Nikki S Lee and Lyle Ashton Harris

Nikki S Lee

Born 1970, Lee is a Korean photographer and filmmaker formerly based in New York City, now living and working in Seoul.


Projects, 1997–2001
Lee's most noted work, Projects (1997–2001), begun while still in school, depicts her in snapshot photographs, in which she poses with various ethnic and social groups, including drag queens, punks, swing dancers, senior citizens, Latinos, hip-hop musicians and fans, skateboarders, lesbians, young urban professionals, and Korean schoolgirls. Lee conceives of her work as less about creating beautiful pictures, and more about investigating notions of identity and the uses of vernacular photography. Lee has stated that the project was one of her graduation requirements.
In 1999 Lee's first solo exhibition took place at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York which was her exclusive representative from 1998 to 2007.

2002–present
A more recent series by Lee, entitled Parts (2002–2005) features images of Lee posing in different settings with a male partner, cropped to make it impossible to directly see who she is with.

In 2006 Lee released a film, A.K.A. Nikki S. Lee. The project, described as a "conceptual documentary," alternates segments presenting Lee as two distinct personalities, a reserved academic and an outgoing socialite. It had its premier at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, October 5–7, 2006.

Lee has had solo exhibitions of her work at major international institutions including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City. Her works are in the collections of major museums, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum in Fukuoka, Japan; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Writing on Lee's work have appeared in many magazines, newspapers, and journals including Artforum, Art in America, Art Journal, and the New York Times. Two monographs on Lee's work have been published: Nikki S. Lee: Parts. by RoseLee Goldberg and Nikki S. Lee: Projects. essays by Russell Ferguson and Gilbert Vicario .

Faking Identities

Crunch time has come to snap out of my post-graduate daze and choose a topic for my all-encompassing, grand sweeping finale Masters Project (no pressure). Last Summer I spent countless late stuffy nights in John Rylands Manchester Library, incessantly analysing the gigantic, grotesque, aged, wrinkled and hairy body parts of self-portrait photographer John Coplans for my undergraduate dissertation in Art History. I’m not complaining too much as Coplans is a unique and characteristic photographer and his reluctantly compelling images got me a good grade in the end (whilst my friends and flat mates slaved over papers on Fungi or Thermodynamics). However, this year I’ve decided to think carefully about a unique and exciting project which preferably avoids looking at old men’s wrinkly balls.

Raised in ‘the ghetto’ that is Wolverhampton (I’m actually from a nice suburban area but like to sound streetwise) I’ve moved to Manchester and now London which has given me the chance to meet and mingle with a variety of social groups, each with distinctive identities. The one which fascinates me most is the ‘chav‘ community in Wolverhampton. Contrast chavs with the ‘hipsters‘ in East London, the ‘toffs‘ from Chelsea, the retro ‘ravers‘ of Manchester and the freshly graduated ‘Yuppie bankers‘ in their swanky city centre apartments. My experience of different social communities fragments into a series of clearly distinguished social identities.

Chav

Sociology, the context of people and the politics of identity are all concepts which interest me and I’m yet to open up Pierre Bourdieu and deeply indulge in the theory behind the likes of ‘cultural capital’ and ‘habitus’. Therefore, after much deliberation I’ve decided to soon perform some kind of ethnographical experiment regarding these different social identities as part of my final Major project. I want to learn more about how and why these cultural groups form. Can everyone be categorised? Do we choose to belong? And most interestingly…How easy is it to become someone else?

The Korean born and New York based artist, Nikki S. Lee.


The Hispanic Project (25), 1998.



In her series of photographs Projects, Nikki S. Lee transformed her own identity through a blend of clothes, make-up, tanning salons, diets and sheer determination to fit into cultural groups from the Punks, Tourists, Lesbians, Hispanics, Yuppies, Seniors, Skateboarders and Schoolgirls. Like the tropical Chameleon, Lee has camouflaged herself into the environment of specific social groups, changing her outward identity to blend in with surroundings. She has infiltrated each group over a period of time, adopting their mannerisms and gestures to ultimately document her new look with a snapshot camera, taken by a friend or total stranger. Through the snapshot aesthetic complete with a date stamp in the corner of the image, her photographs are intrinsically ‘raw’ carrying an artlessness which registers as authentic and ‘real’ for the viewers.


The Hiphop Project (1), 2001.

