Portrait Photography: Evaluation

Black and White Exhibition Print

It sounds like a terrible cliché thing to say, but Level 5 Portrait been a real roller-coaster of an assignment from the start. Portraits are perceived by many as being one of the easiest parts of photography to get good at with very little experience, as long as you have a good eye or a nice subject. That in lies the problem with it for me, the things that are made to look so easy and simple by good photographers are usually nothing of the sort. So my main aim with both sets of images was to keep the subjects quite natural and un posed in an environment that added subtle context rather than dominate the composition.

Black and White 2

The first set of images were taken of construction workers on a building site in Teesside over several visits. Having worked extensively on sites just like this I felt I would be able to use this to my advantage.  

Taking the 5x4 onto a live building site felt good at the time but the first results were disappointing. Trying to cut corners and not heat up the development tank and rather leave them in longer to compensate proved costly as the negatives never really had any punchy contrast to give the prints any real character. Properly processed negatives and a wider angle lens on the second trip gave much better results, This kept more in line with the feel of Ian Macdonalds workplace portraits that heavily influenced me. There are so many elements needed to get good results when using a 5x4 field camera I'm almost embarrassed at my short comings with using a DSLR. After receiving quite a good response from the editorial assignment I had high expectations of the work I would be able to produce in large format. 

Black and White 3

 For the second set of portraits using the colour film I split my efforts into two different sub projects, day time and night time themed portrait sessions. The day time started inside my own house focusing mainly at the way my family chose to relax and the spaces they spent most of their leisure time. The night time shoots were based upon a set of portraits I had already done several times with a digital camera,  In clubs while covering the events commercially.  Both of these ideas never made it through the full process from start to finish but for totally different reasons. It seemed just a little too easy to take photos in my house, I didn't really feel there was much being said in the images about them, other than just this is what they look like and this is where they sit.

I had been looking forward to using the colour darkroom since we first went into have a look around it last year. The no light at all situation (compared to the black and white) was, and still is a challenge but I feel it has got easier to do as long as a bit more planning is in place before you head in.

 Despite shooting regularly in the nightclub environment with a digital camera I still have a lot to learn in getting the images I want from a film camera set up. The extremes like 1 second exposures, high ISO and rear curtain sync flash do not transfer directly into the natural portrait look I was hoping for. I think it could even have been a handicap to try and go into these shoots with that experience of digital. It gave me a false impression of the steps needed and process required to get good results. Rather disappointingly, all of the rolls of film shot at night were deemed unusable for the same reason, the exposure levels were too low to get a good standard of print. With the shortage of paper I chose to concentrate on the last film I shot in the park..

Dog Walker 1

Dog walkers in the park should have been a safe back up if all else had failed, However on the day I went to shoot snow had fallen. This was the first time i had the chance to take any photographs in these conditions. So,again my inexperience has produced results that i am not entirely happy with. Underexposed,and after discussing it with Antony while printing I understand why when shots that were taken at the same time with my digital camera have fared better. When we get some more paper in im going to see if i can get better results from scanned negatives.

Dog Walker 2

So to sum it up like I said at the start its been quite challenging in new ways that can only help in the long run, however I would be lying if I said I am happy with all of the end results.

Dog Walker 3

Portrait Photography: Dog walkers in the Ropner Park

Having not had a much success last time I tried this during the day I decided I should go to a park in Stockton and try and do portraits of people walking their dogs. When i first went out there was a very slight amount of snow in the air,by the time i got to the park there was a good layering of it,the first time it has snowed whilst I have had a camera. I thought it would be best to try and travel light if i was going to be walking around on my own so left the flash at home. Still didnt have a dedicated light meter so opted to carry my camer and transfer the setting across.

Ive managed to get 2 prints that im relatively happy with from the film,I can probabaly get up to the required 6 from it but we dont have any paper left and it seems there could be a wait for a while for it to turn up.

Wide Hassleblad

Contact sheet,not entirely coloured but enough to pick singles

Portrait Photography: The New Gypsies

I came across this work by Iain McKell while doing research for the VC hand in. Setting aside the social commentary made by its publication I dont think anyone could argue the sheer beauty of the images that have been captured. Set among the world of new age travelers it has a quite romantic feel to it you wouldnt find on my big fat gypsies wedding.

Huffington Post Article 

Portrait Photography: Undergroove Shoot

Smoking Shareen

Third time lucky I had hoped.. With the help of a kind of Hassleblad I didnt know we had in the stores..An extra wide angle one without a view finder. The wide Blad has a unique lens with accurate DOF markers for each F stop used..for example, At f11 when the nearest side of the DOF is selected at 4ft the furthest part touches infinity.. I like those odds in favour considering Ive not had much success with doing it by eye in low light.

