Environmental Portraiture.

The term Environmental Portraiture means to take photographs of people in their own environment, whether it be where they work or live, spend time with friends or where they go to pursue their favourite interests. The subject was first photographed by Robert Howlett, who photographed the famous civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel during the construction of (at that time in history) the biggest ship in the world, the Great Eastern. From then other photographer have done the same with a variety of people from around the world.

Main Ideas:

Idea 1:
This idea consists of me photographing a band called Mourningstar, a rock band based in the area I live. They're not a famous band, more of an up & coming band who hope to one day be known to the world. Their lead singer has before actually approached me to ask if I can photograph her band, as she is an old friend of mine & she likes my work, although admittedly the idea is to be people I don't really know, but realistically she's the only person I know within the band itself. What I would do is photograph them during their weekly band practices at a studio they book out every week. The band consists of (that I know of) four members; Kym, the lead singer, Riku the drummer, Chris, the guitarist & Peter, the bassist.

Idea 2:
This idea involves my neighbours who live on the same stretch of road that I live on. The basic idea is to ask them if they are willing for me to take photos of them first off, then I would either have them stand in the doorway of their front door or perhaps in their living rooms to see more of what their lives look like. What I would like for these photos is all the members who live in the household including pets (more just the ones that roam freely, like cats & dogs) to get a real feeling of the people that live there.

For this project I will be shooting my photographs in digital using my new camera. The reason for this being that it has several different settings & styles to photograph with, so I can play around with styles such as using the panoramic feature inside either the music studio or my neighbours homes as well as comparing other settings & seeing how well photos come out using manual settings.
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Historic Artist Study:

The first ever example of Environmental Portraiture was taken by Robert Howlett of Isambard Kingdom Brunel at Millwall London in 1857 during the construction of (at that time in history) the largest ship in the world, The SS Great Eastern.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1857) by Robert Howlett

The most eye catching subject about this photograph is probably the chain in the background, they really give a sense of how big The Great Eastern was. Other striking features include his top hat & cigar. He used to wear top hats to make himself feel & look taller than he really was, as he was a short man. His shoes & suit are dirty from where he has been working, he was an impatient man, & didn’t want to change the suit he was wearing at the time, he just wanted the photo taken then & there.

Roger Fenton was originally trained to be a painter during his studies whilst he was growing up, but later became a photographer after seeing an exhibition of photographs at Hyde Park. This sparked his interest in photography, which later lead him to become one of the pioneering British photographers, as well as one of the first war photographers & photojournalists in the world. In 1855 Fenton was sent to photograph the Crimean War by publisher Thomas Agnew, the initial subject being to photograph the British troops & war-zone. 

Roger Fenton's Photographic Van

During the Crimean War he traveled around in his photographic van, his portable darkroom, in which he used to develop his photographs using the Collodian (Wet Plate) developing process. The portable darkroom was essential as the wet plate process consisted of the photographic material being coated, sensitized, exposed & developed within 15 minutes. 

Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855) by Roger Fenton

Although he was photographing the Crimean war-zone, he did not photograph the bodies of dead soldiers, as it was the photographs were to be shown to Queen Victoria as well as the British public. People didn't exactly want to see dead soldiers who's bodies had been blown apart or violently mutilated. So most of his photographs consisted of posed shots by troops (due to long exposure of the photographs) & landscapes of the war-zone.

Unlike Fenton though, Mathew Brady was completely the opposite when photographing the American Civil War between 1861 & 1865. He along with several other photographers he employed, shot the scenes of the Civil War like they thought they should, by un-censoring the photograph & keeping the dead bodies in their shots to show the devastating side of the Civil War. It was possibly one of the first examples of un-censorship in photography.

American Civil War (1861-65) by Mathew Brady

The home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg (1863) by Alexander Gardener

Although most photographs were taken as they were seen during the Civil War, there was one occasion where one of Brady's employed photographers, Alexander Gardener, had been suggested to have manipulated one of his photographs by moving a dead body by around 50 yards & propped up a rifle against the rocks in the background. The manipulation was suggested as the body had been seen in a separate photograph in a different location, & had thought to have been moved to a better & more photogenic setting for Gardener's photograph.

