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.

Shaped By War-photographs by Don McCullin at IWM

Out of the 4 exhibitions we visited on our trip to Manchester, the one that had the most impact on me was Don McCullin's exhibition at the Imperial War Museum. At the time, i thought i would find this one the least interesting as documentary/war photography is not of any particular interest to me-i appreciate it, but its not one of my favourite genres. But i was blown away by this exhibition, left speechless and humbled, and incredibly touched.






The depth of human suffering that McCullin portrays is incredible, the first photograph above reduced me to tears when i saw it, and even writing about it now gives me a lump in my throat (I'm far to empathic, especially when it involves children) i cant help but think about the desperate situation that mother is in, about the pointless suckling of her baby, it absolutely breaks my heart. The same applies to the photograph of the starving albino child. i know that it is hard being a child in a famine but i also know that albino children are shunned, castigated and mistreated and i cant help but think about this poor child's plight. the visual style that McCullin uses is very direct, completely unapologetic, it says to me 'this is the situation, you can do nothing but learn from it' (whether people do learn from these things in any great capacity is something i am skeptical about).

On a technical level, i found the photograph of the shell shocked soldier the most interesting-to read all McCullins notes on how he processed the image, right down to the dodging and burning, made me realise how much post production goes into a genre i previously thought was the purest. McCullin still edits his photos, but at the end of the day, his photos still show the truth, the harsh facts of war and the human plight behind them.

i went away from this exhibition with a completely changed opinion of war photography, i don't know how McCullins work will impact my own, as i don't practise documentary photography on the whole (apart from weddings but thats a completely different style) but he most certainly influenced me emotionally and academically as it has opened my eyes to that style of photography. He doesn't just document the soldiers, the war, he documents the human face behind it all and his popularity undoubtedly opened the eyes of many many people to the suffering of others in all parts of the world. I never thought for a second that he would impact mine just as much, many years later.

Places-Familiar

Having been brought up in Burnley from a young age, Pendle Hill has always been in the background of my life, both in actuality and figuratively. For the 'familiar' section as part of the 'Places' brief i decided to explore photography of Pendle as, despite living around it for the majority of my life, and being immersed in the legends of the area (in particular the Pendle Witches-especially as my daughter is a descendant of Alice Nutter) i have a surprisingly small amount of photographs of it. Although i'm not originally from Burnley, I have always felt a deep connection with Pendle Hill and still to this day it can take my breath away with its beauty. I am clearly not the only person who has felt a connection with it, as in 1642 George Fox-the founder of the Quakers-claimed to have a vision whilst on top of the hill.

"As we travelled, we came near a very great hill, called Pendle Hill, and I was moved of the Lord to go up to the top of it; which I did with difficulty, it was so very steep and high. When I was come to the top, I saw the sea bordering upon Lancashire. From the top of this hill the Lord let me see in what places he had a great people to be gathered."

Photographs of Pendle by other photographers.





I do like these images but i feel most of them are missing a certain 'something', a dramatic element fitting with Pendles great and sometimes bloody history. I will be doing research into a few famous landscape photographers who's work I admire and their techniques to try and find some inspiration for my own photographs.

Ansel Adams (1902-1984)




Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist, best known for his landscapes of the Deep West. He developed the 'Zone System' as a means to determine proper exposure (very simplistically-expose for the highlights and process for the shadows in one shot) This technique gave Adams' photos a clarity and depth that makes his photos immediately recognisable. I don't know if i have the right technique or, indeed, the talent to make a photograph in that way (landscapes being particularly difficult to expose due to the difference in the shadows and highlights) but I will be trying this technique along with a more modern and simpler version which is to take 2 shots, one exposed for highlights and one for shadows, and combine them both in Photoshop to bring out the best in both.

I adore Adams' way of capturing shadows and highlights in landscapes, and his insistence on capturing each scene with only one frame both inspires and scares me-my affectation for digital photography means i might take dozens of shots for only one picture and i intend on using Adams' influence to try and reduce the number of exposures i make.

I think Adam's use of Black and White is one of the things that makes his work so recognisable, it is definitely something i will be exploring in this part of the brief but i do think i will end up working with colour, as the colour of Pendle and the sky at sunset is one of the more breathtaking views of the Hill.


For my 2nd familiar place, i was inspired by David Chandler's 'Landscape of Disappointment'. Instead of going for a positive, homely place for my shot, i decided to take Chandlers more melancholy aspect of his essay and apply that to my shot. I am particularly inspired by Walker Evans after seeing some of his photographs in 'The Ongoing Moment'

Walker Evans (1903-1975) was best known for his Farm Security Administration photographs documenting the effects of the Great Depression. I love his photographs of doors, of open doors inside buildings and closed ones without. One of my very first ever 'proper' photographs (i.e. one where i purposefully paid attention to the composition and details, although i was far too inexperienced for aperture or shutter speed!) was of an open door with a view of another through it, and its only now, when i look back, do i see the similarity to Evan's work (pure coincidence though of course!)

