Assignment #6 - Portraits

From Wikipedia (yeah, a terrible source, but I liked the definition...)

Portrait:

"A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer."



Three rules to this assignment.

Rule #1: NO MYSPACE PHOTOS - I think you all know what this means. You've seen 'em, you've taken 'em, I don't want 'em.

Rule #2: You need to shoot at least three separate people.

Rule #3: One of those three people MUST be yourself...but, you can't BE yourself...

Here is Cindy Sherman doing her version of Lucille Ball.



Here is a link to the National Portrait Gallery. You will get a lot of good ideas here from paintings, sculpture and photography.

National Portrait Gallery

Here is one of my favorite portrait photographers...Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon Portrait Gallery

Hiroshi Watanabe's gallery has a few sections of portraits that are interesting.

August Sander was a German photographer who made portraits of farmers and working class people near Cologne prior to World War II. After the Nazi's gained power, Sander continued to shoot the people in his city, many of them shown in Nazi military uniforms. Sander's portraits provide possibly the widest cross-section of Germans during that time.

Here is a self-portrait of me as Abraham Lincoln.



Due on Friday, April 9th.

10 on blog, 5 prints, ONE of which needs to be a 'self-portrait'.

Assingment #5 - Get On Your Belly!

That's right, every and I mean EVERY shot done for this assignment will be shot from your belly...or your back. What I want you to do is to look at the world from a different point of view.

Ask yourself when you are making these images how they look different shot from the low point of view. Do they look any different? If they don't look different than if you shot them standing up, don't make the image.

Shooting from below your subject makes it look larger than life. In the 'biz' we call it the 'Hero Angle'. It makes everything look heroic, grand, powerful and large...even if it is none of those things.

Think about what you can shoot that might not be heroic, grand, powerful or large, and how this point of view can play with your perception of those things.

Images and prints due Friday, March 26th. 8 images on the blog, 4 prints.

duck a: "quack"

duck b: "quack quack"