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Reflective Commentary
This exercise took me to my happy place, I love to be in a studio with control of the lights and the entire environment. I have been lucky that I now have my own studio every Thursday, and I can work on my love of lighting and my newfound love of creating images of people.
My thought process for this exercise was to explore the world of Irving Penn and to some extent Clare Strand. In the article I found on Irving Penn’s “Worlds in a Small Room” [1] I was taken in by the statement “The advantages of a studio are isolation and control. What you can exclude, all the distractions of walls, trees, shadows, and clutter; and what you can introduce; controlled lighting, a sense of stability and intimacy.” I wanted to explore this in my studio. So I invited a lot of people in to have their images made. I decide that I would move as far away from the August Sander style as I could and rather use the idea presented above, where Irving Penn took away all the distractions and created an image based on the sitter and in some cases still costume and props I wanted to make images that relied entirely on the sitters face and reactions.
I invited a number of people who come to my church to sit for me, As I demonstrated in part one you cannot identify them as Christians from their faces but if you look at the edited set of three images they all have a happy friendly quality to them.
On reflection the sittings were a relaxed and friendly affair and I believe that the expressions on the sitters are as much a reflection of my mood and demeanour on the day of the shoot as they are of the sitters. I more firmly believe after this exercise that the image will reflect more about the photographer than the sitter, as the photographer creates the light the mood and stimulates the sitter to behave in a certain way.
During this exercise I had cause to take some images of children for the sitters who were parents, the results were more about the character of the child as they refused to be directed and beat the drum to their own tune during the shoot. These images are interesting windows on the character of the child and it is fascinating that the ones the parents like are the ones where I as a photographer took charge and made them conform to the social norm of having your portrait taken.
At the end I feel I managed to isolate the characters with my studio bubble and take images that reflect the way I see the characters. Interesting that they love them and think I have in some way made them look better than they normally do. Suggesting that there is some photographic ideal that everyone strives for but feels they never attain.
[1] Classic – worlds in a small room (2013) Available at: https://imageonpaper.com/2013/07/21/review-worlds-in-a-small-room/ (Accessed: 20 July 2016).
” The advantages of a studio are isolation and control. What you can exclude, all the distractions of walls, trees, shadows, and clutter; and what you can introduce; controlled lighting, a sense of stability and intimacy. But there are other things that take place within a studio that are subtle, and they have everything to do with the relationship between photographer and subject.” (Classic – worlds in a small room, 2013)