Documentary

Documentary

Definition

Documentary photography usually refers to a popular form of photography used to chronicle events or environments both significant and relevant to history and historical events as well as everyday life.


Image Bank

Henri Cartier Bresson

 
Henri Cartier Bresson was a French humanist photographer considered a master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He pioneered the genre of street photography, and viewed photography as capturing a decisive moment. Decisive moment is when a photographer takes an image at a particular moment to show meaning and presentation in their final image (not just a random shot). 

The decisive moment:

"the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression."
There was a single instant in which the meaning of an event was most clearly represented graphically. It was the responsibility of the photographer to capture that representation.

 Denotation: the guys running across the image, the decisive moment of this image is that the guy is suspended in the air. The image is in black and white and taken on a miserable raining day.                                     Connotation: The guy is leaping across to avoid getting wet, you can also infer that the guy is in a rush as he is running. 

Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration. Lange's photographs humanised the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography.

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Best Images

Images that need improvement 

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

My idea for recording Documentary was to photograph and document a walk which I enjoy to take on a daily basis, alone or with company. I was inspired by my research of Dorothea Lange as her photos represented a lot of emotions by photographing people. I didn't photograph any people however I kept the same mood throughout my shoot by keeping the colour scheme similar and keeping to the same subject, the church and woods. 

My images came out as I expected, however I had to pay particular attention to getting the right exposure settings as it was early in the morning when I did the shoot. For example when photographing the church the sky was a light grey and was quite bright with a high exposure. 

f 5.6      ISO 400     1/30

For the images that didn't come out as I expected I struggled to change my camera settings according to the light exposure, and because some of my images were quite dark my focus wasn't that great either. 

AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, 

media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops

For this shoot the camera I used was a Nikon D3400. The images were taken at an aperture of around f 4 and f 6 for darker images and the brighter landscapes were f 29. I tried to keep the aperture settings low as of how bright it was outside and to also keep a dark / dull theme throughout my images. I kept the iso at 400 however when going into the woods I had to move it up to 800 because of the poor lighting. 

If I was to do a reshoot, I would go on this walk at a different time of the day and maybe have some friends with me and a dog to have a better variety of images. 

To further improve my Documentary shoot I edited my photos all similar to link them together, they all have a hint of red as the leaves in most the images, when edited, created a lovely red colour. 

The screen grabs above show the final image and the editing process of each. Some images needed more layers, for example exposure or curves, because the image was too dark or just needed to be balanced more with the hue and saturation. 

AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

The artist research was helpful as it helped me understand what  Documentary was in photography as in the begining i did struggle to see what kind of photos I would take for this shoot. My research on Henri and Dorethea helped me focus on the emotion in an image and then split second moments that can represent a whole story. I took a walk that means a lot to me and documented it, even if you can't see human emotions the idea of the church and gravestones represent them instead. 

AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements. 

Portraiture

Portraiture 

Definition

A portrait is an artistic representation of a persons emotions by using expressions, editing and other props or objects. It can be many medias, for example a painting, a photograph, a sculpture and more.

Image Bank

Yousuf 

Yousuf took this image of Winston Churchill and with the time period it was ( time of war ) Yousuf wanted to make him look intimidating. To get this look the photographer snatched his cigar off him and that made him mad.

Amanda Lapor

Amanda Lapor is a Trans man who identifies as a women. This represents identify in portraiture as everyone is different and their own ways and there are many ways to represent this. Amanda wears her bright red lipstick with her caked on make up as part of her new identify, you would never see her without it. 

Annie Leibovitz

Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer. She photographed John Lennon on the day he was assassinated, and her work has been used on numerous album covers and magazines. She became the first woman to hold an exhibition at Washington's National Portrait Gallery in 1991In the majority of her photo they are professional images of the celebrities. in these two examples we have Angelina Jolie and Leonardo Decaprio, each of them have a blank expressions with a monotone edit to make them look professional and to show the best look.

Thomas Ruff

Thomas Ruff is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been described as “a master of edited and reimagined images”. Ruff shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with other German photographers Laurenz Berges, Andreas Gursky and Axel Hütte. The models in his images have a dead-plan (blank expression) to emphasise the different ways in which identity is shown other than through facial expressions.

David Lachapelle 

David LaChapelle is an American commercial photographer, fine-art photographer, music video director, and film director. He is best known for his photography, which often references art history and sometimes conveys social messages. David makes his photographs fun and quirky to interept a message the celebrity wishes to give.

Alec Soth 

Alec Soth is an American photographer, based in Minneapolis. Soth makes "large-scale American projects" featuring the midwestern United States. New York Times art critic Hilarie M. Sheets wrote that he has made a "photographic career out of finding chemistry with strangers" and photographs "loners and dreamers". Alec's images each have a story behind it in which he's represented in the images without entirely giving it away. The first images a women believed strongly she saw and angle and the frame she is holding is the image she captured of it.

Richard Avedon

             

Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century". The image of Marilyn was taken days before her suicide, this shows how Richard had captured Marilyn deep in thought, as you can see by the expression on her face. The same expression can be seen on the second image, the model looks as if she had realised something and is also deep in thought.



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Best Images

Images that need Improvement

in this image the model is blinking and wasn't prepared for the picture.

In this whole shoot the lighting used wasn't used effectively and most the images turned out like the one above, the shadows are hiding all the facial features and it doesn't look natural.

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

My idea for portraiture is to explore the different angels, backgrounds and materials I can use to create different moods and meanings in an image. I was inspired by the photographers David Lachepelle and Annie Leivobitzs as they have contrasting portraiture images, one being colourful and creative and the other being black and white and professional.


AO2: Explore and select appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and processes, reviewing and refining ideas as work develops.

My images were shot with a Nikon D3400.

To improve my images, and further link my images to my inspired photographers, I edited my photos in photoshop.




















































I have made the images above in black and white to link my image to Annie Leibovitz and her professional portraiture images. However I also changed the saturation in the image ( as seen below), and then used the layer mask to remove any unwanted colours , for example her face was very red, to then make the colours in the background much more saturated like Lachepelles images.

























































AO1: Develop ideas through sustained and focused investigations informed by contextual and other sources, demonstrating analytical and critical understanding.

My artist research really helped me as i discovered there are loads of different ways you can take portraiture photos, it doesn't have to be plain and simple. But i also learned that it being plain and simple can also be really effective. This helped me when I was experimenting with the vase and the light, as different angles and lightings looked better. This also helped when I was shooting in the forest as I discovered that one image can be taken from a variety of different angles.



AO4: Present a personal and meaningful response that realises intentions and, where appropriate, makes connections between visual and other elements.