Studio Portraiture.

The term portraiture means to take photos of individuals or groups of people in a photograph, the subject has been around since the invention of the camera & photography. There are many type of portrait photography, the one that need to be focused on in this project though, is studio portraiture, which consists of taking photos in a studio, whether it be a fixed studio or portable one on location of a client.

Initial Idea.

My initial idea for studio portraiture is to photograph one of my friends, she is a great lover of everything Japanese, so to capture this love I thought I would photograph her in one of her many Kimonos.

For this project I really want to try using the 5"4" cameras, as I've never used one before & this would be a really good experience, I'd also, if available, want to shoot in film in colour, not just black & white, the only problem being that we cannot develop & process colour film in college, meaning I would need to find somewhere that did process colour 5"4" film. I would also use the Canon 5D camera in this project to take the colour portrait & to back up my images in case my film comes out wrong.

The portrait to be taken with the 5x4 camera will be just a straight forward portrait, no movements are going to be used in it, so everything will be in focus & the shape will not be changed. I want the portrait to be either (or both) head shoulders & torso or full body portraits, as so I can get a good majority of my friends Kimono in the frame.   

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Research:
Walter Schels is a German photographer who started his career in 1966 when he moved to New York, then 4 years later moving back to Germany to work for various magazines & in advertising. He is well known for his portrait photography, photography various different people including politicians, celebrities, artists & even animals, but possibly one of his most well known his Life Before Death series. 

Elly Genthe, 83.

First Portrait: December 31st 2002 - Second Portrait: January 11 2003

In this series Schels along with Beate Lakotta asked 24 terminally ill people if they could document the last months of their lives & photograph them before they died & after they died. Schels wrote that "Elly Genthe was a tough, resilient woman who had always managed on her own. She often said that if she couldn’t take care of herself, she’d rather be dead. When I met her for the first time, she was facing death and seemed undaunted: she was full of praise for the hospice staff and the quality of her care. But, when I visited again a few days later, she seemed to sense her strength was ebbing away." 

Heiner Schmitz, 52.

 First Portrait: November 19 2003 - Second Portrait: December 14 2003

When with Heiner, he told Schels that his friends did not want to see him sad, they came round to see him often & sometimes acted like he was going to get better from his illness, but for Heiner it was a little saddening, saying "But no one asks me how I feel. Don't they get it? I'm going to die!”. After the people that he was documenting died, he didn't just photograph them lying down, he made it so they were propped up, as to get them to look more like they were in the first photos he took of them.


Richard Avedon started his career as a photographer in 1942, when he was tasked with taking identification photographs for the Merchant Marines using a Rolleiflex camera given to him by his father. After this he went onto advertisement photography, which got him noticed by art director for Harper's Bazaar fashion magazine, Alexey Brodovitch. He branched out from fashion & began photographing a variety of subjects ranging from artists to musicians, including getting to photograph famous faces along the way, which included The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe & Alfred Hitchcock.

Alfred Hitchcock, New York, March 16, 1956.

Aside from these examples, Avedon was also interested on the working people in America, leading to his exhibition later turned photo book, In The American West. It focused on those who worked in jobs such as miners in their dirty work clothes, the unemployed & teenagers growing up at this time. Avedon was interested in the soul & personality behind his subjects & he liked to make the photo simple, which is why his portraits are usually with just his subjects standing in front of a shear white background staring at the camera.

Sandra Bennett, 12 years old, Rocky Ford, Colorado, August 23rd, 1980.

However when the exhibition was first publicized people viewed it as being a pained view of these areas of America, some even criticized that he had treated his subjects with the attention that was thought to be should only shown towards political figures & celebrities.

Steve Pyke originally started out his photography career after a photographic experience during his first career in the music industry, in which he had made a collection of Instamatic pictures which he had taken whilst on a motorcycle tour of America, which he Xeroxed & coloured on his return home to the UK. This lead him to buy a Rolleiflex camera & drop his career in music to divulge into the visual arts.

Horace Ham, London, UK. May 1993

In 1993 he started to photograph the veterans of WW1, the war to end all wars, which had happened almost 80 years before hand. He photographed veterans from the UK, America, France & Germany. On the subject of the veterans, Pyke said "They all had clear memories of their time at the front and shared some of them with me. In most cases it had taken a lifetime for them to be able to recount their experiences". One of Pyke's on going photographic projects has been taking photos of his two sons, Jack & Duncan. On his website he said "Photographing both my sons Jack and Duncan from twenty minutes old and consistently since, I have been mapping the way human faces evolve." These photos are not just simple family snapshots, they are of a single person, looking at them evolve from infant-hood to adulthood.

Jack & Duncan.

