Unit 05 People
Diverse approaches to Portrait and Human Photography underpin this unit. Studio and Location environments will be utilised in order to examine the heritage, conventions and culture surrounding the photographing of people.
In common with Units 3 and 5 as the practical Year One units of the programme, Image Capture will be digitally and film based, in line with the programme ethos of multi process working.
Students will be encouraged to work with a list of process and subject solutions in order to evolve a portfolio of images that exhibit a contextual and commercial aspect of people photography. This will be examined in relation to the work produced by the student group.
In order to gain an understanding of the four categories into which the People Brief has been loosely organised, start by researching your allocated photographer and the following terms :
Fine Art portraits; Corporate portraits ; Environmental portraits and Candid portraits.
Whilst it helps if you can identify the chief characteristics that define these diverse approaches to portrait photography they are by no means mutually exclusive. Don’t get too pre-occupied down with categorising images;
Jan Saudek
• Find at least six images - before next weeks lesson - print them in colour on the laser printer (UC417)
• Summarise three main points about their approach;
• Summarise three points about their visual style of photography;
• Find their website / homepage and further links to their work.
• Present your research on your blog before the lesson so it can be reviewed in class;
Want to do more? Try looking at any of the following: Bruce Gilden, Paulo Pellegrin, Steve McCurry, Elliot Erwitt, Joseph Koudelka, Nadav Kander, Karsh, Martin Parr, Boris Mikhailov, Brassai, Munkasci, Nan Goldin,Cindy Sherman, Tim Hetherington.
Research on Jan Saudek -
Initial impressions of the portrait photos -
- Simple sets, sometimes just chair and backdrops
- harsh contrasty lighting
- subject falls into two camps large nude females in improbable positions and touching baby photos
- each image has a title which hints at a story not immediately obvious in the image
- early photos (1950s) were shot on location but gradually more were studio until latest work all studio.
- a window behind the subject is used to bring another view into the image
Fine art portrait
 |
| Heavy metal |
Corporate portrait - not sure he did them!
Environmental portrait
 |
| Stalingrad |
Candid portrait
 |
| Brothers |
A further three images for printing
 |
| Ballerina |
 |
| Kisses in the moonlight |
 |
| 120km/hr |
We were also tasked to take 8 environmental portraits to discuss in class next week. I missed this lecture due to the London residential but had used the time in London to photograph people as well as the city and galleries so chose the below images from my London portfolio.
In order to produce a fine art portrait I used the studio at UCBC. Mick was my model, my idea was to produce a high contrast black and white portrait of him which showed something of his character.
I lit him using a single flash fitted with a snoot to concentrate the light on a small area.
The corporate portrait caused me problems because I was not sure what one was. Everyone I asked gave me a different answer. In the end I went with the advice given by Martin on the grounds that he might be marking our work if Andy had not returned from sick by the time our work is submitted.
Martin advised me to set up a straightforward studio portrait with one of my classmates, using beauty dishes to the rear and a honeycomb to the front.
Jack and Liv were the two volunteers and the set up was as shown below
I February I went to a community event in Manchester where The Fairy Job Mother was recruiting for one of her jobseeking courses.
I was asked to take photographs to be used for publicity for future events.
