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.



Contact sheets 

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.