What is a portrait?

When you think of a portrait i guess you would imagine the head to about mid shoulder or mid torso of a person. I would say the more traditional aspect of portraiture, that's what people see when they think of a portrait.

To me a portrait can be taken to a more creative level. Instead of capturing the face of a person you pick out something that defines them and seperates them from everyone else. Something that shows who they are, like a tattoo, a scar, their hands to show hard work maybe, a tear, their hair anything that shows their differences with other people, their individual characters.

So to me a portrait is the identity of a person, as long as it portrays who they are and has a piece of the person/persons in the image its a portrait. 

Images are just from Google images. 

Evaluation

Street Photography

First hearing about the theme of the project I was a little scared, I new that with Street Photography you have to involve yourself with what’s going on around you and I’m not really one for jumping in the action I’m more of a watcher. But I think it was a great first project, it gave me the chance to feel somewhat more confident with my camera, taught me to open my eyes more.

Throughout my process of taking pictures I stuck to lone people, small crowds. I had people ask me if I did this because I felt alone and secluded myself, at first I didn't really think about it I guess I choose to capture lone people because I felt more drawn to them. In a way I felt like they did have some sort of similarities to myself, I felt more comfortable without them knowing I was there taking their picture and them walking away from me then to have them see me. I think if I was to improve on my way of taking pictures I would try to interact with my subjects, maybe ask to take there picture and get closer instead of standing quite a distance away from them. I did get more confident to take pictures of my subjects walking towards me but again I wasn't close enough so to me the pictures didn't look very appealing.

Practically, with all my films I had problems with the full roll developing. I don’t think I have one full roll that was successful. I’m not entirely sure what happened for it to do this, at first I thought that maybe I was developing them wrong but then why would I still get half the film that did develop? Because this happened with all my rolls of film and I didn't know what was going wrong I couldn't really do anything to prevent it from happening. I guess it was just a thing I expected to happen so I learnt to work with it.

I have used a darkroom on my previous course at college so I was familiar with some of the techniques and rules. But I have learnt a lot from my experience on this project, mainly with filters and dodging and burning. I didn't really use these techniques before so it was fun to experiment with then. I've also learnt a lot about photography in general and how the camera works. On my previous course at college it was a mixture of different art forms so when we did do photography it was a case of using the skills and the knowledge you already new. So I've definitely gained more knowledge and learnt some tricks.

The project definitely challenged me to go beyond my comfort zone, I was expecting for a first project to be something of less challenging, something to sort of prepare us for a more demanding project like this. We were definitely thrown in the deep end with this project.

To conclude, if I was to do things differently the biggest thing would to be space out my time of working and not leave everything to the last minute. Especially my evaluation, I was putting it off because I always struggle to word what I want to say so it takes me longer to write and finish things like this. And to also be more organised with photo paper because i wasn't able to contact and print my last rolls of film and i would have liked to print more on my other rolls as well.          

  

Prints Gone Wrong

Print One

Print Two

Print Three

So these are some of my prints that didn't work out so well. Print One, you can see that on the right hand side of the print it looks like light has some how leaked on the neg. I'm not entirely sure when it happened, to me its not that noticeably but maybe that's just because I'm looking at it on my screen. The logical thing to do to solve this problem would be to take more care in the processing room and make sure there's no light leaking through the room. 

Print Two, Is a mistake i made by not washing my negs long enough which resulted in the nice long line of chemicals going through the image. Ive found that its better to wash and develop your negs for a little longer then the normal time, it helps make sure that there developed correctly and washed properly. Which if you want well developed and clean negs its good to just be on the safe side and do this.

Print Three, the background is focused rather then the foreground because i used a wider aperture. With most of my film i used 5.6 so i wanted to experiment more with the aperture but as you can see it didn't work so well.

History of Street Photography 2

Garry Winogrand

Winogrand (1928-1984) known for his portrayal of American life in the early 1960s. At the time of his death in 1984, he left more than 2,500 undeveloped rolls of film. 6,500 rolls of that had been developed but not contact/printed and 300 apparently untouched, unedited contact sheets (lots and lots of film) I find this really odd, I wouldn’t have been able to keep undeveloped film. I’m a curious person so when I shoot just one roll of film I’m eager to develop it, even in the developing stage I’m always trying to peek at my film. It’s really odd, I mean wouldn’t you as a photographer want to see how your shoot went and how your photographs look? 

He photographed, he said, 'to see what the world would look like in photographs'.

I find Winogrands work very sophisticated, his subjects are always dressed nicely, the composition is always perfect as well as the contrast. I read that he was fond of visual puns which you can see in some of his work (who doesn’t like a pun here and there?).

You can tell just by the amount of film taken, that Winogrand was passionate about photography. In some ways he reminds me of Bruce Gilden, the way he's up close to his subjects and surrounds himself with what’s going on around him, he’s in the action and not just standing on the side lines. 

I enjoy looking at Winogrands images (especially his visual puns). Although I find him a little odd he does produce good images. 

 Bruce Gilden

Gilden (1946) who is a well-known Street Photographer and is mesmerized by the unique energy of the streets often calling them his 'second home'.

What sets Gilden apart from other photographers is his ability to see and capture the essence of a character, a place or a moment something learned by years of walking the street with his eyes wide open.

Gildens way of working is very..... Well it's interesting, I don’t think he believes in personal space. He’s very forward, a strong believer of his rights and isn't afraid to get in the action. I don’t think I could do what he does, I’d be too nervous and probably too scared to even get that close to my subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkIWW6vwrvM

 

As you can see Gilden uses flash, I think that has a big impact on the facial features of his subjects, I don’t think he would archive them if he didn’t use one. It adds to the element of surprise.

Gilden has published many books on his work like after the off which explores Ireland and its passion for horseracing, Haiti resulting Gilden to return to the country nineteen times, when arriving there he said ‘where have I been?’ . The country must have attracted Gilden, The work he produced for this book is quite different to his previous work not a great deal different he still uses the flash but he doesn’t concentrate on one subject more of small groups. They look more aggressive as well, where as his work in New York the subjects are just surprised.     

  .

Gilden is without a doubt a great photographer, although his approach to his subjects is quite forward and invades there 'bubble' of personal space. But i think if he didn’t have the courage to do this he wouldn’t have been able to capture the perfect scenes or the surprised expressions. You can capture a great street scene on the side lines but as you can see with Gildens work the closer you are the more you feel like you’re there, like you’re the one standing in front of the subject. Through looking at Gildens work I’ve come to understand Street Photography more in a way, he’s shown me that (although it’s scary) it’s probably better to get in the action, to make my photos have that street feel to it. I’m definitely excited to work more with the Street Photography genre of photography and experiment more with it. I think it’s a great way to help with confidence and also people.

Lee Friedlander

Friedlander (1934) is an American photographer who photographed the American social landscape in 1948. Friedlander has captured many humours images and worked with shadows and reflections among the chaos of city life, he is also recognized for a group of self-portraits he began in the 1960s.

Friedlander has a passion for jazz as well as photography and says that after photography, jazz is his second largest passion in life.

Friedlander also did a series of images called America by Car where he basically went to find America in his rental car. But instead of getting out of his car he instead used the side view mirror, rear view mirror, the windshield, and the side windows as picture frames to capture his images. Like Umbo Friedlander is a creative photographer, he uses a very different style of photography that is unique and also appealing to the eye.