You’ve looked at portraits taken of subjects who are either ‘aware’ or ‘unaware’ of the photographer’s interest. You should by now have thoroughly researched both areas and perhaps found some further examples of your own. Many of the practitioners highlighted here don’t necessarily work exclusively in one of these fields, but move between the two, depending upon what they’re trying to achieve through their imagery. There needs to be a reason for employing a particular method of working and it has been the intention of Part Two to provoke thought regarding what these reasons might be. The next assignment should test this reasoning to the full.
Brief: The objective of this assignment is to provide you with an opportunity to explore the themes covered in Part Two with regard to the use of both studio and location for the creation of portraits. This assignment is about taking what has worked from the above exercises and then trying to develop this further in terms of interchanging the use of portraits taken on location (street) with portraits taken inside (studio). You need to develop a series of five final images to present to the viewer as a themed body of work. Pay close attention to the look and feel of each image and think how they will work together as a series. The theme is up to you to choose; you could take a series of images of a single subject or a series of subjects in a themed environment. There is no right answer, so experiment.
Research Irving Penn and Claire Strand *(see course notes) and a couple of own examples of ‘aware’ portraiture
Brief: This exercise is essentially the same as the previous one, but instead of taking photographs of the same person, here you must make portraits of three different subjects, but keep the background to the image consistent (see Irving Penn and Clare Strand, above). There are many ways of exploring this exercise. You could either select an interesting backdrop to use inside (studio) or perhaps select an interesting backdrop on location (street). Whichever you choose, try to be as creative as you can and be prepared to justify your decisions through your supporting notes.
Again, present all three images together as a series and, in around 500 words, reflect upon how successful this exercise was in your learning log or blog.
Brief:Consider the work of both Callahan and Germain, then select a subject for a series of five portraits, varying the locations and backgrounds. The one consistent picture element must be the subject you have chosen, who must appear in all five images. Think carefully about where you choose to photograph them, either using a pose that offers a returned gaze to the camera, or simply captures them going about their daily business. The objective once again is to visually link the images together in some way.
You may choose a family member as a subject, like Callahan, or agree to photograph a colleague or friend, or even a willing participant who is either known or previously unknown to you, like Germain’s story about Charles Snelling.
Present your five images as a series and write around 500 words reflecting on the decisionsyou made. Include both of these in your learning log or blog.
Brief: This exercise comes with a serious health warning!
Closely consider the work of the practitioners discussed above, then try to shoot a series
of five portraits of subjects who are unaware of the fact they are being photographed.
As you’ve seen, there are many ways in which you can go about this, but we can’t stress
enough that the objective here is not to offend your subjects or deliberately invade
anyone’s privacy. If you don’t have permission to shoot in a privately-owned space, then
you should only attempt this work in a public space, where permission to shoot is not
necessarily required. This is a very interesting challenge, which some students will find incredibly difficult. Remember that the creative outcome of the practitioners discussed above has come about through a sustained approach, which is then heavily edited for presentation. You’ll need to shoot many images in order to be able to present five final images that work together as a set.
Think everything through carefully before attempting this exercise as the responsibility
for the outcome of the portraits rests entirely with you. If during the course of this exercise you are challenged in any way, be prepared to delete what you have shot. If you can see that you are annoying someone, or making them feel uncomfortable, stop shooting immediately. You’ll be required to operate with a degree of common sense here and not take unnecessary risks. There are ways of completing this exercise without incurring risk, such as shooting the work at a party you’ve been invited to, where all the guests have been invited for a particular celebration.
The reflection about your methodology will be as important as the final five images, so be prepared to write about how you found the experience (around 500 words) and present your findings via your learning log or blog.
Nb After researching these answer the following: Parr and Wood were photographing New Brighton at the same time during the early 1980s. Parr claimed ‘I am a documentary photographer, and if I take a good photograph in the process, that’s a bonus’. Wood stated ‘I’m interested in good photographs, and if they document something, so much the better!’ (Wood, 2005, p.33). Which of these approaches most closely reflects your own experience?
Brief:In this exercise, you’ll build on your ‘Background as context’ exercise (Exercise 1.2) by taking the relationship between your subject and their surroundings a step further. The objective here is to try to create a link between the two components of your image, i.e. the subject and their surroundings. Make three different portraits using three different subjects. Prior to shooting your portraits, engage with your subjects and agree three different specific locations which have some relevance or significance to them individually. You’ve already tried to give a particular context to a portrait by considering how the background might link to the subject positioned in the foreground, but now you must go one step further and negotiate a specific physical location where you’ll photograph your subject. This can either be inside or on location, but the key to this portrait is the interaction you’ve had with your subject in identifying a place that has specific meaning for them. Each portrait should be accompanied by a very short piece of text explaining the choice of location or venue. Don’t be tempted to create a work of complete fiction here; it might make life easier for you, but you’d be missing an opportunity to really engage with your subject and collaborate with them in the image-making process. You have complete freedom to work this out as you feel appropriate; for example, you may choose to theme the narrative behind all three portraits. Think carefully about how these images could work together as a set. For instance, if you plan to shoot outside, try to make sure the lighting conditions/ time of day/weather conditions all work coherently. Present all three images together as a series and reflect upon how successful this exercise was in your learning log or blog. Write around 500 words.
