I got the idea of shooting in a tight corner from Irving Penn's portrait images when he had his models stand in tight corners and spaces to relax them and bring out their personalities more, I really loved this style; how different it was and I think it is a really effective portrait technique as the corner it's self draws the viewers straight towards the subject with in the image and really make it all about them, I also really love black and white images and the look that old cameras have which is why I really want to shot in medium format, as well as the fact I loved using medium format the last time we did it, I'm a bit worried about the developing stage if I did use medium format as one mistake and I could mess up everything, another reason why I'm also shooting in digital. Another person who influenced me was Julia Margaret-Cameron with her expressionless but beautiful, soft focus portrait images- I'm thinking of having the models expressionless, as I love how you can still get a lot about someone from their expressionless face and it will make the images even more confusing too which is what I also want, images that something's not quite right with them and make the viewers look at them and think "why is this one wearing this?" "why is this one placed next to this one?"
I'm going to produce I set of 3-7 studio portrait images, this because I'd prefer to have an odd number of prints as I want to continue with the random, odd feeling throughout the project. I'll add to this post, possible outfits/costumes the models will be wearing,test shots and other extra info.
This is a really quickly taken and edited picture just to test out what my idea was and it has not gone very well here but I'll take more tests, this time with more time spent on it and I'll hopefully be in the studio so I can change the lighting and stand further away.
Maybe's:
defiantly's:
I've chosen these outfits because as a set there all very odd and different also I was thinking in black and white the colours of the clothes will contrast nicely against the white walls.
I've done some sketches of how the lighting could possibly be, and the shadow effects each would have.
I have now done a studio session of test shots. Unfortunately I don't have all the images I took as when I went to change the format of my camera to RAW, I actually formatted my card instead and lost all the images I took in the first 20-30 minutes of the shoot, luckily I still had time to take more though so I do have some test shots still. The corner is now made out of two white boards instead of the one.
I tried my best to get the lighting how I imagined the lighting to be in the final images but everything I tried resulted in the image either being too light or too dark.. I was aiming for the image to have a diagonal line of light running through the centre of the image, and the area around that line to be dark but my attempts at getting this effect were ineffective. This lighting effect is one of the many I have in mind for each image but with my failed first attempt at just the one effect I doubt I'll be able to create any of the others I have in mind without first having time specifically playing around with the lights.
This is possibly one of the only images I took which I think fits my idea the most; I want the model stood straight, expressionless against the corner white background, directly centre. This image isn't exactly right of course but after doing this shoot I defiantly know that I want the models to be expressionless and stood straight as poses and expression aren't as effective and are distracting- even though their showing personality and the model is given more of themselves into the image I didn't like them as much. Below are two more images I took, the first one I was experimenting with pose and expression, trying to get more personality into the image to see what effect it had and the second is not completely expressionless or stood straight- and compared to the image above you can see why these two images aren't as effective or as strong.
When editing the images I sharpened them with the unsharp mask, I turned them black and white, added 20 contrast and on two of them I boosted the highlights in them slightly to get more detail and definition. I also boosted the grey arrow on levels to get the colours to be more contrasting and bold. I also edited the white boards which were making the corner as they had dents on them that showed up with the lighting, and I cropped the images in so they were small and straight, creating an even tighter feeling to the images.
I think I may change my mind about dressing the models up in them costumes as I don't know if it would just make the images look tacky, I'm going to have a think about what other things could be my odd aspect in the images because I'm not entirely set on the idea yet. A few ideas I've had so far is I could take the images of models wearing the clothes and edit them so that they faces and another skin thats showing is completely edited out so that the clothes look like their wearing themselves.. invisible people almost. I've also thought of maybe just blanking out the models faces somehow, like with a faint white circle, What made me want to blank out/take out the person behind the images is that with fashion photography, no matter which direction you choose to go in the images will always be selling the person, or their lifestyle rather than the clothes which I never really understood or liked, so by taking out the human aspect of my images it's expressing how I feel about fashion photography and how I feel it really should be.
I've edited the test shot I did so that it fits the other idea of invisible people/the clothes wearing themselves. And it looks odd, which is good in this case as that's what I'm aiming for! the corner lines/angle are a bit off but it is a test shot and this image was composed for the other idea so it's not the exactly vision I have but it's very close and a good example of what my idea is. I think this idea is stronger in the odd aspect way than my original idea towards it, but it's odd in a more obvious and less questioning way so I shall have to think about what the verdict is for this idea. And in this edit I still wanted to keep the corner idea in it but it was hard to do, I think the dark floor and the line going down is a good way to way the viewers eye into the image though.
