Conceptual Portrait Photography is a style of portrait photography used often when depicting artists like musicians or actors and in advertising photography. The portrait is composed with an underlying concept in mind, which may or may not be revealed to the audience. In these portraits, the human subjects are there to complement the concept.
Quite simply, Surreal Portrait Photography involves taking a portrait that plays on the lines of reality and non-reality. While this might seem like a new movement developed with the advent of editing software like Adobe Photoshop, surrealism is actually a movement that started in the s.
Having fallen in with a group of Parisian bohemians , he began to submit caricatures to newspapers, which quickly became popular. At the time, portrait photographs were stiff and formal. Nadar brought his sense of humor to his photos and made his portraits all about the human subject.
He placed his subjects against a plain background and played with fine art lighting techniques. He then used his knowledge of the person to bring out their true personality. While Nadar contributed heavily to the history of studio photography, especially the development and History of Portraiture, after a few years he grew bored with portraits. From there, he moved on to shooting underground using artificial lighting and aerial photography.
In fact, while not so relevant to the History of Studio Photography, Nadar was also responsible for the first ever aerial photo, which he took from a hot air balloon over Paris. There are two types of photographers. First, there are those who know the technical details of their equipment and process like the back of their hand.
And then there are those who teach themselves how a camera works without ever getting into the technical nitty-gritty. In , when she was 48 and the mother of six children, Cameron was gifted a camera. To use it, she converted a chicken coop into a studio and used a coal bin as her darkroom.
While her early attempts at photography often failed, she progressed quickly and began taking portraits of her friends. The Pre-Raphaelites sought a return to abundant detail and complex compositions.
Cameron, who was devout in her religion, used this to inspire many theatrical, biblical-inspired photographs. She never hired professional models or took on commissioned portraits.
Her photos often featured fingerprint marks, cracked photo plates and out of focus subjects. Cameron however, was seemingly unbothered by the kefuffle, preferring to focus on her commitment to poetry and beauty. These days, Cameron is seen as the first photographer to put emotion before technique, and for this she is widely acclaimed.
Canadian Napoleon Sarony was said to be quite a theatrical person. While he created the scene and the pose, his cameraman, Benjamin Richardson, took all the photos.
Unlike any of his contemporaries, Sarony believed it was important to credit his cameraman. Asides from his groundbreaking style of photography, Napoleon Sarony is also famous for being the first to copyright his work.
Naturally, this also meant he was first to run into legal issues with broken copyright. The case went all the way to American Supreme Court where Sarony won the first copyright lawsuit relating to photography. As with all studio photography, the first Studio Portrait Photography Technique a photographer should consider is lighting.
From the very beginning of the History of Studio Photography, lighting and its manipulation have been a significant consideration. These days, there are considered to be 4 main lighting patterns for studio portrait photography.
Loop Lighting is perhaps the most common type of studio portrait photography lighting. This is because it creates a flattering light on most faces.
Simply, it creates a small shadow of the subjects nose on their cheeks. To set up loop lighting in your studio, place a single light source slightly above and behind your subject s. Then place a reflector opposite the light, but in front of your subjects, to bounce the light onto their faces. Just make sure the reflector is slightly above your subjects and not below them! Butterfly Lighting creates a very flattering shadow and is commonly used for glamour portraits. It creates definition of the face by casting a shadow along the cheeks and slightly below the nose.
Butterfly lighting is also relatively easy to achieve! Simply place the light source behind the camera and slightly above eye level of the subject. Place the camera directly between the light and the subject and start experimenting! Split Lighting does exactly what you would imagine in that it bathes one half of the subjects face in light, while the other is in shadow.
This is a useful technique if you want to create a dramatic portrait. You only need one light to achieve split lighting, which should be placed 90 degrees to the left or right of the subject. Rembrandt Lighting is named because the lighting it creates is reminiscent of a Rembrandt portrait.
That is to say, it creates a moody portrait where the subject is placed in a triangle of light. This triangle usually falls to one side of their face. This will create a shadow that falls from their nose to their cheek. It helps as well if the subject is angled to face slightly away from the light source. To do this, simply test the set up. At first, this will involve a lot of trial and error.
In portrait photography, the background is rarely important as the focus is almost always on the subject. This is true of lifestyle portraiture and studio portraiture. In a studio setting however, the photographer often has a little more leeway to play with high apertures. A zoom lens is a lens that has a variety of focal lengths, making it easy to take diverse photos with very little effort.
A prime lens has just one focal length, called fixed focal length, however they generally provide a much better image quality and impressive clarity. As a general rule, most photographers prefer to use primes. With this in mind, you can begin to think about preferred focal length to capture your ideal portrait.
While it would be impossible to declare that one length is better than another for all portrait photographs taken in a photography studio, the most popular lengths tend to be a little shorter, between 50mm and mm. A mm lens will likely be too tight in any studio! The final major point to take into consideration when choosing a lens for portrait photography is its aperture.
