a series of at least 8, it would be difficult to make each one look sufficiently different.


in the end, i decided (with the help of my tutor) to do a series of 8 photographs inspired by victorian-style photography, and specifically Joel Peter Witkin.

Witkin was born in 1937 and prefers a hands-on type of photography, especially in the development. He scratches the negatives, bleaches/tones the print, being influenced by Daguerrotype and Ambrotype. His photographs have a very 'old' feel to them, very victorian and generally have quite disturbing subject matter- death, dismembered bodies, freaks of nature and the physically disabled.






i was given a doll that a friend of mine had made for her university course, she is proficient in special effects makeup and she had wrapped a childs doll in modrock (plaster bandages), then latex and carved a spine into the back and attached the wings of a dead pigeon to the back. I already had the idea to do a shoot with this doll in it and in the end decided to use the doll to create my portfolio, adapting the original idea i had (to have 2 girls, one in white one in black breastfeeding the doll) to cover 8 people, and do the pictures in a modern-yet-old style, like a nod towards victorian photography and the oddities Witkin photographed.

People-Corporate & Environmental

Corporate photography is usually a portrait of a person either in their office environment or similar, to advertise themselves and/or their business. The usual corporate portraits are stereotypical head & shoulder portraits such as these by Mark Robert Halper.



But i much prefer corporate portraits that show a little about the personality or their business, such as these:





For my work regarding Corporate photography, i decided to go down the personality/business route. A close friend of mine is a special effects makeup student, and wanted some photographs taken of her newest prosthetic creation so she could make some business cards to advertise her services. She got her prosthetics on and, because it wouldnt really work in a studio situation, we went out on location and took photos of her in her makeup.

Contact Sheets

my first contact sheet sets out the picks for this set of photographs to decide which would be most useful as business cards.


my 2nd contact sheet shows the 2 orignial photographs chosen for the business cards and also the 2 edits, to show the difference before and after editing.

and finally, Tamsin made business cards out of the selected photographs and emailed copies back to me, which i show below.



These corporate portraits (which, despite the unusual nature of the photos, is exactly what they are) worked perfectly for the client, and fulfilled the business role she wanted from them.

Because they are taken at an outside location, these photos can also double up as environmental photography-she is interacting with her environment, in a way befitting the photographs and her nature.