Lauren Needle Portfolio

Lauren Needle Portfolio, a set on Flickr.

My Photos

Photoshop Alan Sugar

In Transition Photos

Assignment 2 Task 1.2 Treatment Unit 1:P1 Week 8 Final Planning

Treatment Photography

 

1. Type of production and brief details on Subject/Concept:

 - Photography production

 - Subject – In transition

 - Concept - Photographs of change between whole apple – peeled apple.

 - Indoor shots.

2. Facilities:

                        - Camera – Fuji Finepix S1500

3. Finance:

                    - Hired camera from college
                    - Similar camera - Canon EOS 5D MkII Digital SLR Camera - £80 a day + VAT

4. Contributors:

                        - Just photographer (myself)

5. Presentation:

                        - I will present the photographs in a slide show on my blog.

Thomas Hoepker

Five young New Yorkers sit on their lunch break in an idylic setting on the East River, Brooklyn, chatting in what seems like a casual, non-rushed fashion, going about their daily life. Perhaps talking about an evening ahead, or the day just passed. Lucious greens and bright oranges in the foreground create an enjoyable, relaxing and comfortable atmosphere. The people in the picture look as if they're sat comfortably enjoying life, and taking in the beautiful surroundings in which they are in.

But in the background a thick black smokey cloud looms over the twin towers, New York. The picture, to many, evokes thoughts of New Yorkers not caring, and not bothering to help with the disaster of that day. This was the reason Thomas Hoepker, the photographer, banned his own photo from being published, until 2006.

Thomas Hoepker is known for using bold stylish colours in his photos, and for some very contraversial photos of vulnerable people and cultures. He made the decision himself to ban his photo because he knew of the potential impact it could make on America and the world. The US was known to have become united on 9/11 and it was thought that this picture could alter the image America wanted to portray to the world. He thought the picture would be portrayed to show five New Yorkers, not bothered about the tragic event behind them, not even turning to look at it. And the colours made everything seem normal. If the smoke wasn't there, it could even pass as a holiday advertisement, the bold colours and seemingly happy people  show a completely different side to that day. But then you see the smoke, and you realise just what that day was, and how shocking it must have been to some people.

Fashion Photography

Fashion photography has changed over time, I'd say it's come from the time of portraits taken of the rich, to adding fashion, and making them an advertisement. This means the border between adverts and portraits is so un-defined and it is often difficult to tell under what category a photo is in.
Some fashion photos are very controversial in how they are presented. A lot come under scrutiny when they are published for having been altered, photo-shopped. Many of the 'high quality' fashion brands use un-realistically thin and perfect models in their shoots. 'Size zero' models are used a lot in fashion photography because it makes the product hang as the designer would want, and makes the audience more inclined to buy the product with the hope to look as good as the model. In actual fact it is practically impossible to get close, because many have been photoshopped to remove blemishes and flaws, extend body parts to make them look more graceful and made models waists look slimmer.

Photo-shopped photographs are more often found in fashion magazines and adverts for films or music. They often feature a celebrity or well known model, and despite them being naturally thin or pretty, they often feel the need to make the image more perfect and flawless. This involves 'airbrushing' the image to remove flaws such as spots, wrinkles and unwanted marks or lines, leaving the models skin looking perfect and even. They also use tools to make their wastes look slimmer, cut inches off of legs, extend the neck and remove any further 'blemishes'. This creates a very distorted idea of the female body, and as women adapt to conform to the stereotypical 'beauty' they can often resort to illnesses such as anorexia and bulimia, causing irreversible damage to their body.

A good example of these changes is this photo of famous actress Cameron Diaz (left). It shows how the whole image had been brightened to make a more healthy glow. Her legs and waist have been slimmed to create a more desirable figure for women and her stomach has been air-brushed to make a more even skin tone and remove un-wanted muscle definition. This image was displayed and made the audience believe this was how Cameron Diaz actually looked, but in actual fact, so much has been altered, it only bears a slight resemblance to her.

Portraiture.

Throughout time, photographers have captured portraits of all sorts of people.

The origins of portraiture come from when kings and queens paid artists to paint their portraits making them look powerful. They had complete control of the picture, and how they would be portrayed within it.