Lee introduces herself as an artist and explains the nature of her project to each group but it seems this fact is quickly pushed aside as she is casually accepted due to her fake persona. The seniors simply refuse to believe that she is actually a young woman in disguise, dismissing her story as early senility! (Cantz, 2001: 13).


The Seniors Project (26), 1999.

To an unaware viewer, Lee becomes invisible in each image (like the Chameleon of the trees), finally recognisable only by her Korean ethnicity. Her images speak to people’s fantasies about wanting to become something else, wanting to live other lives and wanting to embody something they’re not.


The Yuppies Project (15), 1998.

Via the photographic medium, Lee demonstrates how easy it is to fake an identity and perform a variety of lifestyles.


The Lesbian Project (14), 1997.

 Nothing is certain except that nothing is certain.

Chav

Hispanic

Grannies

Hip Hop

Lyle Ashton Harris

Born in the Bronx, Harris was raised between New York City and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. He graduated with a BA from Wesleyan University and received his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

In January of 1993, "Face: Lyle Ashton Harris" was exhibited at the New Museum. The installation combined photography, video and an audio track offering a critique of masculinity and explore constructions of sexuality, race, and gender.In 1994, Harris exhibited The Good Life in New York. The show was composed of large format Polaroids depicting staged and impromptu photographs of friends and family members. One of the most notable works from the show is a triptych series in collaboration with his brother, Thomas Allen Harris, entitled "Brotherhood, Crossroads, Etcetera". The work weaves a complex visual allegory that invokes ancient African cosmologies, Judeo-Christian myths, and taboo public and private desires.

Collage has remained an integral part of Harris's studio practice since the mid-1990s. In 1996, "The Watering Hole", a photomontage series, reveals his performative use of photography and its mechanisms, putting image into a field of representation where they reveal hidden or repressed occurrences.

In 2004, "Blow Up", Harris's first public wall collage was shown at the Rhona Hoffman gallery in Chicago. This led to a series of three other wall collages composed of materials, photographs and ephemera Harris collected including, Blow UP IV (Sevilla) which was made for the Bienal de Arte Contemporeano de Sevilla in Seville, Spain in 2006.

In 2010 Gregory R. Miller & Co. published Excessive Exposure. The publication is the most definitive documentation of Harris' "Chocolate-Colored" portraits made with a large-format Polaroid camera over the past ten years. In 2011, the Studio Museum in Harlem exhibited some of these portraits, highlighting specific individual subjects.

Lyle Ashton Harris is represented by CRG Gallery in New York City. He currently divides his time between his home and studio in New York and Accra, Ghana.

Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie

Catherine Opie (born 1961 in Ohio) is an American artist specializing in issues within documentary photography. Opie is currently a professor of Photography at University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). She lives and works in West Adams, Los Angeles.


Opie spent her early childhood in Ohio, but her family moved near San Diego when she was 13 years old. She studied childhood education for a year as an undergraduate, but soon went to the San Francisco Art Institute to earn her bachelor of fine arts degree. She obtained a master's degree from California Institute of the Arts School of Art in 1988. Her thesis project Master Plan (1986–88) examined the planned communities of Valencia, California, from construction sites and advertisement schemes, to homeowner regulations and the domestic interiors of residents' homes. In 1989 Opie moved to Los Angeles and began working as an artist, supporting herself until 1994 as a lab technician at the University of California, Irvine.
Opie and her companion, painter Julie Burleigh,[8] built several studios in the backyard of their house in South Central Los Angeles.


Opie's work is characterized by a combination of formal concerns, a variety of printing technologies, references to art history, and social/political commentary. An example of formal concerns include addressing issues of the horizon line in the "ice house" and "surfer" series. She has printed photographs using chromochrome, iris prints, Polaroids, and silver photogravure. Examples of art history references include the use of bright color backgrounds in portraits which reference the work of Hans Holbein[10] and the full body frontal portraits that reference August Sander. A common social/political theme in her work is the concept of community. Opie has investigated aspects of community, making portraits of many groups including LGBT community; surfers; and most recently high school football players. Opie is interested in how identities are shaped by our surrounding architecture. Her work is informed by her identity as an out lesbian.[11] Her works balance personal and political. Her assertive portraits bring queers to a forefront that is normally silenced by societal norms.


Catherine Opie has multiple bodies of work:
Master Plan (1986–88)
Being and Having (1991)
Portraits (1993-97) Chromogenic Prints in various sizes. These portraits of "queer" people references August Sander and Hans Holbein.