William T. Sherman (1865) by Mathew Brady

In 1865 Brady photographed Major General William T. Sherman, an American Soldier of the Civil War. In this photograph he comes across as a very stern looking man with the way his arms are crossed & facial expression. As like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, he seems an impatient man, where his hair has not been combed & uniform looks slightly creased. Around his left arm is a black ribbon of mourning, used as a nation to mourn the assignation of President Abraham Lincoln. After the assignation of Lincoln he was offered the chance to apply for presidency, but refused.

During the era of the Great Depression during the 1930's in America, photographer Dorothea Lange traveled around the country photographing those who had been most badly effected by the Depression. Lange worked for an association called the FSA (Farm Security Administration) that was to document the era of Depression along with other photographers Walker Evans & Ben Shawn. During this era, she came across a mother & her seven children living rough & starving, in which she took a photograph of the mother, Florence Thompson, which was to become the photograph of the Depression.

Migrant Mother - Florence Thompson (1936) by Dorothea Lange

Two out of her seven children are showed in this photo, hiding their faces away from the camera, suggesting that they are both quite shy. Lange says that she never edits her photographs, she likes them how they were taken. Yet on the bottom right hand corner a thumbnail can been seen near the bottom of the branch. It has been removed from the negative itself, either by Lange herself or someone else with her knowledge & has kept it quiet. In addition to not taking her subjects name, Lange got something else wrong, by not finding out anything about the family itself. Thompson & her family weren’t typical Depression migrants at all; they had actually been living in California for almost 10 years. Like all photographs, the Migrant Mother is neither truth nor fiction but somewhere in-between.

The Raising the Flag of Iwo Jima was one of the most iconic images of World War II, taken atop Mount Suribachi by Joe Resonthal on February 23 1945, after it was captured by the Americans. The flag was raised to symbolise the end of the battle of Iwo Jima, but in truth it wasn't over, as the battle continued on for several days after the flag was raised & the island wasn't deemed secure until March 26th that year. Out of the 6 soldiers deciphered in the photo, only 3 survived, the other 3 were killed in battle, just several days after the flag raising. 

Raising the Flag of Iwo Jima (1945) by Joe Rosenthal

The Original Flag Raising (1945) by Louis R. Lowery

However, the iconic photo known today around the world, was in fact the second flag raising. The 1st flag raising was issued earlier that day & the photograph was taken by Staff Sergeant Louis R. Lowery. The reason for the second flag raising was down to the fact that the flag was seen as too small to be seen from the nearby landing beaches, & so a second, larger flag was sent up the mountain. Joe Rosenthal's photo of the second flag raising was in fact nothing more than a lucky snapshot photo, as he wasn't paying attention. Ten years after the flag-raising, Rosenthal wrote: "Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot. You don't know."

Another famous flag raising was of the Soviet flag over Reichstag, taken during the Battle of Berlin on May 2nd 1945, by Yevgeny Khaldei. Like the Iwo Jima flag raising, this too became one of the most recognizable & symbolic photographs of World War II. Khaldei had hoped that during the fall of Berlin that he would be able to capture the same type of iconic moment that Rosenthal had done of Iwo Jima.

Raising a flag over the Reichstag (1945) by Yevgeny Khaldei

Original Photo before & after edit by Yevgeny Khaldei

In the original photo of Raising a flag over the Reichstag, it is shown that the officer helping the other with the flag, is in fact wearing two watches, thought to have been from the officer looting, so once Yevgeny Khaldei had gotten back to Moscow, he was told to edit the the watch on the officers right hand out. 

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Research:
James Mollison was born in 1973 in Kenya but was brought up in England. Before having his work published worldwide. Before becoming a photographer he originally studied Art & Design at Oxford Brookes University. Probably one of his most notable, & my favourite series of his is Where Children Sleep, in which he photographed children worldwide as an idea of engaging with children's rights for an assignment set to him by his employer Fabrica. 

Kaya, 4, Tokyo, Japan

When coming up with the idea of his project, he wrote on his website that: "I found myself thinking about my bedroom: how significant it was during my childhood, and how it reflected what I had and who I was." This is how he came to photograph the children in their bedrooms, or if not their bedrooms, where they slept. Our bedroom is our sanctuary, as place where we can relax, be ourselves, but it also shows how we live, whether we live rich or poor lives.