This time i set up out the back of the Middlesbrough club in the smoking area which was pretty empty apart from a handful of regulars whom were more than happy to help out and have their photo taken.

I have had a limited go at getting some prints off this film with unspectacular results. The flash alough strong enough for my camera doesnt seem to have had the same effect on the blad. I think someone is trying to tell me something here..

Portrait Photography: Solar Knights Shoot

I managed to squeeze a shoot in just before Christmas at a club I was already working at in Darlington. After the previous two pretty much failed attempts I knew that i would need a much more controlled environment if i was to get any kind of results. So this time I used an area behind the dj box, on the stage at a warehouse type nightclub venue called Seen.

It was in almost complete darkness that I set up the camera on a tripod next to a retro looking two seater leather settee. Hoping to get a better look lighting wise I brought a soft box  for my flash unit so set that up on a tripod and attached the wireless triggers. The only light source back stage were two led red can type fittings that had been laid on the floor as a kind of make shift up lighters for the exposed brickwork and behind each stack of speakers facing the crowd. I turned one of these to be going up the wall in sight of the lens to give a little bit of a clue to the environment other than just the subjects.

I invited one of the DJ's to come and sit while I set the flash level and attempted to get focus. Once again it proved to be quite difficult to trust my eyes looking down the viewfinder with only the light of an Iphone to help to see. I was having flashbacks of the Subtrakt shoot. I got it as close as i could and tried a couple of test shots with out the film holding back attached to the body. The flash wasnt firing as the sync cable coming from the lens wasnt fitting as well as it could. So i lengthened the shutter speed to 1sec and fired the flash manually with the wireless triggers instead. All the shots turned out ok flash wise but the red light has come out over saturated and the focus could have benfited from a wider aperture to be a little wider to allow more movement in the chair when people where swapping over. Nice idea but not executed to the required standards again. Trying to create studio shots in a challenging environment was proving just that,a challenge!  

Portrait Photography: Rineke Dijkstra

I like Rineke's approach to portraiture,they way she isolates and highlights the subjects.  Her use of large format film makes truly amazing images and prints. The context through  most of her work is a time of transition,or important times of recent change for the subjects. Teenagers on the beach,bull fighters after a fight and mothers straight after giving birth are just a few examples.

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Portrait Photography: Riffraff

Bez being bez on a boat

Well,what can i say about this abortion of a shoot. Totally went wrong from the start. I hoped to get a portrait of Bez from the Happy Mondays as he was doing a PA at an event i was covering. That part of the night went well and I managed to get some good shots of him letting his hair down so to speak.

Bez had agreed to be in the photo for me as long as it didnt take long, so the plan was to get where I wanted and set everything up and then get him to come in and spend a minute or so doing the shots and he could be on his way back to the party. Never really worked out like that. He was already in the room when i got there so was wanting to get it done and dusted asap. I tried to set everything up with the Pentax medium format camera,metz flash and a background of some blue mood lights. I tried a couple of test shots with my camera to see if it was somewhere near but knew it wasnt exactly what i was looking for. Time ran out and I had to crack on with the few shots I could. After bez had gone i tried to change the film over for a new one and it fell out of my hand in a spiral..The shot below is the only one anywhere near ok,the rest were ruined.

Man bear pig and Bez

 

Portrait Photography: Undergroove

Shooting in the dark is a challenge at best on digital,so when it comes to colour film I felt i needed some more practice. I went to a disco event in Middlesbrough with my 35mm nikon and a borrowed flash to do just that. The images have been scanned in at CCAD and had some post production done in lightroom. The film was deliberately old as I had been told it can create some nice effects but to be honest i dont think it really added much to the overall aesthetics. 

The old flash was used off camera via a TTL lead which does give th images some depth that perhaps wouldnt be there otherwise. I have been and done another since but dont have the developed films back as of yet.

Portrait photography: House Shoot

I wanted to try a completely different idea as well as the club portraits. So i took a set up home with the digital back again to really have a play with what i would call personal but still environmental portraits. I replaced the Metz with a softbox and wireless triggers to have more controlled lighting in a more confined space. Again I thought although the results weren't necessarily bad,I just thought I could do better with something not so obvious.

Portrait Photography:- Subtrakt

I wanted to try and do a films worth of portraits in a nightclub if possible. I was covering an event at the now closed down Crown venue in Middlesbrough so took the Hasslebad,Metz and also the digital back so we could really have a good go at getting the settings down before committing to film. One of the advantages I know wasnt available back in the day but my train of thought is that if you can do something to help yourself you should.