PORTRAITS


“I always tell the people I’m photographing not to look at the lens but to look through the lens. I want them to look through you a little bit. I told them I wanted them to be in a really special place inside their heads, to be kind of dreamy and confident at the same time.”

Portraits

Opie’s Portraits series, encompassing more than fifty photographs created between 1993 and 1997, synthesizes an approach that is at once grounded in documentary tradition and deeply personal. The subject matter is her community of gay and lesbian friends. As part of a community that is not represented in mainstream American culture, Opie sought to provide visibility and representation to her friends and the community at large.

Opie creates discrete bodies of work in series, each with specific parameters. Portraits reflects a typological tradition that can be traced from nineteenth-century archival documentation through August Sander’s People of the 20th Century project, which Opie has cited as an influence. Sander’s straightforward portraits, taken during the Weimar Republic, are frontal, centered in the frame, evenly lit, and present individuals organized by types such as “The Skilled Tradesman,” “Classes and Professions,” and “The Artists.” Although Opie’s photographs echo Sander's in many ways, she is careful to present her subjects on their own terms, without a repressive system of labeling.

In the tradition of the Northern Renaissance court painter Hans Holbein the Younger (1497/98–1543), Opie isolates her subjects against vibrantly colored backgrounds of blue, brown, green, purple, or red. She says, “the colored backdrop allows your eye to go through the photograph in a different way than if it was, say, a person sitting in their house. It’s about separating the subject from their world, but still representing their world through their body.” The portraits are often three-quarter or bust-length shots, with the subjects standing or sitting, their eyes frequently locked with the lens in looks that range from boredom to defiance.

This highly formal style of composition is a means of paying tribute to her friends, who were unaccustomed to such dignified pictorial treatment. As Opie liked to think, “The photographs stare back, or they stare through you. They’re very royal. I say that my friends are like my royal family.”

Opie’s Portraits celebrate the bravery of her subjects’ decisions to craft their own identities in the face of restrictive social norms. The series documents this living community, rendering visible an otherwise invisible or misunderstood sector of American culture with characteristic respect and compassion.

I love her work in the pro trial of identity, culture, and the study of subcultures within the main cultural groups.

Her work has influenced me to look at the women in the body of work that I hope to complete.  
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/education/school-educator-programs/teacher-resources/arts-curriculum-online?view=item&catid=728&id=99

Portrait Lighting Research

INTRO TO PORTRAIT LIGHTING

Good lighting is a critical component of portraiture. It's also easily identifiable even by the casual observer. However, despite this apparent simplicity, knowing how to use light to achieve a desired look requires a much deeper understanding. This introductory tutorial discusses the most basic scenario: portraits with one light source. Subsequent tutorials will discuss setups with multiple lights, but the same principles discussed here still apply.

Unflattering Portrait Lighting

→

Better Portrait Lighting

Expertly crafted model used throughout is courtesy of Nikola Dechev.

OVERVIEW: ONE LIGHT SOURCE

The primary source of subject illumination is usually called the main or key light. Although additional lights may be added to enhance a portrait, key lighting is usually performed independently. This is great news for those trying to learn portrait lighting, because it means one can ease into the process one light at a time. If and when you decide to include additional lights, everything learned here will still apply.

Only one trait controls the appearance of light on a subject: its distribution*. Even though some lighting may seem to have a magical quality, it's ultimately nothing more than this. However, for a given light source, we can separate this out into two more easily manageable characteristics:

1. Direction, which controls the location of shadows and highlights on the subject, and
2. Apparent Size, which controls the appearance of these shadows and highlights.

While these characteristics might seem simple and controllable, their combinations can create an amazing array of different subject appearances. Lighting can easily become unpredictable without first developing an intuition for each.

*Strictly speaking, the white balance of the light source is another trait, but for this portrait intro we're going to assume that you'll want to keep the source looking like natural light.

SIZE: HARD VS. SOFT LIGHT

We'll start with apparent size, since this is perhaps the most common cause of poor portrait lighting. When photographers describe light as being "hard" or "soft," or use the term "light quality," they're actually just referring to the size of the light source:

		Harder Light	Softer Light
Light Size	→	Smaller	Larger
Shadows/Highlights	→	Abrupt	Gradual
Types of Sunlight	→	Direct	Overcast, Shade
Types of Flash	→	Direct	Bounced, Diffuse

Although too much of anything can be harmful, portraits usually benefit from softer lighting. Try moving your mouse over the "harder" and "softer" options below to see for yourself how each influences the look of a portrait:

	Choose:	Harder	Original	Softer

Note how broader and narrower light sources are termed "soft" and "hard," respectively, because of how they render the edges of shadows and highlights. This happens because a larger light source spans a greater angle across the subject. Any given region is therefore more likely to receive at least some direct lighting, causing the softer shadows. Similarly, with a smaller light source, a given region usually receives either all or none of the direct light — producing much deeper shadows. Also note how light size is equally transformative to the highlight transitions, particularly in the model's upper right hair.

