feedback: get some shots where half the face is showing

(work in progress)

The Title of this project is….

A social aspect I want to explore is how each of our identities are also built up from the friends we choose to keep around. I want my audience to see these people how I see them, through a lens that only I could really understand because it’s mine. My perception of somebody is made up from all the experiences and memories I carry of them. A mask of a drawing I made specifically for them. I don’t want my audience to assume or make judgement of who they might be, but what I value in my friends.

I will get inspirations from looking at cartoons, a style that might match them as a person, a lot of them have things called shape language. Shape language tells a lot about a person, if they’re boxy and strong, or round and sweet. I also want to make sure the person has interesting texture or visual aspect. I want my subject to pose but not stiff. Another part of my vision is black and white coloring, to hopefully make the face pop out more. To add texture and visual effect, I want it to look like a scrapbook. With stickers or written statements from me, to make (fake) annotations like I’m writing a letter to them. Something I hope to get to is to print the photos on actual photo like frames and replicate making a photo book.

link to the canva board!

I didn’t mean to, but I did like the texture of my outfit. my jacket had white jewels on them and they showed up too. I also had a white star necklace on too. it looks cool and made my figure more interesting in motion. This is something I do want to take away, I do enjoy the disruption the white details gave.

 

These two photos are really similar, but something I like in the first photo more than the second one was the lighting and also the how blurred the faces are. The blog does decrease the quality, but the first photo blurs the face more. The shutter time was longer, so there’s prone to be more movement in the face. The lighting is also vastly different, which I’m assuming is also the shutter time. We didn’t change the light’s brightness at all during this part of the shoot, so I think maybe the longer the shutter time, the brighter it is.

A photo I didn’t put up but you can see the trend in these photos, I realized that black probably shows up with more detail than not. I was the only one with bangs and my face was usually much more clear, even with short shutter time.

 

 

For my identity project, I want to focus on the fact that you pass by millions of people everyday. I want my project to focus on the lack of identity instead of hyper focusing on the person’s details. To have an identity with little known features. I want my person to be wearing headphones or something that is identifiable, but to have something covering his face at the same time. The idea that you would see millions of faces, but only know them shallowly and just by their faces or what you presume of them.

My vision was mostly inspired by the Mask Series by Igne Morath. I really like the visual of the paper bags over their faces, the look of the paper bags are abstract and really expressive. The identity or the looks of the person is over exaggerated or maybe even up to the viewer’s interpretation. Something I also want to look into is the patterns of their clothes. This series is mainly in monochrome and what seems to be of a higher contrast. The textures of the clothes really pop and give the character a personality, especially with the poses being so stiff, you really can scan over the person’s outfit and the texture of it. They suggest a certain part of their identity without saying it. One of my favorites might be the cheetah print one. The mask is boxy, the cheetah print had been linked to strong feminine power for a while, the bag is a statement of the outfit, the way she’s standing with her arms crossed gives her a sense of defiance. It gives a very sharp, powerful, and strong identity, but also reminds us that this is almost like a character because of the absurdity of the mask. This is something I’m a fan of. These images tell a lot more through the environments  and outfits the subjects are put in rather than the face, despite their exaggerations. It’s satisfying to me, as it shows the person is more character than they might let on.

Things I want to focus on/remember…

• high contrast, monochrome lightening OR over exaggerated vibrance vs monochrome as a sense of contrast.
• patterns patterns patterns! I want outfits to tell me who the person is rather than the mask itself (but the mask can’t be boring either!!)
• exaggeration of my subject’s characters!!
• play around with poses! While my inspiration photos might be stiff, I do want to play around with dynamic poses to see the outcome.
• ^^ though the textures might be ruined if it is monochrome and high contrast.

 

3*

 

A photograph is a portrait when you capture somebody or something, often connecting to an issue that the photographer or a common issue people face in life. A selfie can be a portrait, a self-portrait, but majority of the time it doesn’t depict anything. That issue, essence, or story is what makes a portrait good, it makes it interesting or highlights a certain part of the human body. There’s many types of portraits for all different reasons. From a blog of a portrait photographer, they say that the difference is the intent. While they both capture a subject, but a photograph captures the certain moment in time rather than personality. Portraits takes up a lot of time, considering the subject’s lightening, composition, color, and the overall mood/personality it would give. What makes a portrait better than another is the amount of detail and the planning you can visibly think. What makes a professional glamour portrait more advanced is the lightening and the setting compared to the casual mirror picture (which could be a photograph rather than a portrait).`

An abstract representation can be more-so capturing the essence of the person rather than the finer details. to provide a message that is more deeper than the human body. Or a collage of faces stitched together can document the family the deeper bound between both subjects. The example below is the ties of an older guardian and a younger kid in the same family tree.

(Family Tree by Bobby Neel Adams)

Lastly, I believe a still-life of just objects can technically be a portrait. With careful arrangement and shows a certain story behind a person or people, it can be a portrait (some might just be more shallow than the others).