Portraiture

–Definition and Theory 

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person.

This is a portrait of Winston Churchill, this image represents him as a man to be taken seriously, the lighting is dark and sinister but the lighting is focused on his face and this make shim seem important. The lighting is harsh and makes him look strong, masculine and the harsh lighting makes him look 
like a leader. 

–Photographer Research

Thomas Ruff is a German photographer who works in Düsseldorf and has been credited for being the master edited and reimagined images. He was influenced by photographers such as Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz and the new American colour photographers. 

These images are shot with models having dead pan expressions and the grid of four makes the images look like passport photos or a family photo frame. Ruff would allow his models pick the backgrounds they wanted to sit behind so as much as the dead pan expression does not reveal much about the model there is an element of personalisation there. The face-on dead pan expression of his models will be captured within my images. I will also adopt his composition style of using the grid of four. 

–Image Bank

From these images I can take inspiration from the coloured backgrounds the grids from the shoot and the face on composition approach. I also believe I will be able to capture these images in the college studio. 

–Contact Sheet

 (AO:1.  You must ensure that several of the visual ideas/inspirations within the image bank are pursued. )

–My Best Images

–Images That Need Improvement

AO3: Record ideas, observations and insights relevant to intentions, reflecting critically on work and progress.

My idea for portraiture was to record dead pan images. This was inspired by my research from Ruff's passport styled images his use of colures backgrounds gave me the idea to use the pink colour in the studio

These images were selected as the ones for improvement as I don't feel I quite captured the dead pan expression as I would have liked. Within the first image I had not quite instructed my model properly and so I got a lens glare in the photo. When I reshot this image I asked them to take off their glasses so I did not get this reflection of the light. 

For the second and third images I did not quite get the expression of the dead pan right. Before taking the image I would say quite sad and tragic things to my models so that the expressions were genuine but for these images I could not think of anything to say. 

With reference to my best images they are all very similar I like the composition an the way all my models are looking away from the camera this creates an uncomfortable feel about the images which I like. To improve my images further I put them into photoshop.