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

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

Peter Fashion Shoot collaboration

Peter Fashion Shoot Collaboration  

Peter, a fashion student created a scarf and outfit. A collaborative fashion shoot was planned. Below are the images for the editorial shoot.

F 11, shutter speed 1, focal length 47 mm, ISO 100

  F 7.1, 1/125, ISO 100, Focal Length 50mm

Post Production

 The shots were processed in post production to enhance the vibrancy of the image. the motion blur and image was enhanced using curves and blending filters.
Below are some of the techniques used in Photoshop.

Lighting Diagrams

triggered soft box, a snoot to create lighting set up

Team Work

The shoot was for magazine editorial work. It was a collaboration between a team of people. Pat was the art director and had to ensure that the product, the out- fit and scarf, Peter had made was shown to the best advantage in the final images.
She also liaised with Peter to ensure he was happy with the final images.
Other members pf the team were responsible for  lighting, shooting, post production etc .

What makes a good portrait

Portrait Photography Tutorial

What makes a good portrait?

Photographing people is the most common and, in many ways, the most challenging task for photographers. We all know a good picture when we see one but what is it that makes the good ones stand out? Is it because it is an especially good likeness? A photograph will always be a true likeness, even when we think it isn't. How many times have you heard someone say "that doesn't look like me/you at all"? How can that be when we are using a camera?

The problem is that we are used to seeing people moving around, at least their faces, and in some kind of context, doing something or talking to us. We very rarely see people completely motionless, except perhaps when they are asleep, so a single frozen moment in time can seem totally unrepresentative, it can, only too easily, capture a moment when they are in a pose that we have never noticed before.

So what makes a good portrait of someone is that it should say something about that person that we feel is true. A good portrait sums up the character of the person or at least an aspect of their character. You don't know the girl on the left but, looking at her photo, you have made some judgments about her and you have made some decisions about her character.

The pose, viewpoint, direction and quality of lighting, choice of lens, choice of background and the cropping of a picture can all contribute to the mood of the photograph and therefore what you are saying about that person.

A good portrait is a picture that says something about the person, gives you an insight into the person's character, whether this is make believe or not.

The most important item in the list above, by far, is the pose. Capturing the right moment is crucial and, with that in mind, it is important to take as many shots as you can. Each one will be slightly different, as you take pictures you will think up new ideas, the whole thing is an evolving process. I took about fifty shots to get this one, the others are nice, most of them, but this one stood out as being the best. There is no excuse now that we have digital cameras, the cost of taking extra shots is nothing.

How do I know when to stop? I know the session is over when I catch myself taking the same picture again and again, or we just run out of time.

The picture above was taken in the studio where I can control the lighting carefully and ensure that the shadows fall exactly where I want them. I'll be giving you some tips on light placement on page 2.

This little fellow below on the other hand was shot outside in the playground. I only actually got two shots of this guy so I consider myself quite lucky to get a pose as good as this. Once again, when you look at the picture, you immediately start to read his personality. The shot is a very natural pose. You could not tell him to do that and expect the same degree of success. Which brings me to one of the most important tips for successful portraiture.

You must be ready for the action and work very quickly, seize the moment.

People, especially children, get bored very quickly. If you start fiddling with your camera telling them to hold on a minute you will never get good pictures. The most important part of the picture is the expression on the face. When you see that expression you must be ready to instantly capture it, everything else, the lighting, the background, the composition must be ready. Facial expressions, at least the good ones, are very fleeting things. If you ask someone to smile and you leave them holding that smile for even a second it will look very, very false.

When taking pictures of children I like to use a long lens and blend into the background. After a while they forget you are there then you start to get much more natural expressions. You need a lot of patience to work this way, you must not keep stopping them or trying to get them to turn in the direction you want because you will break the mood. Just keep watching be patient and be ready. Let the good stuff happen when it will.

On page two I'll give you some tips on lighting, cropping and the more practical 'nuts and bolts' aspects of portraiture. These are obviously important too but the most important part of the process is to set out with a definite purpose in mind. My most successful pictures are the ones that were planned carefully. That doesn't mean getting out lots of gadgets, it means thinking about what you want to do and making sure you are in the right place at the right time. There are flukes of course but the flukes are more likely to happen if you plan ahead and are ready to take advantage of them.

Lighting

As I said in the flash tutorial the worst type of lighting is direct frontal light, such as light from a built in flashgun. So whatever you use as a light source, it could be a flashgun a lamp or a window, the important thing is to make sure that the light is coming from the side and not from the camera position.

The ideal position for the main light source is 45 degrees from the camera. There is a sort of arc that runs from beside the camera, but not too close, round to nearly 90 degrees. As you push the light further round you will see the shadows on the face becoming more defined. The same applies to height, aim the light at an angle of about 45 degrees to the floor and push it up until it shines where you want it. If your subject is wearing glasses you will need to push the light round to the side to avoid getting a reflection of it in the lenses. For more on studio lighting see my Studio Lighting Tutorial.

