We see people every day. In many shapes, heights, color and so on. But we never memorise their faces and characters, unless we stop and have a close look at it. Just because we do not have enough time, or we do not make enough of it as we consider it as irrelevant waste of time. Portrait photographers are on the other hand due to their nature of craft take time to study people. I believe the objective of the portrait photographer is to capture the story of the person, their energy and character. Making a statement that despite the fact that people compromise societies and very interconnected, people are still individuals at their core with their perception of life, ideas and ways of living.
With this assignment I needed to capture the essence of the assigned characters. Cameron enjoys flowers and colors yellow with green. Ricardo relates color to the music, where his favorite color is blue ( I assume he likes blues). At the same time, Ricardo enjoys beers and bars so it made sense to relate his portrait to that kind of activity.
That part of assignment was dedicated to the exploration of the settings of the camera.
EXPOSURE
F/3.5, 1/320 s, ISO 400.
F/4.5, 1/4 s, ISO 400
F/4,5, 1/1600 s, ISO 400
ISO
F/10, 1/400 s, ISO 6400
F/13, 1/15 s, ISO 200
W/B
F/4,5 , 1/80 s, ISO 100
F/4, 1/80 s, ISO 100
F/4,5, 1/80s, ISO 100
APERTURE
F/3,5, 1/160 s , ISO 800
F/22, 1/15 s, ISO 3200
MOTION
F/4, 1/3200 s, ISO 100
F/20, 1/4 s, ISO 100
POSITIONING
F/4,5, 1/80 s, ISO 200
F/4, 1/80 s, ISO 200
Part 2: Purpose of Light
Lighters. Such small objects but have so much capacity to change and bring things in life be it satisfaction from after coffee cigarette or unintentional creation of fire hazard. Those objects are very small and it is always easy either to lose them or to leave them in bizarre places. And based on their positions one could definitely tell what the person was doing at that moment of time. As the inspiration I as taking the works of Imogen Cunningham, who was captured by interest of the image of the eggs being placed in the basket.
Born on 23 November 1891, in Sankt – Petersburg (Russian Empire), in the working-class family, where father worked as a theatre props manager and his mother, as a laundress. From 1907 to 1914, Rodchenko studied painting at the Kazan School of Art. After two years of service in the army, he entered Photographers Union where he worked as a secretary. During that time he practiced painting and design. In 1920 at Institute of Artistic Culture along with architecture Vladimir Tatlin, his wife and artist Varvara Stepanova, artist El Lissitsky and others, developed the main ideas of Constructivist movement. Around 1921, Rodchenko renounced painting to concentrate on design. In 1923 he along Vladimir Maykovasky and several others from Soviet intelligentsia established LEF magazine. At the same time, Rodchenko worked from 1921 to 1932, as a magazine photographer and photographic reporter in Moscow, and at that time he started to experiment with photography. At first, he created black and white documentary-style photo portraits of his friends and colleagues at LEF. In 1923 he started also to practice photomontage and he created several illustrations for LEF along with an illustration of the poem written by his friend and colleague Mayakovsky. Somewhere around 1924 Rodchenko fully embraced photography. After attending Paris International exhibition where he participated and acquired his first 35mm camera in 1925, he produced his first photo series “A House at Myasnitskaya Street” and exhibited it in 1926. That was the first series where he utilised the radical angles that made Rodchenko known today. Eventually one could call his aesthetics as documentary style of photo with stark contrasts of light and shadow, shot from radical angles where compositions were abruptly cropped. Somewhere around 1930 he came under criticism for his lately produced series of “Pioneers” as part of October collective, where he was critiqued for formalist underpinnings. Later on, he produced several other series including the series “USSR in Construction” in 1933 where he documented White Sea Canal construction by prisoners and “enemies of the state”. Later on, from 1942 to 1956, Rodchenko worked as an exhibition designer in Moscow while continuing to produce photographic series until his death in 1956.
If you are interested, feel free to check out the presentation below.
