portrait Project
Photographer Analysis
Yousef Karsh
This photo of Winston Churchill was taken by Yousef Karsh in 1941 at the Canadian House of Commons. The image was taken after Churchill's "Some chicken, some neck" speech on WW2 to the Canadian House of Commons. Churchill's posture and facial expression represent the wartime feelings that hung over the UK, making a great photograph.
Karsh put the lighting directly on Churchill's face revealing his facial expression, that takes the mood of the image down to a very serious feeling. This makes the photograph stand out more as a portrait of a war time Winston Churchill.
Churchill's deep glare makes the image create a freighting feeling as if he is staring down into his oppositions eyes. The photos name "The Roaring Lion" represents Churchill's serious expression.
Karsh photographs Churchill's full body to let his face sink further back into the photo dampening the details on his face, therefore softening his facial expression.
More Yousef Karsh Photographs
In these photographs Karsh uses a lot of shape and lines to make the images more interesting. In his Salvador Dali photo he connects his long mustache ti his eyebrows to create a circular shape putting his eyes into your vision. The Martin Luther King image uses his eye line to tell his story of trying to stop racism by making him look up yo his dreams.
Navad Kander
This is an image of Barack Obama by Nav Kander. Kander took 52 portraits of Obama's top advisors in a series called "Obama's people".This is his picture of Obama. In all of Kander's portraits he uses lighting to express the feelings of his subjects. He uses black and white in thus image to show how Obama is in shock or confusion.
Kander only frames his head in the photo because using his body is nit necessary to helping his expression get through the image. The catch lighting in Obama's eyes shows where Kander has lit the photo from. Obama focus is not on the camera showing that he potentially didn't know he was getting photographed.
You can see detail in face and hair with the background being completely plain and out of focus, this helps his portrait to stand out against the background. Kander has used the light to make his eyes and teeth stand out compared to his darker skin and background.
More Nav Kander Photos
In all of Kander's photos he uses the light on his subjects to create more light and shadows, this helps him to tell stories in his portraits. The first two images use light in ways that tell you the story without even thinking. I like the second one more because of the sweat on his face and the split lighting only showing half of the story. The images of David Attenborough and Donald Trump make you think a bit more about the story in the image but they still tell a story. Trumps piercing eye and his serious look makes you think about his story and his serious expressions.
Photoshop Portraits
These images are heavily inspired by Joe Cruz. I like how he highlights the some of the unimportant parts of an images so i tried to recreate this. I dont like the how in the second picture i have stuck to only the edges of the subject. it doesnt allow the creativity to come out of the image. I feel the first image has a lot more creativity but background is to dark, making the colours stand out too much. However, i think they are still the best of the Joe Cruz images i managed to create.
These images are inspired by showing emotion and story telling. I have used photo shop to add burn marks in both images. When i took the images i asked Archie to show his emotions so that when i came to photoshopping the images the ideas came with the image. I prefer these images to the other two shoots i did because i haven't had to use the artist i have learnt about as inspiration.