The Process

Self Portrait Process

Richard Avedon was an American portrait photographer who, like many other photographers, took a series of self-portraits in the late 20^th century. His self-portraits are often close-up and simple, something I would like to include in my own work.

The use of a white background and often black clothing in Richard’s self-portraits creates minimalism and cleanness, the entire focus is on him and nothing else. I like the idea of using a white background for my self-portrait to create a simple but effect portrait. I then had the idea of a plain white background but one main bright colour in either the clothing I wear or added in post-production. This lead me to research Andy Warhol’s self-portraits.

 

Andy Warhol is famously known for his use of bright colours in his pop art work. But he also uses a similar technique in his self-portraits. For example, the use of a very black background contrasted with Warhol’s face being a bright colour as seen in the images below.

This use of one main bright colour in contrast to the black background draws the viewer’s attention directly to Andy, something I would like to capture in my work, through wearing a brightly coloured shirt for example.

After doing this research I then took several self portraits, seen in the contact sheet below. I wore a bright blue top linking to Andy Warhol’s use of one bright colour and took the photo against a white background ( my bedroom wall) linking to Richard Avedon’s use of a white background to create simplicity.

 

For my final self portrait image I decided to remove all the colour expect the blue in my top, this draws your attention to the bright colour and creates minimalism in the rest of the photo, something I think worked well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Familiar Portrait Process

Annie Leibovitz is a 67-year-old American portrait photographer who is well-known for her natural photos of celebrities, such as Bruce Wills and Daniel Craig. She uses natural lighting for her portraits and often edits them to be in black and white. Below are some examples of her portraits. The photo of Robin Williams, in particular, has a minimalistic style which draws the views attention to his facial expression, which in my opinion matches his personality, something Annie Leibovitz often does.

For my familiar portrait, I want to create something similar to what Annie Leibovitz does, through the use of natural lighting and making the photo black and white, as I like the simplicity and naturalism this adds to the portrait.

 

Mario Testino is an international portrait photographer who has worked for famous magazines such as Vogue. He has also photographed various celebrities and the royal family. Testino is well known for his famous pictures of princess Diana.

Similarly, to Annie Leibovitz Testino captures natural expressions on people’s faces and uses natural lighting to create naturalism. Some but not all of Testino’s work are black and white again creating simplicity.

 

 

In this photo of Princess Diana, Testino has captured a natural facial expression and the lack of eye contact with the camera adds to the relaxed nature of the photo. This is something I want to create in my familiar portrait by catching the person I am photographing ‘off guard’ to create simplicity and a natural portrait.

 

 

 

 

 

Below is a contact sheet of the images I took for my familiar portrait. The subject is my Aunt Maya and I started off taking photos of her without her knowing which allowed me to capture natural poses, similar to both Testino’s and Leibovitz’s work. I made a few of the photos black and white before choosing my final image.

 

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The Stranger Portrait Process

Danny Santos is a portrait photographer who lives in Singapore. One of Danny’s projects is called ‘Shooting Strangers’, where he walks around the streets of Singapore and takes portraits of strangers, sometimes with their consent and other times without them knowing. All of Danny’s portraits are very natural and candid, he asks his subjects to look into the camera but not smile. In all of his portraits the subject is in perfect focus and lots of detail can be seen on their face, while the background is out of focus, as seen in the examples below.

I would like to be able to capture detail in the stranger I take a photo of like Danny Santos, but unlike him I want to show the emotion on the person’s face to be able to portray their personality without knowing them.

 

David Weir is an amateur photographer who lives in Los Angeles and has recently undertaken a 100 strangers project to develop his skills. The project involves taking 100 photos of people he has never met before and then uploading these images onto his website, so far, he has got up to 42 strangers. David also finds out a bit out the person he takes a portrait of, for example the photo below is of a woman named Shannon who moved from Florida to Los Angles to study graphic design at a University in Malibu, she is the ninth person David photographed.

Although I am not going to find out anything about the person I photograph, I took inspiration from the natural lighting David Weir used in his photos, by going out on a bright day and taking photos near the Brayford.

 

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These are some of the photos I took of strangers. I achieved these with a 100-300mm lens, allowing me to get close up shots of people without being too near to them and creating suspicion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the photo I have decided to use as my final stranger portrait photo. I like the fact all three people are looking in the same direction and it works with the rule of thirds as each person is in a third of the image. Also, there is lot of natural light linking to David Weir’s work and creating a strong depth of field to emphasise the subjects.