Studio photography proposal

For my four week project I have decided to use life and death as my theme. I have chosen to do this theme because there is many life changing events what happen around us everyday such as child birth, a death of a loved one, vegetation, etc. I will be experimenting with product photography. I will be using a variety of different lighting modifiers. For my product shoot I will be using a snoot and if the image looks over exposed I will use a reflector. 

Life and death has influenced me because there has been a recent child birth in my family and a loss of a loved one. I will be researching other artists and photographers who have used life and death as the main body of their work, I will be looking at their works. I will be using the internet and different books for all the information about life and death and the artists and photographers and what in spired them.

My previous ideas where:

1. Tim Burton- Gothic, movies with death and life(corpse bride)
2. Tim Burton with sexuality- showing sexuality in Tim Burton's films
3. dead vegetation- dead leaves, fruit, veg
4. dead animals- packaged meat

I have chosen dead animals for my final idea only because when we go to the supermarket and walk down the frozen meat isle we don't think of them being animals but just as meat. So I found some meat what I can use for my shooting.

For my test shots I used a pile of dead twigs and leafs, rotten lettuce and a skull cup.

 For this image I used dead twigs and leafs. I put the camera quite close to the object. I like how the centre of the image is in focus why the rest of the image isn't. For this image I used a snoot with a silver reflector and a black backdrop. I placed the snoot on the right hand side of the product scoop and the silver reflector was on the left.The settings I had on my camera for this image are F5.6, ISO 100 and the shutter speed 1/100. If I were to change this image I would try using a softbox to see if it softens the light and I would use a golden reflector to see if it would bounce the light back  a lot more than a silver                                                                                     one.

For this image I used some rotten lettuce leaves. I put the camera quite close to the object. I like how the centre of the image is in focus why the rest of the image isn't. I also like how the part of the image what is in focus has turned yellow and a little part of it has turned purple. For this image I used a snoot and a silver reflector and a black backdrop. I placed the snoot on the right hand side of the product scoop and put the silver reflector on the left hand side. The settings I had on my camera for this image are F5.6, ISO 100 and the shutter speed 1/100. I wouldn't change this image because I think it looks nice and interesting the way it is.

For this image I used a skull cup what is of one of Tim Burton's films 'the nightmare before Christmas'. I like how the image is just a skull. I also like how the skull looks like a warm skin tone colour instead of being white. For this image I used a snoot, a silver reflector and a black background. I placed the snoot on the right hand side and the silver reflector on the left hand side. The settings I had on my camera for this image are F5.6, ISO 100 and the shutter speed 1/100. If I where to change this image I would try and make the left side of the image more darker so there is only the right hand side you can see in detail.
For my final images I used packaged meat.

 For this image I used 2 fish fingers and a pile of stem leaves from a dandelion root. I like how the light has cast a shadow on the leafs and the fish fingers. I also like how the leafs are fairly the same size apart from 2 leafs. For this image I used a snoot, a silver reflector and a white background. I placed the snoot on the right hand side and the silver on the left hand side. The settings I had on my camera for this image are F20, ISO 100 and the shutter speed 1/4. If I where to change this image I would attach string around the 2 fish fingers and stick the leafs to a piece of card and make it look like the fish fingers are swimming.

For this image I used a piece of chicken. I like how there is still some ice on the piece of chicken. Also I like the shape of the chicken. For this image I used a snoot, a silver reflector and a white background. I placed the snoot on the right hand side of the product scoop and the silver reflector on the left hand side. The settings I had on my camera for this image are F20, ISO 100 and the shutter speed 1/4. If I where to change this image I would let the chicken defrost a little bit more and change the position on the chicken.

For this image I used a sausage and a burger. I like how the sausage and the burger are still a little bit frozen. Also I like how the light has cast a shadow on the sausage and the burger. For this image I used a snoot, a silver reflector and a white background. I placed the snoot on the right hand side and the silver reflector on the left hand side. The settings I had on my camera for this image are F20, ISO 100 and the shutter speed 1/4. If I where to change this image I would try and do something interesting with the sausage and the burger so its not just plain and bland.

For this image I  used some chopped up turkey. I like how the texture looks on the turkey. Also I like how the turkey has fallen into a random place. For this image I used a snoot, a silver reflector and a white background. I placed the snoot on the right hand side of the product scoop and the silver reflector on the left hand side. The settings I had on my camera for this image are F20, ISO 100 and the shutter speed 1/4. If I where to change this image I would try and get my camera closer to the turkey to try and get more of the detail on the turkey.

