Evaluation

My overall topic for this unit was 'Close Ups'. I brain stormed a bit on what I could do for this topic and I decided that going down the route of close ups of the human body would be the best thing to do. I figured that it would be an interesting topic to do as you can see all of the detail that you didn't know was there on a human body. Close up photos of the human body also show the unflattering side of things because you are seeing the parts of the body that you see from far away usually, up close. For this whole project I used the Canon 550D with a 75mm Sigma lens. This meant that I could get right up close and the quality was great.

I started off my project with a powder paint photo shoot. I splattered powder paint all over my models face and I took photos of her with lights on her in a pitched black room. This made the colours and her features stand out a lot more. This was a really successful shoot with the best photo being the close up of the eye. It would have been interesting to experiment and use different kinds of coloured things such as normal liquid paint, to see what the difference would have been and whether it would have looked better or worse.

I moved on from the powder paint and I looked at the parts of the human body such as the skin the eyes and the hands. I wanted to make these photos look natural unlike the powder paint ones. To do this, I took the photos in my conservatory where there was natural lighting from outside. This made the photos for detailed as you could see the creases and the hair on the skin and the dirt under the nails. I think the skin shoot went quite well as you got to see how different everyone skin actually is. Some have really fine hair with no freckles and some have really thick hair with lots of freckles. This just shows that we are all unique in our own way. The hand shoot also went very well with the best photo being the one of the woman's hand. You can really see the dirty nails and the pattern of the skin which really fascinates me. The eye photos were also a good shoot because you could see the details in and around the eye.

From this I moved onto imperfections on the human body. I could only really do one shoot for this and so couldn't really carry that aspect on any more this is because I only know one person that has an imperfection on their skin. Despite not being able to carry on this topic, the photo shoot did go quite well. You can see the pigmentation on her back really clearly and after editing it a bit more to make it stand out you could see it a lot more clearly.

From this I went on to experiment with more parts of the body such as feet, hair, mouths and more faces. These photo shoots weren't the best that I have done and I don't think they went too well compared to the ones before. However, I did get two really good shoots from the topic of hands again. I wanted to experiment with hands as the photos before went so well. To do this I added a cigarette into the picture. I wanted the photos to look as interesting as possible so I got a man's hands for this shoot as I didn't think a woman's' hands would be as effective. I got my model to hold the cigarette in many positions so that I had a lot to choose from. I put them on the computer and I edited them to make them black and white. This made them look so much better and it made them have more meaning to them. This photo shoot was incredibly successful and made me want to experiment more with hands after I had just experimented with other parts of the body first.

At the end of my project I decided to come back to hands and take more pictures like the ones with the cigarette in the photo. I got the same model and I asked him to do random things with him hands. I saw a picture on the internet of a hand in a window and I decided to get him to put his hand on the window and when he took it off there was a hand print which looked quite sincere. I then got him to intertwine his hands together so that his hands looked deformed in some way which made an interesting photo. I edited these into black and white so that they matched the cigarette ones. These looked a million times better in black and white than in colour as you just focus on the hands and not all the colour around the hands.

After a lot of pondering, I decided to use the cigarette photos and the hands on the window photos as my final pieces. I thought they were very successful shoots and they were well developed. I also think they look really good together as six final photos. They have meaning to them and are good quality close up pictures.

Response

 

 

These photos are in response to the photos that I found on pintrest. I wanted there to be some element of sincerity to the pictures so for the top two I decided to have the model put his hand on the window so that it left a hand mark on the window. This makes the photo look sincere and a little spooky. I also edited the photos into black and white which made the hand print stand out a lot more and made it look like it has more of a meaning behind it. The bottom picture I wanted to make look as weird and deformed as possible. I just got my model to bind his hands together which made them look a bit of a mess. I chose his hands in particular because they have good, distinctive features and they make for a good photo. Overall I am very pleased with these photos as they show the detail of the hands and I think changing them to black and white always makes photos like this that little bit more interesting. 

Contacts

Photo inspiration

I found these photos of hands on pintrest, where there were lots of interesting photos of hands. They were mostly in black and white and they where all in great detail. I really like the top photo as I think its quite sincere and creepy. It makes the photo very interesting and makes you wonder who's hands they are. I also really like the bottom photo as it shows a great deal of detail from the wrinkles in his skin to the dirt under his nails. Two of his fingers are also cut off at the tip which makes the photo have a lot more of a story behind it and we now know that he has been through a lot in his life.

Response

 

This is my response to David Levy's work. I decided to take the picture at a low angle to try and capture the unflattering angle of the human body. The photo makes the model look like she is looking up but it is where the camera is that makes it look like this. I definitely think that this photo gives the unflattering look that I wanted to give but I don't think it quite gives off the same vibe as the David Levy photos. It doesn't have that same story behind the person or the effectiveness of the photo.

Contacts

Diego Levy

Diego Levy was born in Buenos Aires in 1973. Since 1991, he has been working as a professional photographer. In this particular series of photos he took pictures of peoples faces but he did them in an interesting way. The people who he took photos of had very interesting features and made the photo look a lot more interesting than it could be. He also took the pictures at a slight angle that most people wouldn't say is very flattering. This makes the persons features stand out a bit more and the people he took photos of look like they all have a story behind them and that they have been through quite a lot in their life time. 

Response

 

This is my response to David Terrazas' work. I took the element of expression and displayed it in my photos. I used the most expressive part of our face which I believe is the mouth and I got the model to do lots of different facial expressions. The high definition of the camera means that the expressions and the photos look a lot more real and life like. It looks more serious and like the person is actually feeling these emotions.

