Traditional Regalia

Dairy Entry:
Since this time there was nothing to develop we didn't spend time in the dark room. I liked this project because it goes outside of objects and it is very unlikely that one of us is going to have the same shot as another person in our class because we aren't using each other and there for it is a lot more unique. We had to use a lot more photoshop and I have to because my flash kept of making wierd lights on the person and shadows so I had to try to get rid of the shadows and that was pretty challenging. It's also nice how it is going to be part of international day because

usually we take the pictures we need for the project, then we

just hang them up and they are just seen by people that pass by and its pretty interesting how it will take part of international day.

Theory Notes:

Classic Painting:

This portrait is from the 1800 of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their five children. Even though Queen Victoria and Prince Albert are at the same level Queen Victoria is looking straight ahead and making some sort

of eye contact, whereas Prince Albert is looking complety to the side, kind of uninterested. Also Queen Victoria has her arm around her her son as like he is her heir the next one in line and even though she doesn't have a threatening but she still looks as if she's standing strong.

Contemporary:

This is the Danish Royal family. The way that they are set up is to show that the King and Queen are the core and to their sides are the sons which would be the heirs and then the wives. So in order of importance. Also the King

and Queen are more towards each other once again showing more core like feeling but at the same time there is more of a fe

eling of equality than the more classical.

Compositions:

This is my brother, Tomas and here he is representing Argentina. There actually is a lot more to the traditional costume but I just wanted to draw the eye more to the belt, so the viewer has less things to look at and can concentrate on the belt.

This is Deepakie and she is from India. I've always been a big fan of the Indian culture with all the colours so I really wanted to pick a boring background to make the colours of her sari to stand out.

This is Mathili and she is from South Africa. I really wanted to represent all the colours that are usually seen in the more generalized African culture. This picture was quite the

challenge the to photoshop because the background was originally bright read and it was just too much so it took some

experimenting but I got it to work and I think it looks pretty good.

Image Bank:

Argentinian:

This is pretty typical for the Argentinian with sort of farm like rual

look to it. Even though there is no belt nor did I use a hat like that but that strap around the hat has the same style as the belt.

This picture was taken by Andrew Gibson, who is a writer and a photographer in the south of England. He really loves going to Latin America, specially Argentina, Bolivia and Peru and to try to document the life style.

Indian:
I like how she is sort of praying and how she has every little jewlery on because when I took my picture it was kind of rushed because she had to go practice for her dance for International Day. And I really like the colours and how the background is blurred.

I think that this picture was taken by K

arwa Chauth but I am not sure and I have no imformation about them.

African:

This is exactly what I wanted to try and capture in my picture with the head peace and the jewlery and I like how Mathili and this woman ha

ve this sort of really strong look about them.

This picture was taken by Bill Bachmann, but I could not find much about him.

William Hogarth:

Hogarth was a very important English painter that was born in 1697 and died in 1764. He did things such as

very realistic formal portraits to almost comic like paintings. A lot of his work also suggested some kind of mockery towards the government.

Here are examples of his work.

Ex1:

"The Marriage Contract"

This one is one of more of his serious work but I li

ke how it is not staged and it seems very much as a picture that captured a moment.

Ex 2:

This is more comical of him and it's not showing glamour or anything and doesn't seem as serious as the other.

Annie Leibovitz:

Leibovitz is an American photographer that was born in 1949. She has shot numerous celebrities and she is known for the close collaboration between her and the model.

Here is some of her portrait work.

Ex 1:

She took this picture in October 2009 so it's pretty recent. And of course we all know who this is, Barack Obama and his family. What is interesting is that yes he is using a red tie which usually symbolizes authority but also everyone is at the same level and it just looks like a simple family photograph.

Ex 2:

This is Queen Elizabeth, and this picture was taken during the filming of a two hour documentary about the Queen and her life. What I like about this it that she is looking away but there is still a very strong look about her and her jewelry adds to her importance.

