Studio Photography Equipment
Lights – A variety of lights and set ups can give different effects the images you take, for example you can make someone look quite dark and mysterious by creating a lot of shadows on their face or you can light up there whole face for a friendly and happy picture.
Backdrop
Having a backdrop gives a neutral and constant background in the studio which makes it very easy to manipulate images afterwards (for example photo shopping them onto another photograph). Plus in addition with the lights you can create light spots on your photograph. Also the backdrop can give the image even more emotion or meaning. For example the red sheets can give an image of famous, rich and glamorous
Lenses
Different Lenses can create a number of effects on your images and can be used to create very unique images. For example a wide lense would capture more background than what normal human eye could see or a fish eye image could create an warped image.
Props
Having a range of props can impact of the photograph you take. Can create mood, add to the character you may be portraying or simply make it more interesting.
Enlargers
The enlarger helps you decide the size of the image and some have colour filters in the light which reaches the page, so you can create a wide variety of colours, depending on timings and any blockers you use. For example the image below if taken on a black and white film, using the colour filters you could make it a different shade or a completely contrast and warped colour such as red.
57.1 Research into photographers work
Cindy Sherman
Cindy, born in 1954, is an American who made her name know through self-portraiture.
When she works, she is alone in the studio when she is photographing, becoming everything from the make-up artist, director, wardrobe designer to the model herself. She usually serves as the model for all of her photos, using a variety of dresses and make-ups to give her a unique look for every photo.
With all of her projects and all the series she has produced she is always the model dressed as a variety of characters. This allows her to have full control and creativity.
Larry Clark
Born 1943 Larry Clark originally started out photographing in his family business but later moved on to photograph his friends and later after study and his role in the Vietnam war, he released his book ‘Tulsa’ which portrayed his yound friends drug usage. After he followed up with ‘Teenage Lust’.
These completely uncovered another hidden side of teenage culture and gave America a huge “slap in the face’ ‘http://hardlywiser.blogspot.com/2009/03/china-girl.html’. Larry Clark wanted to show naïve parents how the kids are not ‘alright’ and he said that he wanted to show it in real life, which by his graphical images seems very well done. His main subject have always been, sex, drugs and violence.
He also is a film director and producer, however one of his films was banned for it’s sexual content.
My Self Portrait
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| My Finished Piece |
This was shot on the large camera we had use of which used 5x4 inch negatives because it gives an amazing quality shots which plenty of detail. This means that the image then produced would pick up everything I wanted,for example single eyelashes and eyebrows which just gave the image a more crisp finish and for my idea with the 'status' would have been vital. This is because the word 'intelligence' seems to represent high quality ideals and so I think a good quality photograph is needed to reinforce the status.
I chose the pose I am in in the photograph purely because it looks like I am in distant thought, looking off into the distance for inspiration. I also liked the idea of having shadows on my face except around the eyes which was achieved well. It almost seems as though there is a light source I am focused on which could represent to a viewer that I am looking off to a brighter place. I simply chose to look right to left on the final image because that is how a large portion of the world reads.
After shooting the image I had a negative I needed to develop. Since these negatives are so big we did not have any enlargers that they could fit into. Therefore we had to do contact prints where you lay the negative on the photo paper. It is a shame we couldn't enlarge because we could have produced very large images with very crisp detail.
First of all before wasting whole sheets of paper getting the correct exposure time I did a test strip where you expose different areas of the image for different amounts of time, signalling the correct amount of time you should be doing for when you move on to the full image.
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| A Test strip I did for another image. The darker strips were exposed for the longest. Each strip is a 5 second interval. |
After exposing the full image (mine came to 12.5 seconds) you then carefully place the photo paper into the developer fluid for 1-2 minutes, then the wash for 30 seconds and into a fix for 5 minutes which stops the image fading in light.
After the photograph was rinsed and dried I it onto the scanner and had it scanned and after it was sent to my computer I opened it on photoshop.
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| This is the image I started with and I had to crop down and edit ready for the final A4 size picture. |
After cropping and straightening my image I decided I wanted it a darker and to increase the contrast and bring in more shadows. I did this through the sliders in the menu bars at the top called 'brightness and contrast'. This gave a better and clearly difference from the incoming light and the rest of my face.
After this was finished I opened up another image at the size of an A3 spread and used rulers to mark out halfway. This is where I produced the final image above. To create the background for the typeface I took a chunk of the background from the photograph and 'transformed it' to cover the entire page. I tried it with a simple plain colour but this looked better because it had an almost bumpy texture which made it seem more 3D and special.
With the typeface I decided to use simply white because that in most terms usually means it is a 'fact'. I used the warp tool too, to create a fish eye effect on the writing. I did this to show it like it is 'expanding' and for example like a sort of 'ego' or a growing knowledge. Hopefully it was to represent the word intelligence. I was going to use a very stylistic font too, to make it seem very old style written but it was very hard to read when warped.
After this I added the small 'hmm.' which I think in a way gives the photograph the sound dimension, almost like a comic. I was hoping this would add more to the image in the viewers head while also making it seem more comical and lighthearted which, with the 'status' being quite funny should give it more emotion.
I feel the two sides compliment each other, keeping the grey shade all across the spread which is easy on the eye and quite relaxing plus the light on the picture and the white stands out extremely well against such a background giving key points of focus in the image.
If I were to do this spread again I would definitely experiment with another idea I had. This was to have two of my image mirrored against each other with the text in the centre. So the image would be myself practicing the look in the mirror. This would also give an interesting shape in the centre. I would also consider if I were to take the photograph again to hold hold a small piece of paper which says 'hmm.' which would make it seem more comical and less serious.