Lewis, 10, Barnsley, England

I really liked this series, it ties in with my second idea for my project, photographing my neighbours in their homes.Instead of taking a photograph of the children in the bedroom themselves, he photographed them against a neutral background & the bedrooms separately.

Tom Hunter is a London based photographer, originally from Bournemouth, who was the first ever have a one man show at the National Gallery in London. Aside from this he is well known for photographing communities in Hackney, over viewing & documenting local issues around the area & staging news headline of interest, often borrowing concepts from the Old Masters in the art world. One of his series that took a particular interest of mine was Holly Street Residents, in which he photographed the local families that lived in the Holly Street Estate in Hackney as part of a commission by Hackney Building Exploratory in 1997.

Holly Street Residents (1997) by Tom Hunter

All the photos in the Holly Street series consist of all the residents of the household with the whole room in frame, this allows s to see their furniture, possessions, etc. I found that in some of the photographs the rooms look pretty empty, mainly just a sofa or chair & perhaps a small TV, some homes not even that, where as other households had a little more like desks, shelving, decorations on the walls & some over items. To me, even though these photographs were only taken in the late 90's, they look a little more like they were taken in the 80's due to the carpets & wallpaper in some photos, which gives the expression that perhaps these families are low-middle class citizens with a lack of money.

Ghetto Series (1993-94) by Tom Hunter

Another series that caught my attention was the Ghetto Series, again taken in Hackney, in a squatted community of London Fields East, where in fact Hunter was living at the time. The series thus consisted of his friends & neighbours in the area. The title of the series was based on an article from The Hackney Gazette, in which the area was described as being “a crime-ridden, derelict ghetto, a cancer - a blot on the landscape.”

Lewis Hine was an American photographer between 1904 & 1940 when he died. He originally started in the photographic field when he became a teacher in New York, trying to encourage his students to use photography for an educational medium. During his time as a teacher he would take his students over to Ellis Island to take photographs of the migrants from other countries, where he took over 200 photographs between 1904 & 1909. Possibly one of his most famous series of his time was Child Labour: Girls in Factory in 1908.

A spinner in the Mollahan Mills, Newberry (1908) by Lewis Hine

The photographs were for the National Child Labor Committee, after Hine left his teacher position, they were used to document children working in factories so that the NCLC could try & put a stop to child labor in America once & for all. For over a decade Hine photographed child labour in factories around the US, usually sneaking in to photograph the children, as if he'd asked, he'd have probably be kicked out. 

Workers, Empire State Building (1931) by Lewis Hine

Another of his most notable series was Workers, Empire State Building, in which he photographed the men who were hired to work on the construction of New York's Empire State Building. It was a dangerous job, so to get decent vantage points of the workers he was placed in a hanging basket on the building as not to be put into too much danger. After this, during the last years of his life, people became less interested in his work, whether it was his past or present work, which later lead to him losing his house before dying aged 66.

Nicholas Nixon is an American photographer who is best known for his documentary & portraiture photography, who was influenced by Edward Western & Walker Evans. When he started his photographic career he used large format cameras, & continues to use them throughout his life, as he prefers them to the more portable 35mm cameras, saying that he liked being able to print straight from 8x10inch negatives because they retained the quality of the image. His most notable series has to be his ever continuing yearly photos of the Brown Sisters.

1975

1982

1996

2007

The Brown Sisters series consists of his wife Bebe (3rd on the right) & her three sisters, Heather, Mimi & Laurie. The photos are usually set outside & the sister are are always placed in the same order in each photograph. Like with most of his other photos, Nixon photographs the sisters using a 8x10 large format film camera, which is nice as he gets all of the details from the sisters in his photographs.

James Ravilious is an English rural life photographer originally from Eastbourne, who later moved to Devon after marrying his wife, who began his photographic work by self teaching himself the skills in the 1970's after being inspired by another photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson. It was shortly after this that he was invited by John Lane, an art director from Beaford, to contribute to the Beaford Archive, which had been created to record photographically the unspoilt yet vulnerable country side location, which turned into a 17 year long obsession for Ravilious. 

Archie Parkhouse with Ivy for Sheep (1975) by James Ravilious

Apart from taking photos of some of the villagers that lived in & around Beaford he also took photos of the scenes & landscapes around the village. I really liked some of his work, it really shows what country-life was like around these parts in the past, how they lived what they did around town etc.