Examples of Evan's work:



I will be visiting some of the houses I have lived in around the Burnley area to see if i can find inspiration and if any of my old homes fire that creative spark.

My Work

For my image of Pendle, I walked up the large hill behind my house just before sunset and took lots and lots of images. I set my camera to record 3 different levels of exposure (-2, 0 and +2) so that i could try my hand at a genuine HDR image-previously, i have only ever done HDR by making exposure-adjusted copies of one photograph. I used a tripod to make sure there was no discrepancies between the images, and used a cable release to trigger the shutter so there was no camera shake, especially on the longer exposures. I then went through the photographs in lightroom and chose the shots that i think would look the best as HDR images.

Contact Sheets


i chose the images i thought would make the best HDR, showed the 3 exposures and the HDR generated at the end, using Photomatix and Lightroom.


i picked 4 out of the 5 HDRs and put them on a contact sheet so i could compare them easily. Each image was very different, considering they were all taken within the same hour.

and this is my final image:


i chose this one mainly because of the sense of scale. The towns of Nelson and Barrowford can be seen at the base of Pendle, and at the very bottom of the image, the new school Pendle Vale, which is just a few minutes away, is seen. considering how large the new school building is, it really goes to show how much Pendle looms over my hometown. The HDR works well as it is showing the detail in the towns and buildings and the intensity in the sky which wouldn't be possible with just one exposure. On the whole, i am pleased with this image, although I do think it is probably the weakest out of my places set, which is ironic as it is the first of the places brief i decided on!



Familiar Image 2


As i stated before, I have lived in Burnley and the surrounding for the majority of my life, despite being born in Manchester. I see the old houses I have lived in fairly frequently but none of them created any sense of familiarity, discontent or that faint melancholy of Chandlers description, so i broadened my horizons slightly. I visited Burnley Wood, a place that is among the 5% most deprived areas in the country. I have lived in several houses around this area, but it wasn't until i came across my grandmothers house that I realised i had found my photographic subject. I haven't seen my Granny for around 8 years, and the last time i did, she didnt know who i was or any of my siblings. Not through dementia or any other old-age illness, but because she simply does not care. I spent many many hours in her house whilst my mum was at work, banished with my sister to the front room, sitting on her floral carpet and reading the Enid Blyton books I had brought with me. We were not allowed to leave the room, make noise or run about. Me and my sister would do everything in silence, playing, fighting, crying. As children we were to be invisible, there were no grandmotherly kisses and cuddles, no 'dont tell your mum!' packets of sweets.

It pleased me to see the house boarded up and marked for demolition. I have no good childhood memories of this house. I had no idea that my Granny didnt live there any longer (although I have been informed she is still alive) and that it was boarded up. I loved the fact the door was boarded up with bits of wood rather than the heavy metal doors which normally marks the abandoned properties in this horrible part of Burnley. I intend to revisit the site in a few weeks time and see if its been demolished yet.

I had recently finished 'The Ongoing Moment' and found that works i found in this book influenced a lot of the photography I produced for the Places brief. I was inspired by the photography of Walker Evans when photographing this house, as discussed in the research part of my blog.

Contact Sheets


i took a small series of images of the property, holding the camera by hand, mainly using the rule of 3rds to compose the door and the window. because i already knew what compositional style i wanted to use for this photograph, i only needed to take a few shots til i got what i wanted.

as you can see, i chose the 3rd image from my contact sheet. i edited the image in lightroom, cropping and rotating it slightly, and converting it to a high-contrast black and white with some more black added and the clarity raised. I love the way this image has edited up, how the textures in the wood and brick have become more evident. I'm really pleased with this image!

Places-Foreign or Alien

I spent many a stressed-out hour trying to decide what to photograph for the 'Alien or Foreign' part of the places assignment, i found it very difficult to think of a place that inspired me. Eventually, i remembered the 'Singing Ringing Tree', a wind powered sculpture resembling a tree that is found on one of the hills overlooking Burnley. Designed by architects Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu. It is 3 metres tall and built from galvanised pipes, some architectural or supporting, and some purely to create sound.

I decided, rather than do photograph it from a distance away showing all the country and town below it, to try and photograph it a little more abstractly, so you can't necessarily tell what it is or what its purpose serves. I chose it because it IS alien, a man-made object placed in a very prominent position, the noise it creates (which, sadly, cannot be recreated through photography!) is very eerie, discordant and uncomfortable, and that also inspired my decision to photograph it. Its supposed to be singing and ringing, but i find the noise to be howling and shrieking to be honest!

Contact Sheets



here you can see the shots i took of the singing ringing tree. Some from further away and some a little close, and one through the actual tubes viewing the windmills on the opposite side.


Here are my final two picks alongside the final edits.


i love this, its so abstract, it was taken upwards against the sky to create the feeling that the pipes are advancing over the screen. i love the dark section at the right compared to the bright on the left.




With this one, i took the 'Alien' part of the brief quite literally! I thought the curves of the side of the tree looked like the organic-like curves of a spaceship, and edited in a way to disguise the blue tones of the metal tubes.