Please see the Contact Sheets for this Assignment here and the Research and Planning work here.
The idea behind my final Assignment series is the connection between a human and their pet animal and an insight in to whether those humans and their pets take on aspects of each other’s appearance or identity, whether that be because they are in close quarters to one another daily or through a shared empathy or love for one another.
As you will read in my Journal entries (link in side bar) and in my Research and Planning page I suffer from/am recovering from anxiety, social anxiety in particular, and so for me my comfort zone is somewhat different to what might be considered ‘normal’. In this Assignment I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and it was incredibly uncomfortable but extremely rewarding to see the end results. After I’d done one shoot I became more determined and excited to do the other four. My instinct with the first shoot was to take one photograph and then run away but I, with the help of an assistant, managed to pluck up the courage to take a series of shots to make sure I had a few to choose from with varying angles and camera settings. I even managed to find out a bit about the person and their life, where I felt brave enough I even managed a cup of tea and a chat before/after. All of my five subjects I had never met before, although some of them I had heard of as they were friends of friends. My first subject, Ellie, is the daughter of my partner’s work colleague and my partner knows her so that made an introduction easier for me than approaching someone on the street. I felt so so awkward to begin with and was aware that I was speaking in a really mechanical way to her to begin with and on realising this I began to try to focus on making her, and her dog, feel more relaxed. It helped that I am an animal owner myself as we talked about our pets and that relaxed us both somewhat. One interesting fact from our pre-shoot conversation is that Ellie told me she is expecting and that Ruby seems to know! I am very pleased with myself for being able to hold a conversation and being able to gather some background information on my subject. When it came to taking the photograph I suddenly realised that Ellie was waiting for me to direct her in to position and tell her how to pose. This was really difficult for me to do as I hadn’t put much thought in to it previously (other than that the photo should be taken in the subjects own home/garden/place of work) -having been worrying so much about talking to someone I’d never met before. I had a think and decided that Ellie should be kneeling as then I could fit Ruby in to the picture too whilst maintaining an intimate distance between the camera and the subject. Another thing that helped was that every time the camera clicked Ruby would run towards it because she was curious and amused by the noise and that made us both laugh and contributed towards Ellie’s genuine and relaxed smile. I am so pleased with the end result of the image I chose as both Ellie and Ruby have good eye contact with the camera and Ellie has a confident and genuine smile.
The second image in my series is of a lady called Hilary and one of her bantum hens, Ethel, one of eight hens which she is currently fostering. I met Hilary at work, she was a new customer of the tree surgery company I work for whom I’d never previously met. Asking Hilary for a portrait was incredibly awkward, I literally turned bright red and lost the ability to speak coherently. Somehow I managed to stammer out the question and gave her a brief explanation of the project I was working on to which Hilary said, “Yes, sure, I’ll just grab my coat!”. So it really was not anywhere near as bad as I had imagined it might be! Also, something to mention here is that a fellow student on the OCA Forum suggested that I get some business cards printed up so that it would be easier to verify who I am which I did and this made the initial interactions much easier. Overall I found that people were happy enough to have their portraits taken as long as they were not going to be posted on social media.
The remaining three images in the series are of my stepmother’s friend who has three dogs and a cat (I chose the cat for this series as I had already photographed a dog), a man I met at a local pub who had brought his parrot in on his shoulder and a girl who works in the farm shop who I had seen working there before but had not made her acquaintance. I found that having the animal present was easier when asking for the portrait as it helped to be able to pet the animal whilst talking to the potential subject and it helps build a rapport too because we instantly have a common passion (animals). Asking without the animal present was frankly a little awkward. I would have liked to have gone to a game fair or a farm/dog show as there would have been lots of people with their animals but its a little early in the year for that.
The photos I have taken for this Assignment are definitely environmental to some extent as the background in each image is part of the subject’s home/place of work and therefore offers more information on the subject’s identity than just their physical image. All but one image was taken at the subject’s home (something I am very proud of too as it took a lot of courage to go to an unfamiliar place and take the photos). I do not know enough about each subject to be able to say too much about whether the backgrounds reflect their personality but there are some personal touches to the backgrounds such as the shed that I know Mark painted blue himself and the greenhouse in the background of Hilary’s photo is relevant as I know that she is a keen gardener. The one of the lady called Amanda in the house is the only indoor photo but I feel it still belongs in the set as the other aspects of the image are consistent with the others in the series (such as the lighting, the theme, the focal range, the intimacy and the depth of field etc). On the day I photographed her it was raining and getting dark so we decided an indoor photo was better and apparently the brown leather chair is her cat’s favourite so that adds to the meaning behind the location!