For this image I used a piece of red meat. I like this image because the meat looks a little bit like a heart. Also I like how there is a little bit of ice on the bottom of the meat. For this image I used a snoot, a silver reflector and a white background. I placed the snoot on the right hand side of the product scoop and the silver reflector on the left hand side. The settings I had on my camera for this image are F20, ISO 100 and the shutter speed 1/4. If I where to change this image I would add some grass and place the meat on top.

Self portraits

Richard Avedon

In 1944, Richard Avedon began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly endorsed by Alexander Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. Lillian Bassman also promoted Avedon's career at Harper's. In 1945 his photographs began appearing in Junior Bazaar and, a year later, in Bazaar itself. In 1946, Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and life. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar . From 1950 he contributed photographs to life, look and graphics and in 1952 became staff editor and photographer for Theatre arts magazine. By the 1960s Richard had turned energies towards making studio portraits of civil rights workers, politicians and cultural dissidents of various stripes in an America fissured by discord and violence. He began to branch out and photographed patients of mental hospitals, the civil rights movement in 1963, protesters of the Vietnam war, and later the fall of the Berlin wall.

Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman works in series, typically photographing herself in a range of costumes. To create her photographs, Sherman shoots alone in her studio, assuming multiple roles as author, director, make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe mistress, and model. Bus riders (1976/2000) is a series of photographs that featured the artist as a variety of meticulously observed characters. The photographers were shot in 1976 and are among the artist's earliest work but, like another series entitles Murder mystery people, were not printed or exhibited until 2000. Sherman uses   elaborate costumes and make-up to transform her identity for each image, but is photographed in a sparse, obviously staged setting with a wooden chair standing in for the bus seat. In her landmark 69-photographs series, the complete untitled film stills(1977-1980; although the 1997 travelling MOCA retrospective included five straight - on head shot dated 1975)

Ivring Penn

Ivring Penn was best known for his fashion photography. Penn's repertoire also includes portraits of creative greats; ethnographic photographs from around the world; modernist still life's of food,bones,bottles,metal, and found objects. Penn was among the first photographers  to pose subjects against a simple grey or white backdrop and be effectively used this simplicity. Penn's still life compositions are spare and highly organised. His photographs are composed with a great attention to detail,  which continues into his craft of developing and making prints of his photographs. Penn experimented with many printing techniques, including prints made on aluminium sheets coated with a platinum emulsion rendering the image with a warmth that undertone silver prints locked. His black and white prints are notable for their deep contrast, giving them a clean, crisp look.

Helmut Newton

In 1946, Newton set up a studio in fashionable Flinders lane and worked on fashion and theatre photography in the affluent post- war years. He shared his first joint exhibition in may 1953 with Wolfgang Sievers. Newtons growing repetition as a fashion photographer was rewarded when he secured a commission to illustrate fashions in a special Australian supplement for Vogue magazine. Newton settled in Paris in 1961 and continued work as a fashion photographer. His works appeared in magazines including, most significantly, French vogue and Harper's Bazaar. He established a particular style marked by erotic, stylized scenes, often with sado- masochistic and fetishistic subjects.

David Bailey

In 1959, Bailey become a photographic assistant at the John French studio, and in may 1960, he was a photographer for John Cole's studio five before being contracted as a fashion photographer for British Vogue magazine later that year.  He also undertook a large amount of freelance work. Since 1966, Bailey has also directed several TV commercials and documentaries. Bailey photographed album sleeve art for musicians including The rolling stones. David Bailey was hired in 1970 by Island records Chris Blackwell to shoot publicity photos of cat Stevens for his upcoming album Tea for the Tillerman. In 1972 rock musician Alice Cooper was photographed by Bailey for vogue magazine, almost naked apart from a snake. Cooper used Bailey the following year to shoot for the groups chart. In 1985, Bailey was photographing stars at the Live Aid concert at Wembley stadium.

File formats

GIF - graphic interchange format

Gif creates a table of up to 256 colours from a pool of 16 million. If the image has fewer than 256 colours, Gif can render the image exactly. Gif achieves compression in 2 ways. 1st it reduces the number of colours of colour- rich images, there by reducing the number of bits needed per pixel. 2nd it replaces commonly occurring patterns with a short abbreviation: Instead of storing white,white,white,white,white it stores 5 white.