Gordon Parks has been called a groundbreaking photographer in America, its hard to see why not, at the age of 25 he bought his first camera second-hand for only $12.50 at a pawnshop & his first ever roll of film got him prompted to get fashion assignments at Frank Murphy's women's clothing store. His most notable & iconic photograph had to be that of his American Gothic, Washington, D.C. (1942), which he had photographed while working for the FSA (Farm Security Association) & which had been named after the famous painting American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood.

American Gothic, Washington D.C. (1942) by Gordon Parks

The photo shows Mrs. Ella Watson, a black women who worked as a cleaner in Washington D.C. in her home stadning infront of the American Flag with a mop & broom. In a way, this iconic photo, changed the way that African-American photographers looked at the subject of photography, before the 1940's they didn't really focus on photographing social problems in the community on black identity ordinarily, but instead focused more on the cultural side of what was happening in America at the time. Although at that time in history, his boss Roy Stryker said that the photo was an indictment of America, he urged Parks to take more photographs of Mrs Watson, which later lead to being a series documenting her daily life.

Mrs. Ella Watson, with her 3 Grandchildren & Adopted Daughter by Gordon Parks

Six years after these photos were taken he was employed by Life Magazine as a staff photographer & writer after writing a photographic essay on a young Harlem gang leader, this is another reason he is one of the groundbreaking photographers of the world, as he was the first ever African-American to be employed by Life Magazine & spent 20 years working for them. It goes without saying that his work has truly been remarkable, even life changing in some cases, his photography essay on a young Brazillian boy called Falvio De Silva, lead to his life being saved from malnutrition & bronchial pneumonia from donations from the public, which even lead to paying for a new house for his family.
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Camera, Equipment & Practice:

My equipment for this project consisted of 3 main components: My Sony SLT a35 camera, my 18-70mm Sony lens & my Jessops 360AFD Digital Flashgun for Sony cameras.

My Sony-a35 is a Translucent Mirror camera, meaning instead of having a moving mirror like SLR cameras has, it has a fixed mirror to enable ultra-fast shooting of photos, so in other words you could say that technically, my camera is not an actual SLR, but compared to my old Sony-a200 DSLR camera, its a lot better in terms of functions & quality.

My 18-70mm lens originally came from my first DLSR camera, I use it with my current body though as I only bought the a35 body without the lens. 

My Jessops 360AFD Digital Flashgun admittedly isn't the best flashgun on the market, but its still pretty good to work with. It has a swivel & bounce function to enable the user to bounce light off of walls to create a softer light on the subject.

Camera Modes:
My camera has several different modes on it to create a vast variety of photos, it includes the obvious Manual, Program, Aperture & Shutter Priority modes, although, I admit, I only find myself using them every so often. Usually I use preset modes on my camera such as portrait or landscape, I've found with this camera however I find myself using the photo editing modes on my camera, mainly High Contrast Monochrome & Toy Camera mode, which I know I probably shouldn't be using for a college project, but I find them really nice to work with.

Example Photo: Toy Camera Mode

In Toy Camera mode the camera created the look of a toy camera photos (thus the name Toy Camera mode) that has shaded corners & pronounced colours.

Example Photo: High Contrast Monochrome

In High Contrast Monochrome mode it does what the title says, it produces an image that is of high contrast in black & white. I would say due to this I wouldn't use this in dark areas unless I had a flash, over wise just lighter areas, so out of the two of these I'd probably end up using the first mode & then convert it to black & white in Photoshop.

Test Shots & Flash Techniques:

The first official test shots for Environmental Portraiture involved us going around the areas of Brighton close to City College asking people in the street or shop owners to have their photos taken either on our own or in groups of 2 or 3. I was 1 in a group of 3, & in the end we only ended up taking one photo of a bookshop owner.

The owner of the rather old bookshop allowed us to take a photo of him, on the condition that we wouldn't show him the photograph after it was taken. The photo was originally taken in colour & then changed to black & white in Photoshop. 


Flash Techniques:

Direct Flash

Direct Flash is when you use the flash directly on the subject or subjects, for this activity we had two models, one in the foreground 2m away, the other in the back from the camera, the other 4m away in the background. The camera was set to 1/60second shutter whilst aperture & flash were set at f4. Using direct flash eliminates shadow from the models face, depending on where the subjects is standing, the shadow of her figure would have been either directly beind her or just the side of her.