In an interview during 2006 in the Observer, Jack told us what he thought of the photographs, saying "The really strange thing about these photographs, apart from the most recent ones, is that I don't remember any of them being taken, I might vaguely remember a shirt I was wearing, or a haircut I had, but that's all. Sometimes my dad will say to me, "Oh, that one was taken in Ireland or London in such and such a year," but I don't remember anything about the time or the place. It's odd because they're evidence of me growing up but they're also a bit unreal. The more I look at some of them, the more it feels like it never really happened." I liked this quote because it is plainly true, for all of us, we don't really remember much about what we did in our childhood when we get older unless we're told about it by our parents, we remember stuff vaguely, but that's usually about all.

Yousuf Karsh began his interest in photography when he was sent to live with his uncle in Canada at a young age, he helped out in his uncle's photographic studio & became interested in the subject. When his uncle saw the potential his nephew could have he got him an apprenticeship with portrait photographer John Garo in Boston, but returned back to Canada 4 years later wanting to make a mark in his career. 

Winston Churchill, 1941.

One of his most famous portrait photos was that of Winston Churchill, who was at that time in history, the British Prime Minister. The image was taken after he had given a speech at the Canadian Parliament during the early years of WW2. In this photo Churchill is seen very much like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, being very impatient & wasn't very interested in having his portrait taken with a cigar in his mouth, only allowing Karsh 2 minutes of his time. Karsh didn't want the cigar in Churchill's mouth, & on his website he says "I waited. Then I stepped toward him and, without premeditation, but ever so respectfully, I said, “Forgive me, sir,” and plucked the cigar out of his mouth. By the time I got back to my camera, he looked so belligerent he could have devoured me. It was at that instant that I took the photograph."

Humphrey Bogart, 1946.

Aside from Churchill, one of my other favourite portraits Karsh took was of Humphrey Bogart, an American actor between 1921-56. My personal favourite bit from this photo is of the smoke from the cigarette in Bogart's hand, we can see a slightly slow shutter speed has been used to capture the movement of the smoke. I also like the lighting in the image, coming in from the right-hand side of the image, casting some shadows on right side of Bogart's face. Bogart's pose to me also has a sort of thoughtful impression to it, the ways his hands are posed & his facial expression make me think this.

Bettina Von Zwehl is well known for her somewhat unsettling portrait photography, over the years she has photographed people in numerous ways from drenching them with water to her subjects laying down on the floor. One of her most notable series was entitled Alina, in which she gathered several women to sit in a darkened studio & be photographed.

Alina Series, 2004-05

However, instead of taking the photo straight as they got into the studio, Von Zwehl made them wait, in this darkened room in which she was using as a studio, so she had control over their manner of representation, so that they could not give her false smiles etc. Although the room was darkened, the image we see before us looks like it is taken in a white room, she gained this effect by taking the photo using flash lighting.

In this series of photos, Von Zwehl came up with the idea of capturing the image of someone just as they've woken up from sleeping, to do this she set up a studio in her models homes & told them to go to sleep as usual, but she wouldn't tell them when she would be waking them up, so it could've have been 30minutes after they had gone to sleep or 4hours after after they had gone to sleep. After waking them she got them to sit down in her little studio space & take their photo.

Chuck Close is an American photographer & painter but is best known for his photo-realist portraits of people & self portraits of himself. Probably one of his most known pieces of work was his self portrait of himself in 1967, to a lot of people who have never seen the photos before they will usually always think it's a photo, but it is actually a very detailed drawing.

Self Portrait, 1967.

Although Close seems like a very talented drawer, most of his work of celebrities & politicians are paintings on canvases & painted in a grid system, in which he painted the squares individually. He has used this system throughout his career, but more so after he was paralyzed from the neck down in 1988, since then he has gained a little movement back in his arms, in which he strapped a paint brush to his wrist & painted these portraits with.

Bill Clinton, 2006.

Close paints these image from photos on his subject & when the images are finished the grid system that he always uses makes the image look like pixels but viewed from afar they usually look like one whole image.

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Camera, Equipment & Studio Set-Up:

For this project, the camera I will hopefully be using is a large format camera, more specifically, a 5x4 camera. There are 2 types of large format cameras, the 1st being the monorail camera, more usually used in studio & the Technical camera, a more portable version. The one I will be using is the Monorail. I've decided not to use this to take my colour image now though, & instead use the Canon 5D.

The 5x4 is named this for a very simple reason, because the negative are 5x4inches in size, unlike 35mm film, large format films are single sheet films, so only 2 photos can be taken at a time as the film holder can only hold 2 sheets of these negatives. Large Format cameras are used for a variety of different reasons, for example quality, the film negatives are larger than say 35mm so there's more detail, another reason being that the camera has movements, you can move the front & back standards to enable you to change the plain of focus & even the shape of the image.

Movements of the 5x4 Camera:

As I just said, the 5x4 camera allows movements to be used with this camera, there are 3 types of movements; sliding, swinging & tilting.

The Slide movements allow you to slide the standards up & down or to either side, with these movements the shape & focus stays the same on the image but depending on which way you slide it, you can either see to the left, right, top or bottom of the subject & when you slide back & front left (or vice versa) you cannot see the subject (if there is a subject).