 

I particularly like the middle photo where the model looks angry or stressed. I think it showed the human expressions in a good way and shows them up close. I also like the top and bottom ones because the top one is a whole load of emotions put together and the bottom one is clearly anger. If you look at the photos in order you could say that the mouths tell a story or it is the breakdown from hearing the bad news, getting angry and then bursting into complete rage.

Contacts

David Terrazas

David Terrazas creates photography that has a meaning through the models different facial expressions. The lips are a particular part of the human face that depicts how a person is feeling. You can see in the top photo that the boy may be a bit scared or naïve. The bottom photo is more of a posed picture so doesn't really show true expression but still shows the element of happiness and wonderment. 

Response

 

This is my response to the photo that I found on pintrest which I found interesting. I took the photo from the same angle and made sure that the camera only focused on part of the hair and not all of it. The pintrest photo focuses on the frontal hair near her forehead, however I have chosen to focus on the hair in the middle of her head. I tried to take photos of her hair parting from above her head but the photos didn't really work and came out slightly blurry. Overall I don't really think this photo shoot was successful because it is quite dull and the photos didn't come out how I wanted them too.



Contacts

Photo inspiration

I found this photo on a website called pintrest. I thought it was quite interesting because you could see the individual hairs and it was focused quite well on the hair itself. I think they have done a good job of the lighting and so the light bounces off the hair and makes it look more interesting. I think this makes for a good photo because the hair hasn't been done in a nice way so it makes the photo look more real.

Response

 

This is my response to Martin Schoeller's work where he captured the details of the human face and didn't capture the celebrities faces in a flattering way. I tried to do his with my model by getting him to look quite grumpy with no real expression on his face. I think this worked quite well but not as well as it could have done. I also tried out different poses and I liked the one of him looking out of the window. I thought it had a meaning to it and you can see that he is looking into the distance thinking about something in depth. Overall I don't think this shoot was very successful as it didn't really respond to Martin Schoeller's work very well and the detail of the face in the picture isn't quite up to standard.

Contacts

Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller is a very well known photographer who, as you can see, takes photographs of very famous people. However, he doesn't take the photos in a glamorous way like you would expect. He captured all of their features and makes them look not so glamorous. He also picks people with moderately interesting faces and makes them do different facial expressions to make the pictures more interesting, He does the photo shoots in proper studios with big lights which makes the photos look more artificial. I really like his photos because he captured all the features of the famous people that we don't necessarily get to see.



Response

This is my response to Steeve Lunckers' work. Although Steeve Luncker didn't do exactly what I did, there are some similarities within mine and his work. He does more of a typology based portfolio that has a man smoking a cigarette and the different stages of him smoking it. I thought this was quite interesting and decided to expand on my photos that I did of hands by putting in an object as well. I thought that a cigarette was appropriate because it makes the photo a lot more interesting and it fits with the big hands and the dirt under the nails. I think the smoke coming from the cigarette is effective too because it gives that element of fluidity within the photo. I edited the pictures into black and white because it makes them look older and like there's a story behind them. I don't have a particular favourite out of these three photos because I think they all go together really nicely. Overall, I think this was a really good shoot and I got some great photos out of it. The photos tell a story and have a history behind them. 

Contacts

Steeve Luncker

Steeve Luncker is a French photographer who took lots of photos of a persons face and put it into a typology layout. I like the bottom set of these photos because of the cigarette that he is smoking and I wanted to take that element and put it into my work. I like the way you can see the smoke and you can see him lighting the cigarette. It shows a story of his life and shows a lot about who he is as a person. In my response to this I will not be showing the face but just the cigarette in a persons hand.

Response

These photos are in response to ... I got my sister to stand in lots of different places with her feet in the exact same position. You can see the details of the backs of her feet which makes the photo look better. I also like the fact that she has a blister on the back of her foot with makes the photo more interesting and also makes it more obvious that they are the same feet in each photo.

I think this shoot went very well as you can tell they are the same feet in the same position but just in different places. It shows a journey of the feet and shows a story within the photos of the places she has been.



Contacts

Nicos Philippou

Nicos Philippou is a photographer who lives and works in Cyprus and he did a series where he worked on the Easter bonfires around the country of Cyprus. He captured the same shape of the bonfire in every picture but they where all in different places. It makes for a very good piece of typography looking at the slight changes in each photo and following the same shape of bonfire around Cyprus.

I like his work because I think its interesting how you can have the same type of thing looking exactly the same in different places. I am going to take this into consideration when doing my response to this.

Response

This is my response to Adrienne M. Norman's work. She takes pictures of peoples imperfections and illnesses and shows them in a dramatic way. I wanted to do a photo shoot of someone with an abnormality on their face but I couldn't get anyone who has one. However, one of my friends has this pigmentation on her back and I thought it would make for a good photo. Along with some editing that made the pigmentation stand out more, the photos have turned out really well and shows the imperfection well.

Contacts

Adrienne M. Norman

Adrienne M. Norman is a photographer based in Amsterdam who took photos of different people with skin abnormalities. I think its really interesting because you get to see what different abnormalities there are and you can see that the people live a normal life even though they don't look normal. this makes the photos even more interesting.

Response

These photos are in response to Ann Mandelbaums photos of the necks. I decided to look at the skin of different people and see how different it actually is. I took photos of 4 different peoples arms and they where all completely different. This shows how unique people are and how no one is the same at all and we all have our own identity. I really like them because although the photos are interesting because of the detail they are also disgusting for that same reason.

I think this shoot was very successful as it shows the uniqueness of different people and how different they are on the outside even though we may not see it.