For the individual as a capital project it is my understanding is to capture an individual and make them the main focus of the image.  Portraits date back to thousands of years ago from atrists , they can portray personality and emotions of the person. Focusing on portraiture, I looked up some famous photographers that have attained success in this subject.

One very different approach to portraiture photographs was done by Lee Jefferies , he photographed homeless people and made them the focus of the image. All of these are in black and white which is what inspired me to do the same with my portraits.

SOURCE: http://leejeffries.500px.com/

The photographer Irving Penn is mostly famous for his fashion and portrait photography. After looking at his work online and on Vogue website; I really took a liking to him and his work so  it became clear to me that I would take my images in a way that could be seen as fashion portraiture or something along those lines. Maybe I can try and corporate fashion and portraiture together in my work.

SOURCE: http://www.vogue.com/tag/photographer/irving-penn/

In a lecture in week 8,  we all discussed our reading which was Nicholas Mirzoeff’s new book ‘How to See the World’. This discussion we had about it really interested me. We spoke about chapter 1 – which was all about the new phenomenon of ‘selfies’ which is a new word and has recently been added to the dictionary. A selfie is typically taken on the front camera of  a mobile phone or iPad. They are basically a new modern technical version of a self portrait. 

 

“Use your developing cognitive and technical abilities to create a selection of images about the relationship between people and other things.”

For the people as things project I have decided that I would like my images to give off a mysterious and surreal look; I think with the unusual stances that my model is doing it creates this, the model is incorporated with the object to make it look like they are connected by some way or another. The lighting in all of these shots are quite dim, I used either one or two sources of lighting but had them on very low settings.

We took these portrait images to practise and become familiar with how different lighting and lenses can capture the same person in many different ways. As you can see in the first top left image the subjects face is zoomed in almost like a fish eye effect, it  cuts off a lot of the side of his face, this was taken using a zoom lense. The bottom right image however is taken with a standard lense and captures the whole of his face. There are two sources of lighting from LED lights coming from either side of him which creates a even glow to the face. This workshop has helped me understand how important lighting is and how it can completely change an image.

I think these images kind of tell a story and kind of make you feel something for the creatures, which in my view is the whole point of this project.

These images would typically fit well in something quite fun and quirky like a magazine for younger people, or something on Tumblr. Going back to the new formalism research when I looked at toilet paper magazine; they have some very eye catching, fun images.