Lens. Week 11.

Lens

Week 11 (Monday 9^th December 2013)

Continuing the portrait project we looked at a variety of different artists who use different techniques and styles to capture something, either a person or animal, all of which has given me ideas.

We looked at the artist Eric Lafforgue, whose main focus is on colour and culture. What drew me to him was the contrast of a normally black background with a bright coloured face dominating the image. The face represents a country and a culture you can tell where the photos were taken; all countries are different but similar in ways. He also uses stereotypes, what the country thinks they should be, act and look like, such as in North Korea were everyone is exactly like everyone else, he wants to show that not everyone it the same and that everyone is their own person.  

 Eric Lafforgue, Miss Kim, 2008

Another artist was Tim Flach who does portraits of animals, what I find interesting is that animas are very resistant and hard to work with yet he manages to take a photo that looks effortless and natural. What really stands out is the fact that you have a sense of what the animal is thinking and what emotion they are trying to portray. As most of the images have a black background setting gives it more depth and allows the personality of the animal be brought out. Animals are part of everyday life but I personally never question it where personally I find these photography shows that animals have feelings to and that they want to be treated just like everyone else.

 Tim Flach

Another artist that made me look more into different ways to take a portrait is artist Annie Leibovitz, who uses fantasy. The person or people that are in the images are normally celebrities; the setting is staged and edited after. This gives it the make believe magic look. The colours she uses gives it warm and slightly surreal yet as the audience already knows the Disney stories making them live the fantasies as adults as well as children. Everything is over the top, the dresses or the background I think this is done so that you get the sense that it is not real and in some aspects slightly gloomy.

  

 Annie Leibovitz, Peter Pan

Looking at a variety of artist gave me a diverse range of ideas, such as looking at people in their day to day lives, being natural or instead of focusing on the person themselves look at what belongs they have, shoes, what’s in their suitcase. As well as thinking about the lighting, how for the camera is away from the person, if they are looking at the camera and the lighting for that situation. 

For my portrait project I focused on not only the person themselves but what they use and the environment they are in. Such as looking at the contents of my suitcase, what I take home during the Christmas period and an empty room that holds many memories.

The candles represent warmth and home; the light reflects on the floor, this makes it almost like a water reflection. What I find makes the candle photographs work well is the contrast of the dark flooring to the light that is giving off from the candles, they contrast. I took photographs from different angles to find the different lines that the light can create. Next time I could get different shaped and height candles so that there are a variety of reflection lengths and different coloured candles to see if the colour can be displayed in the reflection.

The photographs of the children I find interesting as you are unable to see their faces therefore question who they are. As they are near lights it changes the emotion, the street light makes the photo creepy as it looks like I am stalking them, they don’t know that I am there. Also there is a shadow like there is someone following them, there are two people there, and I find that it adds depth to the photographs as both figures have no detail. Whereas the photographs that include the Christmas lights are more festive and magical, it is almost as if you are seeing it through a child’s eye. Even though some of the photographs are distorted but it gives the picture movement and in some photos gives it more a disturbing feeling. To progress I could use a variety of different lights, touches, natural lights to see what the mood and sense you get from the photos and the amount of children are involved in the picture, see if it affects the depth of the photo.