Zemni Photography Blog

Photography projects, inspiration and research by Linda Mayoux

Basics of portraiture

Category: Identities

  • Basics of portraiture

    Portraiture  is a conscious act of more than one person. It is consensual.
    “It is, however, not so much what is depicted as the relationship between the photographer and subject that is significant. Academic painting sanctioned the image of the body in terms of official classic tradition and so does early academic photography, but it does so in terms of its promise of the actual. An image of a body as distinct from the painting of a body insists on a privileged access normally shared only between the artist and (his) model.” (Clark p.124)

    Photography in its infancy drew heavily on the painting tradition and a knowledge of portrait painting techniques can support us in mastering portrait photography. That’s why it’s important to look at other photographers’ and artists’ work in some detail.

    Listen to Robert Amft on the relationship between painting and photography:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RN-aN4LQgU
    http://robertamft.com/art-of-amft/photography

    Amft does prism images and portraits, and digital mosaics.

    Exercise: Draw a Portrait

    The body in the photograph

    The relationship between photographer and sitter is a one-to-one relationship that has predetermined external pressures that the photographer needs to manage during the work.

    • Do we pay a photographer to produce this portrait that shows us as handsome or beautiful?
    • or do we pay a photographer to produce the truth?

    A very common issue with photographers is whether or not they should photograph people they know. Working as a photographer with those we live with or work with is often very frustrating; they won’t do as you ask, they expect you to finish in a matter of seconds, and so on.

    The sitter who is a stranger is likely to have a number of questions:
    • What is the truth? Will I like it?
    • If sitting at the photographer’s request, why me?
    • What does the photographer see?
    • How will I be portrayed – as clever, intellectual, rich, powerful, ordinary, or even sleazy, cheap or hopeless?
    Difficult questions and not a frame shot as yet.

     

    Read Chapter 6 of Graham Clarke’s The Photograph, especially pp.123–43.
    This is a very good piece on the body and its use within a range of genres of photographic imagery.

    Controlling the elements of portraiture

    But despite its consensual nature,  portraiture is in the control solely of the photographer???; the sitter can’t see what is happening. This is unlike other areas of work, such as editorial or fashion photography, which often happens in settings that the photographer has no control over.

    Painting portraits has provided artists with a way of earning a living since the Renaissance. Aspiring painters with a sufficient level of skill and aptitude would be apprenticed to a great master’s studio (provided they could meet the cost of indenture). Typically, the master painted the faces while the students painted the bodies or perhaps the background detail.

    sfumato:  a technique   to produce the softness and the skin tones necessary for the photorealism their clients demanded.

    The photographer for the most part controls the background, pose, clothes, props, lighting and exposure in the consensual act of portrait photography. Of course, these are not really separate
    issues – they are inter-related. Change the clothes or the background and you have a very different feel or meaning to the work. People respond to costume and situation and the image
    will change accordingly.

    So, if all these elements are interlinked, where do we start with this multi-functional task which in practice can resemble a circus plate spinning act – get one thing
    right and another is wrong?

    Quality of light

    A good starting point is the quality of light that falls on the subject.

    chiaroscuro: the nature of the light falling on a subject. In harsh light the tonal range decreases. In soft light the tonal range increases – hence the use of softboxes in commercial studios.Let’s return to painting.

    Early photographers’ portrait studios used something they
    called ‘north light’ from the direction of the roof windows, using blinds and curtains to control where the light fell.

    We can use light and dark – contrast and tones – to create shapes and form to portray three-dimensional subjects. A common device in both painting and photographic portraits (eg Rembrandt self-portraits) is to show one  side of the face  with soft daylight falling on it. On the other side, the shadow of the nose meets the cheek shadow but the eye is still in the light.  The face looks rounded or three-dimensional. This can be achieved with a soft light on both sides but exposure becomes critical. You have to ensure that the lighting ratio across the face does not exceed 4:1. That is 8 stops difference for a hand print; if reproduced in a magazine this will have to be considerably reduced.

    As a painter Rembrandt has artistic licence – that is, to have shadow areas where he wanted them, vignetting the centre, and small soft pools of light where he saw fit. The genius is that it looks plausible and natural.

    David Saffir and Sally Wiener Grotta discuss how their photography has been inspired by Rembrandt’s Night Watch at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJN0pdSv__U

    Bill Truran’s portrait of a little girl (more like Vermeer lighting)

    The sun is the natural light source that all artificial lighting tries to reproduce but the sun isn’t always the same – it gives us different results on different days dependent upon the time of year and the weather. On a bright day it throws hard shadows, on a grey day soft shadows. Contrast in tone is the issue here. On a sunny day shadows are deep/dark and highlights are bright so there is high contrast. On a cloudy day shadows are mild and highlights are scarce so there is
    low contrast.

    Outdoor portrait photography

    John Freeman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYlpLRA8Mbw
    (www.johnfreeman-photographer.com/ is Japanese!!)

    If you’re making a portrait it is perfectly feasible to use the sun as your light source.