However, light size doesn't just control the appearance of large-scale tones; it also determines the visibility of fine-scale texture. Pores, blemishes, wrinkles and other facial details all become more pronounced with hard light. Hard light also increases the likelihood of harsh direct reflections off a subject's skin.

Hard Light

Soft Light

The most important trick for achieving softer light is to understand that direct light is hard, but that whenever this light bounces off or travels through other diffuse objects, it becomes softer. Photographers use this to make the most of otherwise harsh light.

Tips for achieving softer light:

• Diffuser. Place a larger translucent object between your subject and the light source. This might include using a lamp shade, or hanging a white sheet or curtain over an open window that receives direct light.
• Bouncing & Reflecting. Place your subject so that they receive only bounced or reflected light. This might include moving them a little further from an open window (just outside the direct rays), or aiming your flash at a nearby wall or ceiling.

portrait with very soft light

In either case, be careful because you'll end up with a lot less light — potentially requiring a longer exposure time or a brighter flash.

At the other extreme, a light source may also be too soft (although much less common). Some might consider photos taken in the shade as appearing too flat, for example, if indirect light scatters in from everywhere. Such light is effectively enormous in size and erases all shadows. Other examples include portraits in the fog, or outside on a fully overcast day.

However, just how soft is "too soft" really depends on the look you're trying to achieve. For example, even though the photo on the right uses softer lighting than any other example in this tutorial, many might still consider this a desirable look for glamour portraits.

DISTANCE & APPARENT LIGHT SIZE

At this point you've perhaps been slightly misled: it's not really the physical size of the light source that matters — just its apparent size relative to the subject.

Closer light sources become softer, because this light strikes the subject from a broader range of angles — even if the light itself remains unchanged. Similarly, the opposite is also true: direct sunshine is hard light even though the sun is physically enormous. The sun is just so distant that its light reaches us from roughly one direction.

	Choose:	Further	Closer

On the other hand, moving a light closer also makes it brighter. If this was your primary source of light, then the look of your portrait likely won't change — your exposure time or flash intensity will just decrease to compensate. However, if much of your subject's light was previously ambient, then moving a light source closer can decrease the influence of this ambient light — effectively making the overall light harder since more of it will come from one location.

Closer light sources also illuminate the subject more unevenly, since different parts of the subject will become relatively closer or further from the light. For example, the far side of the subject might only be 5% further from a distant light source, but could become 50% further when the light source is moved up close — causing it to become much darker relative to the other parts of the subject.

However, this unevenness can also be used to your advantage. A closer light source may be able to achieve better subject-background separation, since the subject will become much brighter relative to their background. On the other hand, this can also make matters worse if these were already well-separated.

DIRECTION: SENSE OF DEPTH & REMBRANDT LIGHTING

Finding the right lighting direction requires the photographer to strike a balance between several potentially competing considerations. Typically, this includes both (i) portraying a sense of depth and (ii) depicting facial features as attractively as possible.

(i) Sense of Depth. Creating the appearance of depth is a key part of capturing realistic-looking portraits. However, our sense of depth doesn't work very well unless light is striking our subject from the right direction. For example, a sphere is a reasonable approximation for the shape of our heads, and it only appears three-dimensional when light strikes it from a front upper side:

Front Lighting

Side Lighting

Upper Side Lighting

Although sphere lighting is a good rough guide for portraits, a wide range of lighting angles could have been used to achieve the above sense of depth. Faces, on the other hand, aren't quite as forgiving.

(ii) Appearance of Facial Features. In addition to the head as a whole, each facial feature also has its own shadows and highlights — all of which deserve special consideration. This might include avoiding making the nose appear larger by having it cast a long shadow, or making the subject appear tired by portraying shadows underneath their eyes. Upper side lighting could cause these and other undesirable effects if not carefully positioned.

