Adde Adesokan is a German photographer of Nigerian heritage. He concentrates on Street Photography, but has an interesting technique which creates triptych images of each of his subjects. Each image in the triptych is of a different part of his subject’s body, the head, mdriff, and then the feet. He tries to include something within the shot to show something of the subject’s character. All his subjects are strangers to him. As he says: I end up talking to my strangers for about 20 minutes, sometimes up to two hours. Most of them are flattered if you ask them about how they get along and stuff (Dzierza 2011).
Continue reading Adde Adesokan
Elina Brotherus – Carpe Fucking Diem
Elina Brotherus is an artist who regularly uses herself as a model in her images.
I wrote about Brotherus and her series Annunciation in my Article on Autobiographical self-portraiture in my blog for Context and Narrative. Her most recent monograph Carpe Fucking Diem includes images often taken in parallel with Annunciation, consists of a mixture of images, from landscapes, through portraiture of friends and relative, and her inevitable self-portraits; some wearing masks, and some nude. Continue reading Elina Brotherus – Carpe Fucking Diem
Hans Eijkelboom
Hans Eijkelboom is a photographer from the Netherlands who concentrates on aspects of identity and society. Continue reading Hans Eijkelboom
Irving Penn
Penn was one of Vogue magazine’s most prolific and creative photographers. Born in 1917, he attended the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Arts where he learnt both to paint and to photograph. Unsatisfied with his paintings he destroyed them in 1942 and returned to New York where he concentrated on photography. Continue reading Irving Penn
Exercise 3.1
Go through your photographic archive and select around ten pictures. Separate them into two piles: one entitled ‘mirrors’ and the other entitled ‘windows’.
I approached this task in two different manners.
First I decided to use my library program to select ten images from the collection on my computer completely at random. I have then split these into two lots, mirror and window on what they seemed to relate to. Here are my selections: Continue reading Exercise 3.1
David Tipling
I recently attended a lecture by Norfolk based bird photographer David Tipling at a local ornithologists meeting.
Tipling has travelled the world taking photographs of birds and other wildlife, but is probably best known for this photograph which has been published numerous times and used both in books and on calendars. Continue reading David Tipling
Reflections on Assignment 2
This was quite an interesting assignment as it enabled me to take some portraits using studio flash.
I am not experienced at studio lighting, but I used some of the knowledge that I have acquired over the years from working in television studios, and in doing stage lighting many years ago when I was at school.
The decision to take pictures in the church was partly a result of Brian’s position as a retired clergyman, but also a result of the appalling weather that we have had recently, meaning that making an appointment for outside photography would at best be hit-and-miss. That also accounted for my photography in Exercise 2.1 where I decided to use the indoor spaces that people occupied for much of their lives, rather than their favourite outside locations. Continue reading Reflections on Assignment 2
Assignment two – Vice versa
The objective of this assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to explore the themes covered in Part Two with regard to the use of both studio and location for the creation of portraits.
This assignment is about taking what has worked from the above exercises and then trying to develop this further in terms of interchanging the use of portraits taken on location (street) with portraits taken inside (studio). You need to develop a series of five final images to present to the viewer as a themed body of work.
For this assignment I decided to photograph Brian, a retired minister who lives locally and although retired still takes services in our local church whilst it is interregnum, with no local vicar.
Having asked his permission, I first visited his house, in order to take the ‘studio’ shots for the assignment. We started by having a cup of tea and a general discussion. Whilst he sat, I set up my lighting and took a few photographs, both to get him at his ease with the camera and to test my lighting setup. I was using two studio strobes, so I set one up directly as a key light, whilst the other I used with a reflective umbrella as a light to fill the resulting shadows, as in the illustration below. Continue reading Assignment two – Vice versa
Exercise 2.4 – Same background, different model
This exercise is essentially the same as the previous one, but instead of taking photographs of the same person, here you must make portraits of three different subjects, but keep the background to the image consistent (see Irving Penn and Clare Strand, above). There are many ways of exploring this exercise. You could either select an interesting backdrop to use inside (studio) or perhaps select an interesting backdrop on location (street). Whichever you choose, try to be as creative as you can and be prepared to justify your decisions through your supporting notes.
For this exercise I decided to return to the Quay in King’s Lynn where I carried out Assignment 1. In order to keep the background consistent between images, I decided to set up my camera on a tripod. As a background I decided to make use of the Customs House and the statue of Captain George Vancouver, the Kings’s Lynn man who in 1792 first surveyed what is now the city of Vancouver in Canada. Continue reading Exercise 2.4 – Same background, different model
Erik Johansson
At this years Photography Show at the NEC, I listened to the lecture by Erik Johansson about his imaginative photography
His specialism is in surreal images, created totally out of real photographs, but showing things that are totally impossible. Continue reading Erik Johansson