    But if the subject is facing the sun you may well end up with squinting or some other facial expression that you’d rather avoid. When shooting a subject against the light never look at the sun through your lens – it can severely damage your eye.

    It’s normal practice to pose your subject with their back to the sun and use a reflector. In technical terms, this means that you have a main or key light (the reflector) – the light you want to work with – and a secondary light source (the sun) exposing the background and lighting the edges of your subject (e.g. modelling light on the subject’s shoulder or lighting the hair).

    Because the reflector isn’t the brighter of the two lights you need to consider your exposure. Where do you meter from? Meter from the face. You can do this by setting your camera to spot meter or – as many professionals still do – by using a light meter. Expose for the face; if you get this right everything else should fall into place.

    Exercise: Outdoor Portraits

     

  • Rembrandt

    Rembrandt had a studio with fantastic quality daylight; the window light was soft and he used reflector sheets to bounce light back where he wanted it. In other words he used soft controlled light which is what the studio softboxes of today http://www.rembrandthuis.nl/cms_pages/index_main.html

    Rembrandt creative commons website

    Exercise: The Night Watch
    The painted portrait had to show the viewer what was important either to the sitter or the creator. This was done in some cases by pose, in some by costume or uniform or significant items with inherent meaning, or simply by position – being higher up than others or at the optimum positional point of the image. Look carefully at Rembrandt’s famous painting The Night Watch, commissioned by Frans Banning Cocq, the figure in the centre foreground.

    Before you follow the link below, make some notes in your learning log about how the artist uses the elements listed above (background, pose, clothes, props, light). What effect does
    he create? What does the portrait say about Banning Cocq?
    Look particularly at the use of light and dark in this huge portrait. How might you create similar effects photographically?
    Now follow the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9jj74aOr_Q

  • Exercise: A self-portrait

    This exercise aims to develop your analytical skills in defining how to portray someone, but this time the subject is you.

    Write 150 words about yourself and select a stance from this to bring to the camera.

    In terms of lighting, etc., use a friend or family member to practise and then set the camera up on a tripod and either use a timer or ask someone to press the button when you tell them. It’s still your image – you set it up, did the posing, lighting, costume, hair, etc.

    Produce three images that tell the viewer all about you – as you see yourself.

    Now ask friends or colleagues what they think your strengths and weakness are. Ask them what defines your character to them, how they see you. Produce three images from your friends’ points of view.

    Write the experience up in your learning log. Do the images coincide in terms of your own and your friends’ impressions of you? In other words, were you trying to photograph the ‘same’ person in each case or someone completely different? Then look again at the images and see if they coincide visually. Try and analyse your findings.

  • Exercise: Identity: There’s only one…

    Yes it’s a football chant but it also reflects your uniquenesss, your identity.
    What are you about? Why are you –you? What makes you different from other people? What makes you the same?
    For this exercise, use either a mobile phone or a small but cheap digital compact. No DSLR or bridge cameras. You’ll also need a large lump of Blu-Tack or plasticine to put your camera on or stick the camera into. This is your tripod – it will stick into corners, on shelves, etc., where you would struggle to put a full-sized tripod.
    Photograph yourself for three days. If you can, take roughly one photograph per hour.
    If you miss an hour you can’t take two shots in the next. And you can’t repeat it if it goes wrong, if somebody moved, etc. Aim to show your feelings, your moods, your quirks, your belongings, your environment – the things that make you into you.
    Produce eight images that, together, create a profile of you and explain what there is to know about you when read from left to right in a particular order.

  • Sam Taylor-Wood

    Sam Taylor-Wood has become one of the UK’s leading photographic artists and is now establishing herself as a film director.

    Much of Taylor-Wood’s work explores feelings and emotion.

    • Gracefully Suspended self-portrait series explores the feeling and perhaps euphoria of weightlessness.
    • Men Crying exposes the vulnerability and emotional side of wellknown film actors.

     

    Taylor-Wood  has been described as a post-feminist artist. Some of her work in which she has appeared naked, for example Leda and the Swan, has attracted feminist criticism.

    For the more commercial side of STW visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8thrvcrEOuU

     

  • Miru Kim

    New York-based photographer Miru Kim is fascinated by city life.

    Naked City Spleen series features Kim herself naked in city locations across the world, including New York, Paris
    and Berlin.

    The Pig That Therefore I Am.

    http://vimeo.com/19871003
    http://www.mirukim.com/photosPig.php
    http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/naked-city-spleen-by-miru-kim-1

  • Laurie Toby Edison

    American photographer Laurie Toby Edison (born 1942) has engaged with gender and body image in her books:

    Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes (1994) and

    Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes (2004).

    More recent work includes Women of Japan which features clothed portraits of women from different social backgrounds.

    Visit the website for more images and an insight into Edison’s practice:
    http://laurietobyedison.com/video.asp
    Listen to a video of Edison talking about the values and practice of her work:
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4596714865921868323&hl=en#

  • Rachel Stone

    “As a self-made woman, an auto-didact to the core, I have always been screaming and shouting, trying to add my breath to the winds of change, which should shake off the lethargy of human kind to become a more loving race, where men and women, equally regarded, take control over their lives instead of being controlled by those in power….to take off the pressure of the never ending flow of images in my head I started to create through means of photography; using archetypes and ancient and new symbols alike to get my messages across, finding this a more subtle and effective way to get response and actually reach the hearts of people; we, you and I, can make change by being that change!”

