Evaluation - Portraiture

My initial aim was to incorporate the style of Catherine Balet used in her body of work 'Stranger in he Light', along with the theme 'My World is Beautiful' and diversity in terms of race and ethnicity. I feel I was able to capture the style of 'Stranger in the Light' fairly well, though I found it hard to incorporate 'My World is Beautiful' and the diversity aspect. The diversity aspect would have worked if I photographed more than one person, but since I was photographing the same person, I couldn't show diversity in any way. My interpretation of 'My World is Beautiful' was that I would include nature and / or wildlife into my photographs, but due to the lighting was working with, I found it very hard to incorporate this, as it was too dark. This meant that I had to take photos by main roads in order to get enough lighting, but not too much that it would prevent me from capturing the style of 'Strangers in the Light'. I also tried photographing in the day so I could incorporate nature, but it was too bright for me to use any lighting techniques, which relate to Catherine Balet.

 

(A photograph of one of my 3 plans.)

In my planning sketches I spoke about how i wanted to use all 3 of my chosen themes, though my final otomes only contained the lighting aspect i spoke about in my plan, but even then, the location was changed.
 

A key technique that I carried over from my technical project was shutter speed. Since it was so dark, I lowered the shutter speed in order to let more light in, and also to create some interesting lighting with cars driving past. I feel that this was executed fairly well as the lighting that i was able to capture was very interesting and quite unique.

I feel that what was most successful was recreating the style of lighting that Catherine Balet used in 'Strangers in the Light', and was the only aspect that I feel went to plan, as the other two themes I wanted to incorporate were not present, or at least my interpretation of them. To help me be more successful I need to work on my planning, as it was my panning at fault when it come to not incorporating diversity in race and ethnicity and my interpretation of 'My World is Beautiful'. Had I planned more I’d have been able to get another person or a few more people involved in order to show diversity, and also taken one of my photographs at a time where there was more natural light, so I could incorporate nature into my final outcomes.

 

(One of the unusable photoraphs taken while i was shooting my final outcomes.)

This was an attempt at using tree branches in order to incorporate nature, but none of the photographs taken using this idea resulted in being usable. The branch was also too hard to see in the lighting that as available.

An obstacle I had when it came to these photographs was the lighting, since it was nearly pitch black, though this was easily solved with lowering the shutter speed, which also allowed me to be more creative with the lighting. The lighting was also a huge improvement over my final outcomes for the first part of the course, and makes for much more interesting photographs. This is due to me being forced to be more confident with different settings and messing around with the shutter speed, aperture & ISO as a result of the lighting situation.

 

(One of the unusable photoraphs taken while i was shooting my final outcomes.)

Due to the high shutter speed i decided to use, alot of my photographs were blurred in areas that i needed to be very sharp.

For my final outcomes I feel I had quite a variation as I had one close up and one environmental portrait. Since I am relatively new to portraiture photography I feel I was quite experimental and I they turned out a lot better than I expected.

My ideas when it came to lighting were very strongly linked to Catherine Balet and 'Strangers in the Light' and so my artist research really helped my final outcomes. Without the artist research my photographs would have turned out very differently, since I hadn't considered incorporating the ides used by Catherine Balet before my research. Though I did try and add something f my own to it - for example, instead of photographing inside I decided to photograph outside in an attempt to incorporate nature, and I also made the contrast between light and dark a lot more present, as where there is no light it is nearly pitch black, creating a sense of isolation.



Photograph by Catherine Balet.

 

(One of my final outcomes.)

In my photograoh it is generally pich black where there is no light (higher contrast), unlike the work of Catherine Balet where the lighting is softer and evetually gets darker as it gets further from th light source.

To improve on my final outcomes I could have tried painting in some of the trees behind who I am photographing to help it link more to 'My World is Beautiful' and also have another photograph in which I use more than one person. Having two more photographs which are instead photographed earlier in the day when it is still dark, but light enough to see trees could have also added a nice amount of variation and also helped it link to one of my key themes.

If i were to shoot these again I would also shoot on a wider variety of locations, such as where there are more trees, or somewhere that lighting is more interesting. Another improvement wuld be to incorporate more light sources, such s using flood lights to create  stringer light, but one that was still clearly artificial. I could also try using a wider variety of angles, such as high or low angles, to give the photograph a different tone.