Contextual research for Enviromental Portraiture Project

1 & 2. Emmet Gowin
3. Elliot Erwitt
4. August Sander Young farmers

Final choice of prints

I chose to print my finals from the film shoots as I thought they had more character. I cropped one of the photos from the shot of Natasha of i was really pleased with the shadows of the coke on her neck, the expression and how well you could see the coke spraying (aswell as the milkshake on her chin.) This is a rough crop I took more time with the final, even though when i changed the image size of the final to the same as the other prints, to make it fit the piece of paper it had slightly changed the size so it is slightly different to the others. I am pleased with my outcomes, i did want to shoot another person but the person i wanted kept cancelling and it was too late. I think I should have planned my first shoot abit better so the shots were more similar especially as in the second shoot the model was standing in the same place so the images were more consistant. I wish we'd had longer to do this as i would like to explore this idea more as it was fun and liked the idea of doing something humorous on a subject that bothers people. I like to think of this project and as abit of a slap in the face or laughing at the face of disgust when someone sees it. With this project I wanted to show the contrast of girls looking pretty along side a photo of them doing something quite disgusting, I wanted to show people the "laddish" side to girls which I think our society and men in particular dont want to see and girls feel like they can't show despite men being able to do disgusting things such as spitting, being aggressive, burping etc. It was a liberation thing.

Shoot two Georgia back garden mets flash - Digital outcomes

I really enjoyed using the mets flash with digital it made the pictures pop! I did find in comparison to the film shot the white walls look more grey. But this experiment has made me want to use flash more with digital. I found it hard to concentrate when using the attachment so the flash was connected to the camera, so when I took it off i felt more relaxed and at ease as I could experiemnt more with movement of the flash to make the image look more flat or to make the model stand out more.

Shoot two Georgia Back garden mets flash - Film prints

I was really pleased with my film outcomes as I used the mets flash so was worried I wouldn't have set the appertures, shutter speeds correctly. I enjoyed using the mets flash as it was more free to hold it and move it around creating different shadows and highlights.

Suprisingly the coke showed up more in the film shots than the digital shots. The colours are more vibrant and i ended up shooting more of the actions shots with the film slr as I knew I wanted my finals to be in film.

Film prints for shoot one

The colours are much more vibrant in my colour film I feel. the actual shots of Tash spitting arn't as clear and the one i did like of her spitting was a landscape so would have to crop if i used this one as i dont think it would look very consitant of i used a mix of digital and film.

Shoot one - Natasha Churchill Square Car Park DIGITAL POSSIBLE OUTCOME

These are some of my digital prints. These are 2 options of presenting them for finals, i had the idea of either giving the images a white border (but still on the same a3 sheet) or with no white border so they take up the whole page. I thought of presenting them on the same page so they link better but am not sure if it would be better to print one on an a3 page.

I wasn't very pleased with the digital prints, I'm not a big fan of digital and i found it hard to work with these as I prefer the grain and colour of film.
I also shot a roll of film for this shoot.

Ideas

I came up with my idea before I saw Erwin Wurm's work about things you shouldn't do in public (the particular picture i was inspired by was the one of the woman spitting in her coffee) but when I was shown it it linked perfectly.
I had the idea do to three different girls portraits, I wanted them to look almost "fashiony" and the girls to look done up. Then alongside their portraits I want to have a portrait of them spitting drinks, shouting, screaming etc. The more I thought about the idea I remembered a photo by Elaine Constantine, a portrait of singer Roisin Murphy, where shes standing fully clothed in the sea with two pints in her hands and she is screaming, hair flying everywhere and beer coming out the glasses. I was already a fan of Elaine's work and the more I looked at it the more I was inspired to do this idea. Elaine's work is playful, colourful and bright without being cheesey. She's shot alot of girls running around and acting up almost as if Elaine is just documenting friends rather than a staged shoot (which they are)