Aperture determines the amount of light the camera allows in, as well as the depth of field. The composition of a photo is a key element to creating a powerful, interesting or emotive portrait. For example, daguerreotypes often showed a person from just above their waste, angled slightly to the side but looking straight at the camera. This pose is one that works!
In the same way, there are a few easy tricks to successfully compose a portrait, whether in your photography studio or outside of it! Photo by Arnold Leow on Unsplash. The Rule of Thirds is one of the first rules of composition. It helps to create a balanced and interesting photograph, whether in landscape photography or portraiture.
Basically, imagine that your photo is broken down into thirds horizontally and vertically. Your photo will now be broken down into 9 parts. The four lines that do this are ideal lines along which to position your subject. The points where these lines intersect are especially important. Photo by Dan Schiumarini on Unsplash. Straight lines , while not necessarily a composition technique, are also a great way to create a more impactful portrait. Although perhaps less important in a studio setting, always make sure that any props you involve, or windows placed in the background of a natural light photography studio, are straight.
Wonky lines and horizons are distracting and will take the focus away from your subject. In fact, this is something a photographer should always pay careful attention to when composing a portrait. When composing a portrait, the basic guidelines of what to include are:. Composition norms aside, one of the easiest things to focus on when composing a portrait is the subjects head.
This is likely where the audience of any photo will look first. Shooting upwards is rarely flattering! Finally, while there are plenty of rules to be found, rule-followers rarely create groundbreaking work. Think about Nadar who believed that knowing and understanding his subject was the key to taking an interesting portrait! Photo by Azamat Kinzhitaev on Unsplash. While taking portraits, especially at the beginning of the session and even before it begins, talk with your subject.
After all, it can be quite intimidating having a camera focused specifically on you. Try to find something that makes them laugh or that makes them reflect and use that moment to capture their natural expressions. Standing still and remaining at the same level an entire portrait session is a surefire way to get static images. It might make sense to start that way, but as your subject warms up to the portraits, try moving around. Move away from them and then move closer. Capture the details of their face and photograph their whole body.
The portraits you produce by using different angles might surprise you. Photo by iam Se7en on Unsplash. They say the eyes are the window to the soul.
Use this! Find a way to make them laugh and capture the twinkle in their eyes. This is especially true of advertising and product photography. Lucas , with a similarly confrontational stare, sits laconically in a chair, legs apart, challenging us to stare at her fake breasts; two real fried eggs almost slipping from her flat chest.
Discuss the merits of the different backgrounds; the plain, dramatic and perhaps funerial black in the Breakwell and the chequered floor possibly a reference to those represented in seventeenth-century Dutch paintings and the domestic interior in the Lucas. Projects Find out about the different types of digital prints that can be made from computer files. Experiment with three of these to make a self-portrait. Construct using Photoshop or similar programme an image that represents what is happening to you in your life at the moment.
Embed your invented or found image into your self-portrait. Contemporary photographic techniques Polaroid portrait Stuart Hall , a cultural theorist and Professor of Sociology at the Open University , was photographed at the National Portrait Gallery, during a short residency by the photographer Dawoud Bey in The Polaroid process is becoming obsolete, but some photographers are trying to save the technology.
What is the relationship between artist and sitter? Discuss whether you think that a photographic portrait is a truthful portrait? Projects Make a diptych portrait in the manner of Dawoud Bey, where the head fills the space of the lens.
On one side of the portrait the sitter must look directly at the camera lens, and on the other, away from it suggesting a public and a private dynamic to the portrait interpretation. Using Photoshop or a similar programme, change the flat colour of the background three times.
Notice what effect the different colours make. The one in which you feel that the colour adds to the portrait and perhaps reflects the personality of the sitter. Contemporary photographic techniques Iconic colour photograph Annie Leibovitz worked for Rolling Stone magazine in the early s, when she became famous for her images of rock stars and other celebrities.
Her reputation grew with original, unusual and sometimes startling portrayals of public figures. For the magazine Vanity Fair she became celebrated for her complex photographs of groups of people united by their fame and profession. The following discussion questions and activities relate to the famous double portrait she took of John Lennon and Yoko Ono b. Five hours later, Lennon was shot dead by Mark David Chapman just outside the building. Because it was the last photograph ever taken of this very famous singer, composer and ex-Beatle, it has become celebrated in a very special way.
Contemporary photographic techniques Iconic colour photograph The photograph is unusual in a number of ways. He appears foetus-like, eyes closed, kissing her tenderly with his arms in an elegant embrace framing her head. We know that they are lying on the carpet, but we want to imagine that they are somehow standing upright - the photograph is presented in this way.