One classical* way to achieve both a sense of depth and a flattering appearance is to place the light so that the far cheek depicts a triangle of illumination. This style is often called "Rembrandt lighting" and we'll refer to this shape as the "key triangle." This restricts the lighting to a much narrower range of angles:

			Move Lighting:		Higher
				Left	Key Triangle	Right
Show	Hide	← Key Triangle			Lower

note: visualizing the triangle is usually easier with hard lighting and a neutral expression.
In the above example it appears more rounded due to the wide smile.

Try moving the light source in any direction away from the key triangle lighting by moving your mouse over the options above. With the exception of the lower lighting, each of these options could be considered "front upper side" lighting — yet the key triangle positioning is usually considered the best all-around representation. This is because the triangular shape is an indicator of several underlying principles of good portrait lighting.

For example, when the key triangle is:

• Too Big (Tall or Wide). This means the light is too close to the subject's forward direction, and likely isn't creating a sufficient appearance of depth since most shadows are hidden from the camera's perspective.
• Too Narrow. This means the light is too far to the side of the subject, and could cause the nose to appear bigger by having it cast a longer shadow, along with potentially leaving a substantial portion of the face in shadows. However, this is perhaps the least adhered to of all the key triangle guidelines.
• Too Short. This means that the light is too high or low, and is likely causing shadows underneath the eyes or a lack of shadow definition along the jaw line, respectively. Lighting from below is often used for unsightly creatures in movies, or to create a frightening face when telling a scary story (by holding a flashlight under the face).

Also keep in mind that its exact appearance will vary greatly depending on the particular subject's facial structure and expression, so one should only use this as a rough guide.

*Note: "loop lighting" is another popular (and more commonly used) portrait style that is similar to Rembrandt lighting, except the shadow underneath the nose doesn't fully extend to the shadows on the far side of the face — producing a "looped" diagonal shadow under the nose.

Short Lighting	Broad Lighting

However, with any rule there are exceptions, but usually only when this is in keeping with the spirit of that rule. For example, a side-view portrait might not need a key triangle to convey a sense of depth, but only if additional shadows have become visible on the side of the face (such as in the example to the left).

Furthermore, Rembrandt lighting is just one style amongst many, and each subject is a little different. For example, one might want hard side-lighting to accentuate a man's facial hair, or to convey symmetry by only illuminating half the face. The key is knowing how to use light to emphasize depth, shape or texture — depending on your artistic intent.

Two other common styles include short lighting and broad lighting. These are used when the subject's face is oriented at an angle. Short lighting illuminates the full face and leaves the near side of the head in shadow, whereas broad lighting illuminates the near side of the head and face but leaves the far side of the face in shadow. These and other portrait lighting styles will be the subject of a future tutorial.

CONCLUSIONS & FURTHER READING

In general, the goal of portrait lighting is to achieve softer light. This makes a subject's features appear smooth and gradual, and makes skin texture appear softer. Achieving softer light requires making the apparent size of the light source bigger. This can be done by either (i) moving the light closer, (ii) increasing its physical size, or (iii) bouncing this light off of or diffusing it through other objects.

However, the choice of lighting direction is definitely more subjective than that of hard or soft light. Even so, two lighting orientations are usually considered undesirable: lighting from underneath and directly from the front. The former isn't something that appears natural, and the latter destroys the portrait's sense of depth. In any case, one generally wants to portray their subject in a flattering light, but each subject is unique and may require a different treatment.

Regardless of the above choices, the key is to envision your artistic intent at the start, and then to adjust your lighting setup to achieve that goal.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/portrait-lighting.htm

Lighting for portraits indoor and outdoor. Window Portraits

Lighting for portraits indoor and outdoor

Light can dramatically alter the appearance of your subject. By simply changing the lighting, you can transform the mood from glamorous to ghoulish.

Hardness of light  Bright sunlight is hard and creates dark, clearly defined shadows that can hide the face emphasizes wrinkles and blemishes causes unattractive squinting Light from an overcast sky or a north window is soft and creates soft shadows that don't hide the face minimizes wrinkles and blemishes reveals subtle skin tones and hues allows the subject to open his or her eyes wide

Direction of light  The direction of sunlight, especially hard sunlight, changes how people look. Which direction is best? That depends on the effect you're trying to achieve. Front light: Harsh sunlight shining directly into a person's face flattens the face and causes squinting. Overhead light: At midday, the sun is overhead and casts unpleasant facial shadows. Use the camera's flash to lighten harsh facial shadows. Side light: Early and late in the day, position your subject so the sun strikes only one side of the face. With one side of the face brightly lit and the other side in shadow, you will create a dramatic effect. To reduce the shadow effect, use fill flash. Back light: Occurs when you position your subject facing away from the sun. This places your subject's face in shadow, eliminating squinting and often adding an attractive glow to hair. Use fill flash to lighten your subject's face.