This portrait of Henry VIII was painted by Hans Holbien The Younger in 1953. It makes Henry VIII look powerful dressed in gold and expensive clothes. The thing about old portraits, is that they could be edited easily, as they were painted, the artist could change anything about the image to make it  look how the King wanted to look.

Since then, portraiture has come a long way and now can involve 'regular people' going about their daily life doing whatever they'd normally be doing.





Diane Arbus

Diane Arbus was a photographer in New York in the 1960's. Her photos were thought to be chic and of people as they came, not posed, or dressed up. This photo is of a transvestite in New York. It shows the unknown side of New York, the side no-one usually sees and was hidden away from the rest of society. A lot of the photos she took, were seen as a little creepy, very blunt and bold.

Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park. This photo is said to be taken of a boy posing, as Diane Arbus moved around him to find the perfect angle to take the photo. As she did so, the boy, Colin Wood got agitated and yelled 'Take the picture already!' Diane Arbus thought this was the perfect facial expression for what she wanted to portray through the photo and took the picture. In most of the other photos of Colin Wood, he is seen as a happy boy, but this picture shows his impatience and annoyance of the whole event.




Portraits can now be seen all around us. They are used on bank notes, coins and in homes and galleries. And is now used in many ways.
Larry Clark

Larry Clark created the book 'Tulsa' of his own photographs. During the years 1963–1971 Clark was addicted to drugs, and a lot of his photos portray his life like a 'diary'. The photos in his book were taken during this time, so many include people taking drugs, naked etc.
Clark showed the side of New York that people hadn't seen before, the often darker, more harrowing stories that were never told and images that shocked the world. There were photos of people injecting themselves and others with drugs (heroin), others holding guns in the air or at themselves and some of people participating in sex. The photos were shocking to some people, but just showed hidden day-to-day life stories usually left un-told. I find his photos can be shocking, but at the same time they are a  true to life representation of real life in the mid to late 60's.

Photojournalism

Henri Cartier-Bresson


Henry Cartier-Bresson created what he called the 'Decisive Moment', the moment that the picture ties together. He said he had to be in the right place at the right time.

Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare.
The photo to the right, was Henri Cartier-Bresson's first big picture, if it had been taken a second earlier, or later, if would have been a completely different photo. This shows how it was true to life. This photo was taken in 1932, just before the second world war and some people have mentioned they feel the broken wheel to the lower half of the image signifies a big change to come for Europe.

The Leica Camera

The photo to the right shows Henri Cartier Bresson using his favourite type of camera, the Leica camera. It was made by the company 'Leica Camera AG' and the first prototypes were made by Oskar Barnack in 1913.

War Photography
Although the Decisive moment was key in the change of photojournalism, it was not always helpful in war photography. There was no context behind a photo. The audience would only see what the photo showed them, and no background or information about the picture. Two famous war photographers were Robert Capa and Tony Vaccaro who both saw the wars as they happened which was a new concept years ago.

Robert Capa
Robert Capa was a photojournalist and photographer who covered five wars during his years, including the Spanish Civil War where one of his most famous pictures, The Falling Soldier was taken. He had two rules he used to make his photos a success and they were;
1.  'Get close'
2.  'Get closer'.
He believed to truly achieve a photo that was both honest and true to the event, he had to get in the action and get involved.

Tony Vaccaro
Tony Vaccaro was an American soldier who photographed the war from the battlefield. His work is so famous because he was a soldier in the wars he photographed, he knew the lives of the soldiers he took photos of, and the emotions behind it. As a soldier, Vaccaro couldn't afford to use the Leica camera he would have liked to use, so opted for the less expensive, Arga C3 for his photography.

He once said to 'place the person you photographed on a pedistool' and to determine the personality of the person, narrow it down to one word, and capture it.

To the left, is a photograph of Pablo Picasso, a famous painter and sculpturer taken by Tony Vaccaro in 1968. Picasso had previously asked Henri-Cartier Bresson to take a portrait of him but felt he had failed to capture the image he wanted to portray in the two years he had tried. He then asked Tony Vaccaro to try to take the photo and proceded to pose for him until Vaccaro said that his camera was broken. Picasso imediately dropped any poses and walls he had up and Tony Vaccaro took his opportunity to take the photo. He felt it captured his true personality.