After having a critique with my photography class and teacher, I suggested my idea of the invisible people and showed them the image above, the feedback on this idea was good but I'm still incredibly confused about whether or not to do it. I've being thinking about it and I'm going to stick to my original idea, but have one person instead of varies models, and have the same lighting in all of the images. So that all that's changing is the clothes... I know this isn't very odd, but my model will be a girl and this girl will be dressed up in men's outfits such as the ones I choose above. The odd aspect will be this girl will be dressed like a man. I'll see how this idea goes. I did a sort of test shot of this idea, fully done though costumes and all and this was the result:
This shoot didn't help much with the problem of deciding which idea to go with, although it did show me what my idea looks like fully played out, I even got the lighting more or less how I wanted it(using the smallest grid to cast the lighting). The images and idea to me doesn't really do want I wanted it to do, the odd aspect isn't coming through really or as successfully as I wanted it too, more thinking is defiantly going to be done though before I can finally settle on which direction to go, I'm going to book the studio again and maybe try both of the ideas as a final shoot, and then decide which looks better then. I'm choosing to stay using black and white as well, because not only is it the people used to sell the clothes, but colour is also used to draw people in- I feel that using black and white will give the viewers more reason to search the image, to find something that draws them in naturally rather than using bright or attractive colours that they have no choice in being drawn too.
After looking at Irving Penn's corner portraits again, I've come to realise that, all this images are still interesting even though their placed in the same backdrop and I think that the interesting thing about the images is the people in them, what they're doing/posing that makes each image seem fresh and exciting- which is what I've been stopping by choosing to make my models stand straight, expressionless and I really do think that if I went through with this idea that the set of images I create from it will be boring and I really don't want that. I was hoping that the odd aspect about my images would save me and make them interesting but I have failed so far in creating the oddness I envisioned. I think I shall make a list of pros and cons/ aims and wants for the images, as I'm running out of time for experimenting and I really do want to create a successfully body of work I can be happy with, which I fear won't be the case if I don't rush my thought and experimentation process along.
I've decided after along think, an attempted pros and cons list and a look through the shoot I did before, that I'm going to stick to the expressionless, stood straight idea- simply because of the images I took before being rather striking because of these choices of lighting and expression etc. I think Irving Penn's images were meant to be fun and exciting, were as that was never really the aim I was going for with this project, I wanted the expressionless beauty of the models, against this mysterious tight corner in dramatic and inviting lighting- I wanted contrast and mood and the thought of the project's final images being boring shouldn't stop me from achieving what I first set out to do. I also think I've decided that instead of dressing the models up in these clothes I chose that I may just photograph them in what they wear that day, they'll look more fitted to themselves then and the odd aspect to the image could simply be that these people are in front of a corner, and for some reason their completely expressionless- the viewers will be forced to search the image for some information about the people since the subjects aren't given any away themselves. I feel that I lost faith and confidence in my idea because of fear but I'm not giving up on it.
When I was doing this shoot; I went into it still not knowing what I wanted to create- I posed them the expressionless, stood straight, I posed them in an odd/creepy way, I changed the lighting, I tried having two subjects in the images together, I tried having them sat down and I tried having them leaning on the wall, I used a soft box, a grid set... but nothing I did gave me that feeling that I was onto something, that I was going in the right direction. After doing this project I've realised that studio work is so much harder than any other form of photography for me, simply because when doing documentary or location work for example- there's always something going on for you to capture; for you to find and create into an image but when you're in the studio you have to create you're vision from scratch and if you're not even sure what you want to create; nothing successful happens.
After doing the final shoot I realise that the fact the subjects weren't given off any information about themselves coupled with the fact there was no clues as too anything about them within the images; was never really a good idea in the first place, as compared to the shoot before this one there was depth to the images; something to them other than just random people stood in a corner. The subjects in the images(in the shoot before) are dressed in police man and army man clothes- it doesn't come across as odd of course because these jobs don't only have one gender working for them any more so the images don't look odd in any sense at all really, although these images have more too them, they tell the viewers something and express something- the subjects looking brave and strong, coupled with their clothing, sends out a strong message of how women can work doing dangerous things, women can fight for themselves. This is why I've decided to choose the two images from the shoot before as my final images for the project. I'm aware that these images don't really fit my entire proposal's outcome wishes but it's being clear the whole time I've being doing this project my idea was changing with it; and I wasn't sure what the outcome would be. The images are taken in a corner, the lighting is dramatic, the subjects are dressed up and expressionless. I'm only happy with two of the images I took from this shoot so that's why I'm only picking two rather then 3.
The last two shots I've done I used the equipment below:
Evaluation
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