Indoor lighting  Taking good indoor pictures is challenging because the light is often dim. Natural light is so much brighter than most artificial light that it's usually best to take indoor pictures of people with indirect light from a north window (or any window not admitting direct sunlight). Window light: Soft, indirect window light is good for people pictures. If the side of the face away from the window is too dark, reposition yourself and the subject so more of the face receives window light. Since dim window light may force the camera to use a slow shutter speed, hold the camera extra steady or use a tripod. Artificial lights: Table and ceiling lights don't often provide attractive lighting for people pictures. Try to avoid using them, opting for flash or window light. If you must use them, hold the camera extra steady or use a tripod. Flash: A built-in camera flash is great for indoor snapshots of people, but not great for portraits. For portraits use window light. Follow these tips for using the flash to take indoor pictures of people: Position your subject within the flash range for your camera (see your camera manual). When photographing a group, make sure that all your subjects are about the same distance from the flash. Turn on all the room lights to avoid red eye. Red eye is caused when the flash hits the back of the eye and reflects back into the camera lens. The extra brightness will help reduce the size of your subjects' pupils letting less light in. Watch out for shiny surfaces-such as mirrors, windows, and eyeglasses-that can reflect the flash. Stand at an angle to shiny surfaces to prevent unwanted reflections of the flash in your photos. Ask subjects wearing glasses to turn or tilt their heads slightly.

Window portrait- window to left of the subject

Window behind the subject's head. Reflector held to the right of the subject.

MARTIN SCHOELLER

MARTIN SCHOELLER

Martin Schoeller created a book “Close Up” where his subjects are photographed, well, close up. Taking inspiration from Richard Avedon who “has taken many very harsh portraits in his life where his subjects don’t come off necessarily very flattering”, he strives to create portraits “showing a person for who they are and what they look like without retouching, without tricky lighting, without distortion, without crazy wide angle lenses, just straight up honest portraits.” (Smithsonian.com, 2009) Most  people photographed are celebrities and politicians.

Martin Schoeller example of lighting set up

How were these shots created?
Martin Schoeller takes advantage of continuous lighting to create his signature look.
 A very shallow depth of field and a very narrow depth of field which emphasizes the eyes and the lips, where most of the expression in a person’s face is all about the eyes and the lips. He tries to get my focus right so the eyes and the lips are the focus. Everything falls away so quickly because of the shallow depth of field. Everything else becomes secondary. So not only is he focusing on just the face, he is even concentrating it more by having everything else look like it’s out of focus.

Martin Schoeller was Annie Leibovitz’s assistant for several years

http://madphotoassistant.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/lighting-title/

Phtoshop techniques to create Martin Schoeller

Can be found at the following web address

Part 1

http://phlearn.com/martin-schoeller-lighting

Martin Schoeller Part 2
http://phlearn.com/martin-schoeller-photoshop

Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller (born March 12, 1968) is a New York-based photographer whose style of "hyper-detailed close ups" is distinguished by similar treatment of all subjects whether they are celebrities or unknown. His most recognizable work are his portraits, shot with similar lighting, backdrop, and tone. His work appears in "National Geographic Magazine", The New Yorker, "New York Time Magazine", Time, GQ, and Vogue. He has been a staff photographer at The New Yorker since 1999.

Born in Munich, Germany on March 12, 1968. In his early years he was influenced by photographers August Sander, Bernd Becher, and Hilla Becher. Schoeller studied photography at Lette Verein in Berlin.

Schoeller started his career in Germany, and came to New York in 1993 and worked as an assistant for Annie Leibovitz from 1993 to 1996, here he developed his "big head" portrait technique, a term coined by him, of his style of "hyper-detailed close ups", which later gave him worldwide acclaim. He left in 1996 to pursue his freelancing career. Soon his street portraits started getting published in Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, and W. In 1999, Schoeller joined Richard Avedon, as a contributing portrait photographer to The New Yorker since then.

The following are my attempts at Martin Schoeller type Set up in the studio:-

I have emphasized the eyes and lips. The portraits have been enhanced using the Photoshop techniques out lined on :-

Part 1

http://phlearn.com/martin-schoeller-lighting

Martin Schoeller Part 2
http://phlearn.com/martin-schoeller-photoshop