Blog Links:

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Jenny

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Fabrizio

Heather

Katlynne

Meghan

Mess

Mess

Typically when one thinks of the word “mess” one thinks of a messy house, a typical teenager’s room or papers all over the place. To be honest those were the first things that came through my mind. The dictionary defines mess as “a dirty, untidy, or disordered condition”. But that was too literal, and also I wanted to create a picture that truly wowed the viewer and I felt that by doing a messy room that would be a little hard to do. I went through ideas and different types of messes, and even though what I stumbled upon and decided to do is a bit clique I felt it could give me the strength I needed for my picture. Thus I chose to do emotional mess. The dictionary had 13 definitions for just the word “mess” and the last definition was “a person whose life or affairs are in a state of confusion, esp. a person with a confused or disorganized moral or psychological outlook.”

When I first thought of emotional mess, words like “crying”, “ sad” came to mind. The initial image in my head was to have a straight head and shoulder shot (preferably with bare shoulders and female), messy hair, smudged eyeliner and with a lot of emotion in the models eye. That was the main thing I was trying to concentrate, to try to really show the viewer the confusion and sadness in the model. I chose to do the picture in black and white because I personally feel that in black and white emotions are transmitted a lot better and it really captures someone eye. I think that I like it so much because in real life everything is in colour and black and white allows for more imagination. But that’s slightly outside of the point.

I used a good friend of mine as the model and at first it was a bit hard to get her to really look sad, not with the make up and the hair because those were easily fixed but to get her to have a sad emotion in her eyes. I took over 25 pictures and I just snapped away to try and catch that one picture that really shows what I wanted. After a while I decided to let her position herself in what she felt was most efficient for the shot. And after a while it was more natural for her and she started thinking of the dog that she left in Costa Rica and then that’s when true sad eyes started to appear. I actually got rather inspired and it was flash after flash, and I was rather excited.

I usually like to do weird crops in my pictures, crops such as half a face or cutting it off at the top of the forehead and I wasn’t sure if Ms. Dele would like that since she previously said that I make random crops. But I think it fits this picture because then it makes the viewer concentrate more on the eyes and the expression that anything else and that is what I’m trying to achieve. Also I like how she’s looking away, as if she’s too much of a mess or too sad to even look someone straight in the eye.

It was fun to shoot and I think it turned out rather nicely considering that all I had to use was a desk light and my normal digital camera. I wanted there to be more difference between the side of the face that had the light on it and make it a lot darker on the other side but my flash would always go off and if I had it off it would go blurry. But I think that it still manages to look good and there is still quite a difference between both sides of the face.

I did a little tweaking with Photoshop and I just made there be more lines and played around with the contrast and exposure.

I found a photographer called Raphael Guarino. He takes some amazing portraits in black and white. He takes from a very elderly woman with the most interesting faces to angsty teenagers. All his pictures have very interesting lighting and they all show a lot of emotions, but the emotions seem to mostly be sadness or anger. Sadly I could not find a lot about him personally but his pictures really struck me because that is the type of pictures that I love and that I find most interesting.

It was pretty hard to actually try to string in what I thought of emotional mess into one picture and actually having to get the model to get pretty personal and get physically upset. But thank god that she’s a good friend of mine and that she was able to help me. I was a little bit scared to how well my picture would come out because I don’t have the best camera ever and I wasn’t sure if what I had in my mind was going to be able to translate into a picture. That always happens to me, I have this image in my head and then I cant really express it in photography or drawing or anything like that so that was one thing that I was excited to see how it came out. I am happy about how it came out and I think that it effectively expresses what I wanted to do. Maybe the word that comes to mind is not mess but I definitely think that “sad” or “broken” comes to mind, which I think fit very nicely to “emotional mess”. I was pretty happy with my word because it wasn’t too hard to think of something and I know that some other of my classmates did have a hard time to come up with a picture to take but overall I think I really captured what “mess” means to me.

Raphael Guarino website here.