In the picture on the right the main light is at a 45 degree angle to the left of the camera. There is also a second light on the right of the camera. The second light is pointing away from the subject towards a white wall, giving a softer and less powerful 'fill in' light. The relative strength of these two lights is quite important as that is what determines how dense the shadows are. It's quite easy to adjust the strength of each light just by moving them nearer or further from the subject. (See my tutorial on the inverse square law for an explanation.) If you only have one light to use you can create the same effect by sitting your subject as close as possible to a white wall. I often use large sheets of white paper to reflect light back onto the subject as this gives a more subtle effect.

Posing

As with the lighting a pose that is square on to the camera is rarely the best solution. It can work quite well if you want the feel of the picture to be confrontational but generally speaking an angle to the camera is better. The first position I usually try is having the sitter facing towards the light then I get them to turn their head back towards the camera a bit at a time as I take pictures. Different faces work better at different angles, some work better fully facing the camera but still with their shoulders at an angle. Whatever you do it's important, as I said on the previous page, to work quickly an be ready to take a picture as soon as you have adjusted the pose.

Outdoors

Here are a couple of outdoor portraits to illustrate the importance of viewpoint to the mood of the picture. Looking up at the woman on the right reinforces the effect of the stern posture and the formality of the occasion. The child on the left also benefits from being at eye level, when I photograph children I always try to get down on the ground to photograph them.

These pictures also illustrate one of the main dangers with outdoor portraiture and that is the cluttered background. Even though the background of the photo on the left is out of focus the red shirt is still very intrusive, whereas the photo on the right not only has a very out of focus background but it is also washed out and over exposed. We have just about enough information to see that it is a street scene but there is no intrusion into the main subject. If you're taking pictures in a crowd be bold and set the camera up to use a wide aperture then be careful where your point of focus is, you can get some stunning effects where everything is out of focus except your main subject. You will, of course, get some out of focus failures as well but that's life.

Fill the Frame

Finally a quick word about filling the frame. I see so many pictures of people with a massive amount of empty space above their heads. Make sure you crop the picture so that the top of the subject's head is near the top of the frame. Leaving space above a person's head just makes them look shorter than they really are. Also notice that all the photos on these pages are in upright format. Turn your camera on it's side to fill the frame with your subject.

Dan Winters Lighting set up

Dan Winters Lighting set up.

Dan Winters is a great photographer who produces gripping work. His lighting style is amazing, and he has a way of pulling emotion out of his subjects that will leave you breathless.

Tom Hanks,

The web site below looks at his famous portraits  e.g  Tom Hanks, and tries to reproduce it.

http://phlearn.com/dan-winters-style-photo-shoot

Practical Exercise

Analyzing Dan winters’s lighting style, and we tried to reproduce it in the studio.

 In Post processing Photoshop was used to color the image similar to Dan’s and give the background a bit of life. I feel there is real depth and texture within the image




The following are attempts in the studio and in photoshop to recreate Dan Winters type portraits.

Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing OBE RA (born 1963) is an English conceptual artist.
Gillian Wearing was born in Birmingham. She attended Dartmouth High School in Great Barr, Birmingham. She moved to Chelsea, London to study art at the Chelsea College of Art.


In the early 1990s, Wearing started putting together photography exhibitions that were based around the idea of photographing anonymous strangers in the street who she had asked to hold up a piece of paper with a message on it. Of these "confessional" pieces.

Wearing stated, I decided that I wanted people to feel protected when they talked about certain things in their life that they wouldn’t want the public that knows them to know. I can understand that sort of holding on to things—it’s kind of part of British society to hold things in. I always think of Britain as being a place where you’re meant to keep your secrets—you should never tell your neighbors or tell anyone. Things are changing now, because the culture’s changed and the Internet has brought people out. We have Facebook and Twitter where people tell you small details of their life.

Approaching people on London streets, asking them to write something on a card and then photographing them as they displayed it. Private lives were given a sudden and revealingly painful exposure: a policeman holds a card reading ‘Help!'. With the introduction of video and more in-depth interviewing of her subjects, Wearing began to use adult actors lip-synching the recorded confessions of children, and subjects, solicited from advertisements placed in newspapers, making confessions while wearing masks. The introduction of actors signalled an increasingly dramatic element in her work and a shift away from the use of documentary techniques.

"I'm desperate" 1992-3

" I have been certified as mildly insane!"1992-3

I signed on and they would not give me nothing 1992-3

I like to be in the country 1992-3

Everthing is connected in life 1992-3

Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say

Gillian Wearing plays with codes by getting the subjects to right signs. She plays with the viewer and the perception of identity.  For example, the man in the suit, who the viewer would thing was affluent, portraits his inner feeling bu saying "I'm Desperate", is not what one expects.

I really love her work and Gillian Wearing has also had a huge inspiration on my final project for the Portraits, Identities, culture and self unit.