We never got as far as using the film as we were not happy with the results we were seeing on the back of the camera. This is probably the best shot we had but it just seemed to lack any real interest or depth to be pursued.

Portrait Photography: Randoms on Church Square

For our first go on medium format myself and Grant went out onto the square to use up a film and get us on our way. We used a Metz flash as a fill light with our subjects with their back to the low winter sun.

The results were a little disappointing as we never had the flash set high enough to compensate for the small aperture needed as to not over expose the film looking straight into the sun. We made a contact sheet but none of them where deemed usable for the final 6.

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Portrait Photography: Metz Flash

Metz

I have tried several times to tame the beast that is the metz flash. you will see over the next few posts how successful or not the results have been.

I think i have a much better understand of it now ive had a few good goes on it,its not an easy device to use and in the wrong conditions the light can be quite unforgiving and not the most flattering to the subjects.

It has a few different ways it can be set up and some of the models vary slightly.

TTL - common in most modern cameras the Through The Lens metering is pretty much an automatic setting if your going from different light set ups at say a wedding or a social event. A pre-flash is fired out of the smaller bulb to measure light returning to the lens.on longer exposures this will look like 2 flashes if rear curtain sync is on.
Manual - You tell the flash exactly how much light you want it to fire and thats it,it doesnt try and change anything so you have to meter for it yourself correctly or it simply wont work.

Aperture - Like half way between the previous 2. You tell the flash what aperture you have it set to and it usess a sensor to adjust the lighting to suit. Its like a semi automatic,not exactly manual but then doesnt go as far as ttl for the whole scene in front of it. There is an iso dial which needs to be used at the same time for this setting to work properly.

Portrait Photography: Colour Film

De Vere Colour Enlarger

So were moving on now to use medium format and colour to create 6 prints in the colour darkroom. As we have no facilities to process the colour film we will need to use a lab which is kinda better as its one less thing you hope would be able to go wrong.

The main difference in the process is the complete darkness that is required when handling the colour paper before being exposed to by the enlarger. This makes the red lighting in the black and white dark room look like a walk in the park.

The colour balance required after exposure levels have been established will also be a challenge,but im pretty confident i understand how it should work and definately know what i want them to look like when done.

The black and whites were without flash using just natural light,so for these we will be using various different types of flash to get hopefully a more dynamic look in the final prints.

Portrait Photography: Exhibition Print

We had a group crit with everyone providing their exhibition print and we discussed them over. Mine was picked up of for not being specific enough about what trade my subject was. Some people felt it wasnt enough to just imply he worked on a building site,they would have preferred to see some tools used or actually working even if it was staged.

So the rest of the prints except for a couple(including mine) were in portrait orientation. They have been hung up at the entrance to CCAD since we looked at them. Basic moral to this story is conform or be excluded..

Replacement Exhibition Print

Portrait Photography: Barker and Stonehouse Shoot 2

Much better this time, Brought a wider angle lens which seems to be more in keeping with my desired look.

I tried a few different variations on the DOF to see which worked best and still managed to not use one of the slides after thinking i had used it and getting distracted by someone asking what I was doing on a building site with a massive old camera. I think those kind of mistakes will happen less and less the more you use this set up.

This time the dev tank was lifted out to get the temperature up as to be in more control over the times needed for a good result. Really happy with how these have turned out,I doubt i could realistically hope to do any better and this stage of my education.

Contact sheet 1 of 2

 

Portrait Photography: Ian Macdonald

The process and final product of Ians work is something I have admired since first becoming aware of it last year. Its the closest i have seen to what i was hoping to acheave for this firstpart of the assignment. Strong contrast black and white 5x4  portraits of real people with a scope of enviroment to tell a little bit about who they are what they represent. More of this is needed for mine if i am to be happy with them at the end.

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Portrait Photography: Barker & Stonehouse shoot 1

Barker And Stonehouse

I decided to shoot my black and white portraits on a building site that I was already visiting on a regular basis documenting the progress of the construction for a Real Stockton blog piece.

The actual shoot went pretty well and there was enough interest from the workers to get a few decent shots with the 5x4 field camera.

The part i wasnt so happy with was the development of the film back in CCAD. The temperature was quite cold (14 deg) so rather than warm it up we went with leaving them in longer. It just doesnt get the same results and they looked alot less contrast than i had hoped.

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Portrait Photography: Richard Avedon

I had looked at Avedon's work last year. I'm not massively into celebrity but i understand its place in our modern society. He does have way of keeping his work looking very simple and quite natural for most of the part which i like. You could argue that black and white portraiture is of a time but at the same time still is very relevant and a good way to act as a leveler to take away the distractions of current fashions  and give a more timeless classic finish to the portrait.

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