RAW - raw data

Raw is an image output option available on some digital cameras. Though lossless, it is a factor of 3 of 4 smaller than TIFF files of the same image. The disadvantage is that there is a different RAW format for each manufacturer, and so you have to use the manufacturers software to view the image.

TIFF - tagged image file format

TIFF is a very flexible format that can be lossless or lossy. TIFF is used almost exclusively as a lossless image storage format that uses no compression at all.

PSD - Photoshop document

PSD is a layered image file used in Adobe photoshop - is the default format that photoshop uses for saving data - is a proprietary file that allows the user to work with images individual layers even after the file has been saved.

PNG - portable network graphic

PNG is also a lossless storage format. However in contrast with common TIFF usage, it looks for patterns in the image that it can use to compress file size. The compression is exactly reversible so the image is recovered exactly.

JPEG - joint photographic expert group

JPEG is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable trade off between storage size and image quality.

Idioms

An idiom is a combination of words that has a figurative meaning owing to its common usage. An idiom's figurative meaning is separated from the literal meaning. There are thousands of idioms and they occur frequently in all languages. For example when pigs fly means something will never happen, let the cat out of the bag means disclose a secret that was supposed to be kept, don't judge a book by its cover means should not decide upon something based just on outward appearances, etc.

For my idioms I have chosen to do are Hit the books, Scratch someone's back and Get the cat out of the bag.

Hit the books

Scratch someone's back

Get the cat out of the bag

Stereotypes

What is a stereotype?

A stereotype is a thought that may be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality. There are two different types of stereotypes these are positive and negative. These are some negative stereotypes: All blond woman are dumb, All red heads are sluts, Guys are messy and unclean, etc. Some positive stereotypes are: French are  romantic, All Indians are deeply spiritual, All blacks are great basketball players, etc.

For my stereotypes I have used people who are young and old.

 

YOUNG

 YOUNG AND OLD

YOUNG AND OLD

Research on types of studio photograhpy

Bob Martin- action

Bob Martin is famous for his photography in the athletic field, capturing many shots in competitive events and the players involved. Bob specializes in action shots, mostly in the sports arena. He has photographed every single Olympic games since 1998.Bob Martins photographs have been published in many places such as sports Illustrated magazines, New York Times, The Sunday Times, Life Magazine Time and many more. Bob Martin is the only current photographer based outside the United States, being in his own home country, England. Bob Martin has been awarded over 53 national and international awards. In 2005, Bob was lucky enough to get award the 'Sports picture of the year'. In 2005 alone, Bob won 23 awards. Bob Martin has won the British sports photographer of the year three times. After 20 years of professional photography, Bob Martin has definitely achieved some great things, from experiencing the Olympics to becoming a multi award winner.

Dennis Peterson- still life

Of Armenian descent, Dennis Peterson was one of the first photo realists to emerge in New York. He is widely acknowledged as the pioneer and primary architect of hyper realism, which was founded on the aesthetic principles  of photo realism. Dennis Peterson distinguished hyper realism from photo realism making meticulous changes to works depth of field, colour, and composition in order to emphasize a socially conscious message about contemporary culture and politics. Peterson has often utilized the hyper realism painting style as a phenomenological vehicle for social change. In his work 'dust to dust', Peterson asserts that a man of negligible social status who inhabits the lowest stratum of society is just as worthy of having his portrait painted as any titled individual or famous person, and, more importantly just as deserving of having his humanity recognised. 

 

Alexander Gardner

Alexander Gardner become an apprentice jeweller at the age of fourteen, lasting seven year. He was influenced by the work of Robert Owen, Welsh socialist and father of the co-operative movement. In 1850, Gardner and others purchased land near Monona, Iowa, for this purpose, but Gardner never lived there, choosing to return to Scotland to raise more money. He stayed there until 1856, becoming owner and editor of the Glasgow sentinel in 1851. Visiting The Great Exhibition in 1851 in Hyde park, London, he saw the photography of American Matthew Brady, and this began his interests in the subject. Gardner and his family immigrated to the united states in 1856. He initiated contact with Brady and come to work for him that year, continuing until 1862. At first, Gardner specialized  in making large photographic prints, called Imperial photographs, but as Brady's  eyesight began to fail, Gardner took on increasing responsibilities. In 1858, Brady put him in charge of his Washington, D,C. gallery.

Types of studio photography

Food

Portrait

Still life

                                                        

Fashion

Advertising 

Animal

Action