    Photographer  (born 1976 in the Netherlands), like Cindy Sherman, uses both self-portraiture and dolls . Stone’s work is more distinctly feminist, however, as it frequently deals with the domestic lives of women, pregnancy and motherhood. She frequently uses props such as phones, dolls, teapots, clothing pins and other items identified with the domestic lives of women. Stone’s work plays with perspective and scale and is influenced by dreams or nightmares visualised through surrealism.

    Rachel Stone @ http://www.lilithgallery.com/gallery/rachel_stone.html

    For more of Stone’s work, visit: http://www.rachelstonephotography.com

  • Barbara Kruger

    Barbara Kruger (born 1945) studied alongside Diane Arbus but went into the field of graphic design and worked for numerous magazines. She developed what became her signature style
    of work in the 80s when she stopped taking photographs and started to use American media sources for her images. She places banners across the images with direct, pithy and hard-hitting
    phrases on them, often involving pronouns such as ‘I’, ‘you’ and ‘they’. Where Sherman’s images challenged aspects of modern society, these images were directly combative – often aimed at
    YOU and placed so that you couldn’t avoid the question. Kruger did this by transforming normal white cube galleries into combat arenas and presenting her work as an installation.
    The image below is not an installation but is equally direct, questioning female roles, identity
    and task assignment.
    I shop therefore I am 1987

  • Identity

    As a photographer of people, you need to get to grips with the idea of identity and social constructions of identity. How you portray people will have ethical and moral implications. And you’ll need to create images that convey a particular truth or message, depending on the brief in hand.

    What am I to who? The discovery of self and the search for identity

    An important strand in feminist art is the idea of selfhood – the individual who is lost within the objectifying image.

    • Do images of us represent what we are?
    • Or do we see them in a postmodern sense where they represent who we think we are and what we know about ourselves in a way
      that allows us to analyse and learn about ourselves, growing and shaping our perspective on self even further?

    When we talk about our identity, we usually mean one of two identities:

    • social identity – mother, Scottish, student
    • personal identity – goals, passions, dreams, achievements, style, etc. Personal identity encompasses body image which is very relevant to disorders such as bulimia or anorexia.

    These two short papers on self and identity give further perspective on this issue. The second link, in particular, examines the nature of self-identity through roles and its interaction with social identity formulated through group attachment or membership.
    http://wat2146.ucr.edu/Papers/02a.pdf
    http://wat2146.ucr.edu/papers/00a.pdf

    Female photographers may choose to investigate the classic female roles of wife, mother and daughter and the expectations associated with these roles. For women there is a great deal of visual pressure through the use of manipulated images of women in fashion and PR situations. Women compare themselves unfavourably with the ‘false’ images they see, for example in the marketing of beauty products. A recent BBC website poll found that only 2% of UK women see themselves as beautiful.

    Men also have dilemmas in terms of identity. Are they boys or men, fathers, husbands or sons? Are they role models or wasters? Writers or Romeos? Again, crucial components of identity that deliver self-worth and self-esteem. Think about men who over-train at the gym or use steroids to change their body shape. (Go on the internet and look for Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein’s photographs of Olympic athletes, for example.) These are all issues that have been explored in contemporary fine art photography.

    Issues of identity are fertile ground for photographic investigation. Richard Billingham explored the effect that his father’s alcohol dependency and the consequent impact on his personality
    had on family life.

    Cindy Sherman has investigated a range of roles in her work – executive/employee, equal/object.

    Self Portrait

    We can examine ourselves through the art of self-portrait and looking at how we wish to be seen – how we wish to define ourselves and how we are seen by others and how they would define

    us. You could base a project on your own identity, asking ‘How am I perceived and is the treatment I receive in life, the interactions I like or dislike, related to the way people perceive me?’ There is also a lot of potential for project work in gender roles, society’s perceptions and expectations, and acceptance (or not) of different sexualities.We can also just use ‘things’ that we feel represent us, items that have the properties that we hold dear as signs of honesty or virtue, humour or fate. These images can be combined to form allegorical images of our personas.

    • How we are perceived is important to some people; for others, it’s not an issue worth considering. For most of us, though, people’s perception of us is important at certain times or places in our lives, for example if you’re looking for work or trying to sell something. Even then, you can’t assume that prospective employers or buyers have the same values as you do.
    • Are the things that you hold dear evident in the way you are seen or do you put on a ‘mask’?
    • Are the things you are perceived to hold dear just an illusion?
    • Does your dress code say you are ‘one of us’? What is meant by ‘us’ in a particular context? ‘Us’ is usually the group making the judgment, those who consider themselves able to make judgments on our behalf. Judgments may be based on all sorts of factors – race, nationality, colour, religion or speaking with a southern accent. (Scottish accents come across as more trustworthy according to advertising research.)