Bounce Flash

Bounce flash is when you bounce light off of a surface, mainly either walls or ceilings, the photo above has used bounce flash off of a ceiling, which can be seen from the shadow in the background of the subject in the foreground, it is lower than he is himself. Using bounce flash creates are more softer light on the subject than direct flash does & we can still see some light shadowing on one half of his face.

Ring Flash

Ring flash is typically the same as direct flash except it has a lot more asphetical qualities about it, we can see again that the subject has no shadowing on her face, we can also see her shadow on the wall boardering around her whole body. Ring flashes are typically used by fashion photographers, as the flash gives circular/ring lighting effect to the subjects eyes.

Fill In Flash

Fill in Flash is used to help eliminate harsh shadows from situations such as strong sunlight. In the on top we can see the shadows from the sunlight cover around one half of her face, this has been taken without the flash, to eliminate this we set the flash -1 & -2 stops below ambient lighting, the results came out to alot less harsher than they had without using flash. This technique would probably be used more on outdoor portraiture such as weddings etc.

Day to Night

Day to Night flash is usually caused/made when the flash settings on the camera are set to auto,which is then brought up by two stops on the flash, this means you have overpowered the flash, but by doing so caused the photo to become somewhat under exposed, especially in the background, which has not been touched by the flash, which then gives the false impression of it being nighttime.

1:1 Flash: Balance Flash

Balance Flash is used when he subject in the foregrond is a lot darker than the background is. The first shot was taken without the flash & aperture set to ambient, to get the exposure between background & foreground balanced we kept the aperture at ambient & put the flash to ambient also. If we had set the flash to be 2 stops below ambient however, it created glare on the window.

Flash Blur

Flash blur is created when flash is used on a slow shutter speed, usually around 1/8 of a second. By using flash blur, the photo will show the resulted movement of the slow shutter yet a frozen image of the subject from where the flash has gone off. The technique is good to use to capture dramatic movement in subjects such as sport or even wildlife.

Light Painting 

Light painting is created when the camera is on a long shutter speed in low lighting. In this photo the light painting has been made from several of my classmates firing off the flash every couple of steps they come towards the camera, thus the reason for their faces to appear several times, also in this photo I moved the camera around whilst taking the photo, which is why they are not all in the same places either. Aside from this there are several other ways to use light with long exposure, for example you could use a flash or penlight & create shapes with them.
Out of these techniques the most relevant one to me to use for thi project would be either direct flash or bounce flash, these are both really good for portraiture as the show the faces of subjects in detail, its also good if its too dark to take the photo without the flash.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact Sheets:

Contact Sheets: Idea 1.

Contact Sheet 1.

For contact sheet one I didn't take many decent photos, the best are the 15 above. All of the above were taken with my old DLSR camera, which was somewhat slow when it came to taking high speed shots that needed to be in a decent amount of focus. At the time of taking these I didn't possess a flash gun that fitted onto my camera, so when I found the photos to be coming out a bit dark I just used the pop-up flash on my camera. Although I wouldn't quite say that these photos were bad, if I were to choose Idea 1 as my final idea, I probably wouldn't find myself using some of these for the final cut.

Contact Sheet 2.

For my second contact sheet photographing Mourningstar I had my new camera to photograph them with, & also this time round, their forth member of the band, the bassist, was there for rehearsals. To take the photos above I used the high-speed continuous shooting mode on my camera, as to capture every frame (or near to every frame) of the movement & motions of the band whilst they were playing. The downside to this though was having to go through over 700 photos & narrow them down to 24 photos on the contact sheet above. Although I had it on hand, there was no need to use my flash gun, as the lights in their studio were sufficient enough to get decent photos.

Contact Sheet: Idea 2.
When I first thought of this idea, I have to admit, I thought it was a great idea, but I was terrified of carrying it out, I guess mainly down to the fact that, well, I'm not the best when it comes to socializing with people I know let alone people I hardly know. All in all, i recon I spent around 5-10 minutes with the people I visited, with the exception of no.'s 14-18, who I chatted with & took photos of her two kittens for about half an hour (what can I say, I like taking photos of cats & other animals, usually a lot more than of taking photos of people). In several of these photos I did use flash as natural light wasn't sufficient enough to get good photos, & for the ones I did use the flash for, I bounced the light off of the ceiling or wall to attempt to get softer light on their faces rather than harder light.