Slide Movements

Swing movements allow you to swing the standards either left or right. Unlike the slide movements however, the focus is changed, & we get a vertical band of focus (which can be moved left or right). When you move the front standard the image stay the same, but by moving the back standard you can change the shape of the image to get converging & diverging horizontals.

Swing Movement

Tilt movements allow you to tilt the standards in around the same ways as the swing. By tilting the front standard you change the focus & is a horizontal band of focus, which can be moved up or down. By tilting the back standard you can change the shape again, this time with diverging & converging verticals.

But if changing the focus to just vertical or horizontal bands of focus isn't for you, you can combine the swing & tilt to create a diagonal band of focus on you photograph. Despite all these really cool movements at my fingertips though, i plan to just have a straight forward portrait of my model with no movements what-so-ever. I also plan on only taking one photo with this camera, for the black & white portrait required. For my colour portrait on the other hand I plan to use the Canon 5D, this will allow me to take several photos instead of just a limit of 2 at a time given to you by the 5x4, another reason for me using the 5D would be so in case something goes wrong with the film for example it over/under develops or the exposure & aperture were set wrong.

Lighting Setup:

Basic Setup for 5D

Basic Setup for 5x4

My lighting setup in the studio are as followers, I will be using a low key setup for both cameras against a black backdrop, there will be two lights, both with soft boxes on them (this however may change on the day depending on the results of the test photos on the 5D), & when using the 5x4 camera I may use one tungsten light, there would also be black reflectors on either side to reduce the amount of light hitting the backdrop.

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Contact Sheet:

After my shoot my final contact sheet came out a little like this:

These are my narrowed down digital shots, in which I thought were the best shots of the whole lot. When shooting I did have some problems at first, but that was soon fixed when the shutter speed was adjusted. All in all though I believe the shoot was a success, at least using the Canon 5D. The lighting in these photos came out just the way I wanted it to, bright enough to light up my subject & give full detail on her, but with the background quite black.

I'm also happy that I did decide to backup my shoot with digital photos too because when shooting with the 5x4 camera my colour print did not come out, it was suggested by the man who developed it that I may have accidentally left the dark slide in the camera when shooting the colour film & the more & more I think about it, this seems to have been very likely.

5x4 attempt.

This was the black & white film I took on 5x4 film, the reason I don't want to use this is because I have to admit I wasn't looking to see what my model was doing when I took the photo, I was too focused on setting the camera up, the other reasons being that it came out under exposed when developed & there are also marks all over the film. I really liked how my digital photos came out, which is why I don't plan to re-shoot & try using the 5x4 camera again for this project, I admit a film print as my final image would have been good, but I'm content with what I shot on the Canon 5D.

Possible Finals:

F/stop: f/8 - Exposure: 1/100sec.

F/stop: f/8 - Exposure: 1/100sec.

F/stop: f/7.1 - Exposure: 1/100sec.

F/stop: f/7.1 - Exposure: 1/100sec.

F/stop: f/7.1 - Exposure: 1/100sec.

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Editing & Photoshop:
For my final 2 portraits one needed to be in black & white, which meant I needed to edit them in Photoshop.

Cropping.

First I cropped down my photo so my model was reasonably centered in the frame & also to crop out a slight showing of one of the reflectors I used during my shoot.

Adding a New Adjustment Layer.

Usually after cropping I would edit the contrast of the image to make it a little more contrasty, but with these photos I felt I didn't need to do that, so I went straight to adding a new adjustment layer to make the image black & white, I did this by going to Layers > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer. Between using Channel Mixer & Black & White layers i chose Channel Mixer because I felt it was a little easier to use, however the Black & White adjustment layer does give some more options/colours to adjust on the image.

Channel Mixer.

Before & After.

After adding monochrome to the image & then editing the tonal range this was how my image came out, before the photo looked quite dark but by increasing the red & green tones & decreasing the blue tones I managed to make it a little brighter on the right side.

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Final Images:

From 5 possible final photos, I picked my 2 favourites from them.

F/stop: f/7.1 - Exposure: 1/100sec.

Looking back at my contact sheet I could have seen a lot as my possible final photos, & it was a hard choice to make. I was a little disappointed when my 5x4 negatives didn't come out very well, but at least I can say I tried using a large format camera, as this project could have been my only chance to ever use one. Over all I would say that this was a good project, although I admit, I don't like using the studio that much, it was nice to learn how to use a large format camera.

F/stop: f/7.1 - Exposure: 1/100sec.

I really liked how my final prints came out, out of the two of them I would probably say that the colour print is my favourite, as we can see most of the outfit from where my model is sitting down, I think that the colour bring out the photo more & we can see a bit more detail in the kimono, but then you can see more surface area of the kimono on my colour print. Out of all my over possible final prints, my current black & white one probably looked the best, I really liked the tonal range after editing the photo.