Portrait - Costing and Organisation

Organisation wise I have tried to roughly organise as best I can of what I think would be the best order to post my various blog posts on my portrait project. I have tried to work it out of doing general research first but still relevant to the project portraits then go into more focus posts of photographers and then also still posting within this what I'm doing at Uni in regards to taking images, what works what doesn't, printing and so on.
Costing for this project is quite high, probably one of the highest we've had if not the most. Although sending images off to be professionally printed can easily mount up the cost and for this assignment we do print out our own, it still works out expensive because of the costing of the paper and film a little.
£40 for 10 sheets of (black and white) paper sized 20 x 24
£10 for 10 sheets of (black and white) paper sized 9.5 x 12
£45 for 50 sheets of colour paper sized 12 x 16
£2 a black and white film which is one picture and I think it is around £5.50 for a roll of 12 pictures on a colour film.
£3 for the 20 x 24 sleeve. (bought individually.)
£9.95 for 9.5 x 12 print sleeves  (10 pack)
£13.45 for a 12 x 16 print sleeves (10 pack) 
Delivery came to £5.94
V.A.T came to £15.38 - as I ordered for 4 of us, all the same, 4  12x16 and 4 9.5x12. Individually it comes to nearly £5 V.A.T for just one each of those orders.

Portrait Photography Level 5

For my second project in second year we have portraits again however the difference this time is that we aren't shooting in the studio but out on the streets shooting strangers and using for some of these shots the 5x4 camera that I used in the last project for landscapes. For this project we have to hand in 3  9.5x12 inch black and white prints, 1  20x24 inch black and white also - exhibition standard print and finally 6  12x16 inch colour prints, the most we've had to hand in as a minimum. I will follow this post with some quite vague research on certain photographers, all who have done and/or focus on and are well known for their portraits as well as trying to find some lesser known photographers. I will then hopefully go into portraits and steer a little away from just talking about photographers however will mention them in the discussion if required. I will then mention costings and post things as they happen and things that are relevant, continuing on with my research as well.  

Editorial Evaluation

Editorial Evaluation.

Theme Extraordinary.

Nicola Callaghan (794 words)

I completed the assignment by first researching editorial and also the theme given which was extraordinary. I began looking at magazines like ‘Hot and Cool’ and photographers in general. After the initial research of these I began to think of ideas that I could do and one that came up which I liked was ‘Bipolar’. I have a friend who is Bipolar and she liked the idea as it brings awareness and she was willing to be photographed for the series which we had thought out and planned of how and what to do. A technique I used in some of the photos is one of my favourites which is Rembrandt lighting but which can also be tricky to get right. The method I chose was to shoot the series all in the studio as this would help me achieve them all looking like a body of work. I’m not too sure if anything or anyone in particular has inspired me to do the idea of Bipolar but I liked the fact it could help bring awareness and therefore people/ photographers who have done projects like this where they have made a series showing or portraying something to help bring awareness has inspired me. A problem I had at the beginning was trying to come up with an idea for this brief. I could think of things for editorial that I could possibly try and go in to but the word ‘extraordinary’ through me a bit and I was unsure what to do. I struggled coming up with something for about three weeks that I thought would fit both editorial and extraordinary. I had thought of maybe doing about Bipolar earlier on but only fully decided and committed to it within the third week. As it had been a few month since our last project I had forgotten how to do the sizing on the imaging for the CD, I had a vague idea but was uncertain so I looked up videos to try and help which they did somewhat but I have always had a little struggle with sizing, as even when I think it is right something always seems to be off or wrong. It takes a while for my head to get around things so I'm sure over time and practice I will be able to overcome this. The assignment challenged me because, like before in previous briefs, there is always something that I have not done formerly. In this case I had never done editorial or anything to do with the theme extraordinary, so I had to think of how to achieve what the brief asked of me. New skills I learned and have acquired because of this brief are editing skills, having to know what shots you want and choosing them all to fit together and work with each other to look like a body of work. Being able to go through a set of pictures and picking ones that fit the idea/ theme which all have a similar look and style to them but have their own individuality in regards to something in the image. I responded well from tutors and peers in regards to their feedback and advice as well as guidance. I really appreciated their comments and suggestions of how I could do certain things and also what I could do with the theme. I think that I have tried to meet the requirements of the brief as best I could and hopefully I have considering it was my first time doing anything editorial. As for the other requirements to the brief, i.e. the research (blog), prints, portfolio etc. I do think I have done what has been asked and is required though not all may be right or perfect. I would say that my work has been quite successful as I have done what is asked to the best of my ability. I could improve the work by trying even harder in the shoots I did in the studio to produce better work. I would also give myself more time to do the shoots and try to think of what I can do for the brief a lot sooner and this will help me have more time to take pictures where I know what I want to get out of the shoot and what my goals are to get out of studio time. What I would of done differently is similar to the above but also when sending my pictures of even the I set the resolution to 96 it came up low resolution, I think about 46, and I’m not sure why so had I more time I would have tried to correct this before sending them off. Hopefully they won’t be too bad!