Her magnificent hair spreads out in a voluptuous mane, a halo cascading about the pair. Her hair and clothes are dark in contrast to his pale freckled body and the light tones of the bed and carpet. This photograph has a resonance beyond its initial high quality as a remarkably creative double portrait of an intensely talented and artistic couple. The circumstances of history have turned it into an iconic work; elegant, passionate, private and simultaneously public; an affirmation of commitment that echoes the politics of their young love.
The image below by Tom Blau is also a collaboration as it shows the couple just about to kiss. The focus is on their heads and the shape made by their almost joined profiles. Contemporary photographic techniques Iconic colour photograph Activity Discussion points What is an iconic picture? Choose three that you like and analyse these pictures. Do they have anything in common? Is it the person portrayed that makes an iconic photograph, or is it the way in which they have been photographed?
Do you think that you can isolate the parts of the photograph that make up the ingredients for a great shot? Do you think that collaboration with artists would be easier than with, for example, people in the world of business? Projects Look at portraits by Leibovitz that seem to have been made in active collaboration with a sitter.
Think about how difficult this must be when dealing with certain celebrities. How do you think she persuades them to do some things? Imagine you have been commissioned to photograph the Beckhams. How would you work with them? Do you think that John and Yoko had much input into the way that they were represented?
Ask a friend to collaborate with you. Take the photograph and discuss with your colleagues how successful these portraits have been. However, if you look at photographic portraits made in the nineteenth century, one can see that the basic format of contemporary portraits is traditional — often a head and shoulders view. Artists are consistently inventive and new technologies allow their creativity to flourish.
The National Portrait Gallery has a number of innovative portraits that incorporate computer software and this portrait is an example of a marriage of techniques producing a result that falls somewhere between photography, drawing, pop art and film.
Originally a conceptual artist, this commission marks a new departure into the realm of portraiture for him. Although the linear portrait is fixed, the colours are controlled by computer software that makes constantly randomised choices. The work slowly changes over time in infinite combinations. Known for her signature building design, Hadid is not an architect of modest and demure constructions, like the highly pitched hues of the portrait her work grabs our attention whether we like it or not and in this way this portrait could be seen to reflect her personality.
Because of this, it also needs to be seen live, in order for the viewer to appreciate the artful wit of the work. The figure appears to be breathing and from time to time, he blinks both eyes. This ensures our attention and engagement in a different way to the portrait of Hadid. Contemporary photographic techniques New technology and portraiture Activity Discussion points Are these works cartoons? Notice the impact of the black lines set against the bright colour and simplification of the facial features.
Do you think that these portraits would function well as identification tools? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having a portrait that moves? Notice how the colours affect the portraits. How long is the time between changes in the portraits? How many colours have the artists used? Compare his way of creating portraits to that of Craig-Martin. Using a thick felt tip pen, outline your figure and mark up the facial features.
With another colour, square up the image and then transfer it onto a larger piece of similarly shaped paper. Now select vibrant colours and use them to bring your portrait to life. You could also animate the portrait using a programme such as Photoshop or by making a flipbook. Six pairs of photographic self-portraits A resource for teachers of A and AS level Photography, focusing on six pairs of photographic self-portraits from the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery.
Think about and discuss the types of objects that you could use to relay messages about yourself to viewers of your photograph. Discuss why you think Madame Yevonde has framed herself and what Camille Silvy is telling us about himself in his image? Projects Describe what is going on in these pictures by listing and describing what you see, and analysing the elements of the self-portraits. Find out what an albumen print and a colour dye transfer print are. Describe how these prints differ from contemporary inkjet prints.
Try and find some old prints to look at to help with your descriptions. Discuss family albums and wedding photographs, why are these important to people? Notice how these two images are mounted and signed. Discuss what effect this has on how we respond to the portraits. Projects Find an old analogue non-digital portrait photograph. Gather together different papers to mount it onto and select two kinds of backdrop for your image. Consider the difference that colours and textures make to how we view the image and also how the size of the margins affects this.
Afterwards, the Edwardian beau monde was captured by the dazzling, effervescent strokes of John Singer Sargent. Innovation, chic, directness and theatre mark out all these portraitists: indeed it is tempting to believe that they in part created, rather than merely recorded, the history of British society. Underpinning the history of British portraiture has been an insatiable need to record status and achievement.
The great swell in middle class population from the late 17th century created a merchant and professional class that began commissioning portraits. The mayor, the soldier, the banker, the cleric and the politician — together with their respective wives and sometimes children - all required a brush with immortality. William Hogarth was the first native born painter of genius who understood the balance between rank and personality.
Portraiture, or the human face and body, have allowed artists to express their own concerns and interests about the human condition. It has taken on exciting and varying directions. Francis Bacon contorted bodies and visages brilliantly to express his psychic angst. In many ways every Lucian Freud is a self-portrait, so consistent are his compellingly individualistic, often unsettling characterisations. What is keeping figurative portrait painting artistically alive is the work of genuinely innovative practitioners who infuse what could become a pedestrian art form with personal, reflective and challenging approaches.
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