The connection between the physical appearance of human and pet is not as obvious in my series as it is in Ines Ophelia’s work of which was an influence to me but it is still present. When I look at each pair I can see not just a connection but a similarity between them. In all pairs there was a strong connection and each human subject has two common links with another in that a) they are all strangers to the photographer and one another and b) that they have a shared love for animals that is almost mirrored in each image. In some images more than others it is obvious that the subject is slightly uncomfortable with the presence of the camera but they are all very comfortable with the presence of their pet – a casual arm draped around a dogs neck, a gentle coo-ing with pursed lips to a bird who is reaching for an offered grape, an almost maternal look of adoration on a girl’s face as she looks upon her baby rabbit etc.
I am really happy with all five of the portraits, I actually couldn’t believe that my shaking hands could still take a photograph let alone a meaningful one but apparently they can! I’m so glad that I made plans to take more than one photograph using different settings and camera positions as the image I thought was the best on the viewfinder was often not when I got it on to my computer and so it was good to have lots to choose from. My only real regret is that I didn’t ask Hilary to turn slightly more so that less of her face was in shadow. My favourite photo is of Mark and Jim the parrot as I like the interaction between him and the parrot. In some ways I wish I had asked the other subjects to interact more with their pets too but I was initially concerned about getting blurry images due to not being able to judge the correct shutter speeds on the spot. Overall I am really proud of myself for having completed this Assignment, I used every ounce of willpower and courage I had to do the first shoot and after that it did get a little bit easier to approach potential sitters. I feel very satisfied with the outcome and I feel I would be less concerned about approaching a stranger in the future, especially now that I know I can take portraits to a standard which I am proud of (and therefore I wouldn’t mind showing the results to an inquisitive sitter).
Here are the final five images from the Assignment:
Ellie and RubyHilary and EthelAmanda and BootsMark and JimKaty and Nessa
Assessment criteria
Demonstration of technical and visual skills
I think I did well with my demonstration of technical and visual skills because I didn’t merely take the portrait’s without considering the backgrounds first and that I took more than one photograph so as to explore different variations of the same portrait. My images are fairly consistent with their use of lighting and angle and focal distance etc which makes the images work well as a series – I can image them on the wall of a gallery. This is a difficult Assignment to self assess as I was trying my hardest to ascertain the best settings and camera angles and lighting etc for the images whilst under a lot of pressure socially (as was of course the aim of the assignment) so they may not be as good as they might have been had I known the subject well. Having said that I think in some ways I tried harder to make sure that I had at least three images on my viewfinder that I could work with when I got home so as not to be embarrassed later if the subject emailed me and asked for a copy and of course so that I wouldn’t need to ask for a re-shoot. I think that my visual skills are constantly improving as I tend to get better at considering the image in my viewfinder before pressing the shutter button instead of aimlessly shooting. I wanted the portraits to be intimate so even though it was awkward I tried to get as close as possible with the camera. I did find this easier than I had imagined it as the camera makes a sort of barrier between me and the subject. Considering the times of day, locations and natural/artificial light were all different I think I did well to keep all the images similar in lighting and colour. However if I was to do the same project again I would try to arrange the same time of day and keep them all outside instead of having one of the subject’s inside. I would also be more careful about measuring the distance between me and the subject so that all images in the series were a little more consistent in terms of intimacy.
Quality of outcome
I am very pleased with the results of this Assignment considering the doubt I had in myself at the beginning. At one point my only aim was to ‘just do’ the assignment no matter the results but once I had completed the first portrait I realised that I was definitely capable of much more than ‘just doing it’ and I put in a lot more planning and effort as I was then inspired and excited to continue the project. When I set out to do the project I thought I would want the images to be in black and white but I decided after the first two photographs that colour was an interesting factor in them – for example Hilary’s clothing and her chicken are almost identical in colouring which was fascinating to me and in my opinion makes the portrait more interesting to view. I have not yet had the images printed so will not send them for tutor feedback this time but will have them printed soon to check quality for eventual Assessment.
Demonstration of creativity
I think given my struggles with confidence for this Assignment that I still managed to draw upon my own creativity and personal voice to create an interesting theme instead of just relying on the common theme that all the subjects were unknown to me. I decided to use the subject and their animal to document the close relationships between owner and pet and hint at similarities between the two. I also directed the subjects around their own gardens and homes and spoke to them about themselves in order to arrange backgrounds which spoke something of their individual characters and/or that of their pets.
Context
I think that my research is a good start towards other practitioners in this area but needs to be extended. I am going to ask my tutor to point me in the direction of some further research in perhaps environmental portraiture or portraits with humans and animals so that I can study these areas further and this further research will be included in a revised edition.
Identity and Place 