Editorial Final Prints

Here are my final prints. A minimum of five are needed but I'm unsure of which ones to hand in as some are pretty much the same except for cropping and slight facial differences but I quite liked this as I, personally, think it fits the idea of Bipolar quite well.

Editorial - Research Portraiture recreations

Famous photographer Rankin recreated 7 famous and iconic photographs that changed fashion. I have watched this twice and it is really interesting and good to watch.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/4161221/Rankin-Seven-Photographs-that-Changed-Fashion.html
Video to watch Rankin recreating the photographs, good watch, very interesting. Link here -.http://vimeo.com/60749359

A more recent version of recreations is photographer Sandro Miller, like Rankin, created more very famous and well known images however unlike Rankin he used only one model/ subject to do so and he was John Malkovich. The series is refreshing and done very well. One of the images he did was the well known Dorothea Lange photo entitled 'the migrant mother'.
http://www.boredpanda.com/portrait-remakes-malkovich-homage-to-photographic-masters-sandro-miller/

Editorial - Rene Burri

Another photographer I looked in to was Rene Burri who was Swiss. He is well known for his iconic images of huge historical and cultural and political events as well as important people of that time like Pablo Picasso and Che Guevara for example. A lot of his images, like Bailey's are black and white and because of this feels like it suited that time (era) as they wanted viewers to focus on the contents of the image not necessarily the colours. However although many of the works are taken around the same time they feel completely different because of the contents and differences of the pictures. The styles of the images are totally individual and only the black and white are what they have in common.
The link below will take you to some examples of his work from the Magnum site.
http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL5350UE

Editorial - Research Photographers/ Portraits

One of the photographers I looked at is the very well known David Bailey. I chose him as I like his style of work regarding the harsh light that he sometimes uses and Rembrandt lighting. I like his black and white photographs that he still uses (does/produces) to this day and can easily recognise it as his work. You could only tell of the times (years) when the images where took because of the people in them as they are timeless.
Some of his work is available to see on Vogue if you click the link below;
http://www.vogue.co.uk/person/david-bailey
An interview Bailey did is the link below;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/10604874/David-Bailey-Ive-never-understood-why-people-like-Jean-Shrimpton-and-Kate-Moss-so-much.html

Another well known photographer I researched it Terry Richardson who, like Bailey, has photographed many celebrities and in his own very unique style and technique which is also recognisable. He has shot advertising campaigns for Tom Ford, Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Jacobs and supreme among many others.
 The link below is to Richardson's site;
http://www.terryrichardson.com/archive/#/

Editorial - Dazed magazine

Whilst researching I had a look at the magazine Dazed and Confused online. They have many various articles on there regarding fashion, art and culture, music and photography.

I think this magazine will be suitable and interesting for the majority of people as there is a great range within all of these subjects for people to chose from. They have some topical subject matters, up to date news given by photographers and journalists as well as artistic photographs.  

The link to have a look at this magazine also is below. All work belongs to the photographers credited. http://www.dazeddigital.com/

Editorial - Tutorial with teacher

I showed one of my lecturers in my tutorial the photos I'd taken so far and I told him my chosen subject of 'Bipolar' within the given brief Editorial and theme 'Extraordinary'. He mentioned not to do the 'cheesy' sort of images regarding to people screaming etc and showing the split emotion and focus more on the actual person and maybe have close ups so we get to really see the person and their emotion without them actually showing us directly. Looking at and in to their eyes to portray how they are feeling. I liked this idea, as well as my own still, but obviously opted to do what the lecturer said as it was his feedback and what would be the point of going to receive feedback to help you with your work and then not listening? He also stated to use a minimum of five different people instead of just the one person as it could/ would get boring seeing the same person for all five images, even if they were various images. So I have chosen to shoot five different people and each separate to the last,  I have ideas for four but two may be quite similar to each other more if I can't think of a fifth. 

Editorial - First shoot (ideas shoot), examples.

Here are some examples of a few idea shots I took for the given theme Extraordinary and my chosen subject Bipolar. The first images demonstrates the two sides we tried to portray. One side being normal, and the other how the person actually feels, maybe perceived as crazier to other people. Each side dressed differently to try and help visually demonstrate this idea. The second image I quite like but not sure why. The idea from this shot was previously I had taken shots of her foo above the clock to demonstrate her about to smash the clock and after those images I asked her to simply stand next to the clock and came up with this image. The third and fourth photographs link together as we played around with the idea of using shadows, as I had used shadows in I think all of the images so far, as it was another, subtle, concept of the shadow representing another side to the individual, a shadow that everyone has at some point. The first of these two images the model is in the picture and you can see she is creating the shadow and is aware of it, also whilst she is still dressed in a split way.  The bottom image solely shows just the shadow as I thought this brings the viewer in to think about what it could represent, what it is and the meaning of it.