Contact Sheet.

The Final Decisions:
The final decision really comes down to which idea I like the most, photographs of a band rehearsing in their booked studio, or photographs of my neighbours in their homes. Between the two I would have to say i prefer the second idea, just mainly down to the fact that they seem like more environmental portraits than the photos from the first idea & even though I took more photos of the first idea, I always like the concept of idea two more.

F/stop: f/5.6 - Exposure: 1/40sec.

F/stop: f/4- Exspore: 1/60sec.

F/stop: f/4 - Exposure: 1/60sec.

F/stop: f/4 - Exposure: 1/60sec.

F/stop: f/3.5 - Exposure: 1/50sec.

F/stop: f/3.5 - Exposure: 1/40sec.

F/stop: f/5.6 - Exposure: 1/60sec.

F/stop: f/5.6 - Exposure: 1/100sec.

I think for presenting my final images i will have 2 photos side-by-side on one A3 sheet, the 2 photos being of the same people from the same house. For example I would have no.'s 7 & 12 from the contact sheet on the same one, showing Betty on her chair on one side & her cat Lulu, also sitting in Betty's chair on the other side of the paper.
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Editing & Photoshop:
For my finals prints I want two photos side-by-side on the same file, I also need to make them into black & white photographs, which required me to use Photoshop to create these effects.

Selecting a New Document

First off I needed to create a new black document to put two images onto, to get an accurate measurement for the document size I checked the image size of one of my photos, I kept the height of the image the same but I doubled the width to enable space for two photos.

Creating a New Document.

Next I needed to decide whether or not to edit the photos both together on the new document, or whether to do them separately. I chose separately as then I could determine the tonal quality of the photos without messing the other photo up if it didn't go with it. To turn my images into black & white images I needed to create a new adjustment layer & selecting the black & white or channel mixer layer.

Adding a New Adjustment Layer.

I chose to use the black & white adjustment layer, as it allows you to change the reds, yellows, greens, cyans, blue & magentas within the photo, therefore you can control & create good quality toning into the image.

Layer Adjustments: Before & After.

Layer Adjustments on Photo: Before & After.

Now that I've adjusted the colours the image looks more tonal than say if you just changed the image to black & white by creating a new colour layer & just filling it with black. The next & final thing on my list if to see what the photo is like if I add contrast to it. To do that I had to add another adjustment layer, this time under brightness & contrast.

Creating a Brightness/Contrast Layer.

After Contrast is Added to the Photo.

In the photo above I increased the contrast up to 30 & kept the brightness level at 0, this in my opinion made the photo look a little more sharper. If i had increased the contrast any more than I had, the tones, partially around my subjects jumper would have been a lot darker, same if I had lowered the brightness, on the other hand if I had increased the brightness the image would have looked over exposed. I then did the same steps to my second photo, in which after I was ready to add the two photos to my new document.

Blank Document.

1st Photo Added.

2nd Photo Added

After this final step was complete i went on to save the files as JPEGs ready for presentation concludes how I edited my final photos, I went on to follow the same steps to produce my other 3 final images.
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Final Images:

After editing all my final images these are the results I produced for my final photographs.

Sue & Rosie.

Out of my final four photos, I'd say this one was probably my favourite, one reason being the tonal ranges in the photo, other reasons being it was really enjoyable talking with Sue. I gues the meaning behind this chosen subject was to get an insight into what my neighbours were like & how they lived etc.

Sharron & Alex.

Like for example Sharron & Alex, they only recently moved into my road I would say between 6months & a year ago from somewhere in London & she works for Southern Railway. Another thing that I learnt is that another of my neighbours, Sid, used to be an engineer & loves to do gardening.

Pat & Sid.

I have to admit, this has not been my favourite project, the main reason being taking photos of people I don't directly know, it really takes me out of my comfort zone, & I wouldn't say that this project has really helped me improve my confidence in working with people in photography.

Betty & Lulu (Lucy).

I think if I were to redo this project, I might just use single images rather than splice them into two images, as some of the images are a little too distracting from the actual subject of the project.