Styles Of Photography

Reportage Photography

Reportage photography is quite self explanatory within the name itself. Reportage sometimes refers to the total body of media coverage of a particular topic or event including news reporting and analysis. Reportage is also a term used for an eye witness genre of journalism. Reportage styles of photography can be applied outside of photojournalism. People who have worked in the journalistic profession sometimes move their skills acquired into other areas of photography such as weddings or portraits, pets and animals or event photography.

Below is an example of reportage photography.



Painterly Photography

An oil painting is painterly when their are visible brushstrokes, the result of applying paint in a less than completely controlled manner, generally without closely following carefully drawn lines. The impressionists and the abstract expressionists tended strongly to be painterly movements. Both pop art and photo realism, due to their dependence on photographic imagery, where characterized by an absence of apparent brushstrokes.

With the advent of photography it became possible to turn a painting into a photograph. Today, with new techniques and technology, it's possible to turn a photograph into a painting, almost. Fine art photographs can now be made to appear as fine art paintings and drawings.

Below in an example of painterly photography.



Surrealist Photography

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920's, and is best known for it's visual artworks and writings. Surrealist works feature the element of surprise. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities  during World War 1 and the most important center of the movement was Paris.Onwards from then the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film and music.

Even the most prosaic photograph, filtered through the prism of surrealist sensibility, might easily be dislodged from its usual context and irreverently assigned a new role. Ordinary snapshots, movie stills, medical and police photographs, all of these appeared in surrealist journals.

Below is an example of surrealist photography.

Cost And Size, Health And Safety

Cost And Size

Hoping to have my images printed out on A2 and A4 proved quite difficult as the ECR was out of this size photographic paper! Deciding what to do and how to go about it I settled to have my images printed out on 6 by 8 paper and was really pleased with how they turned out. The cost for these and mount-board came to 2 pound and seventy five pence, I thought this was very reasonable!

Health And Safety!

Using an SLR camera, be sure the strap is around my neck at all times to ensure it is safe and will not fall or break, keep the lens cap safe and make sure that the area that I am surrounded in is risk free and clear of anything in the way.

Make sure the surrounding area is safe to take photographs in and ensure the person I am taking photographs of is risk free and safe e.g, passing cars or cyclists also the safety of others around including myself.

Evaluation Of Final Piece

Evaluation

For my final piece I decided to create two images representing the punk era and my own interpretation of Vivienne Westwood's style of clothing. Vivienne Westwood has been key to influencing me to create such a shock factor type piece and to recreate the types of clothing that she is well known for which I have portrayed in my final images.

Vivienne Westwood is one of the most influential British fashion designers of the twentieth century and introduced "underwear" as "outerwear." Her most well known movements are those of sub cultural fashion and punk. Punk is a well known fashion style in the present day and was born in the 1970's mainly in London and other main cities, it was part of a rebellion and aggressive movement. The fashion "punk" was closely related to the genre of music that formed also named "punk," examples of this particular music genre are The Ramones, The King Blues and of course, the Sex Pistols which pretty much invented punk themselves and the band was formed and created by Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood's early boyfriend..

The Sex Pistols were an English punk rock band that formed in London in 1975. They were responsible for initiating the punk movement. The Sex Pistols consisted of members such as Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock, Glen Matlock being replaced by Sid Vicious in the early 1977. Under the management of Malcolm McLaren, the band provoked controversies that took Britain by storm. In 1971, McLaren and girlfriend Vivienne Westwood, opened a London clothing shop called Let It Rock, on King's Road. The shop stocked many second hand pieces, and Teddy Boy style clothing designed by Westwood herself. Such clothing that Vivienne had designed were Bespoke tailored drape jackets, skin tight trousers and thick soled brothel creepers. All of these designs were the mainstay of the shop and all of the designs are also being resold in shops to the present day,

Vivienne Westwood also designed a bunch of styled clothing with the logo Destroy. This certain design I had tried to recreate in my final images and is my own interpretation of this awesome design. Other punk types of clothing and items I have also used in my final images are things such as tartan jackets, skirts, outrageous make up and hair, spiked dog collars and safety pins as nose rings, all of these were big things to wear back in the punk era and are still around today.

Making This Happen.

Trying to turn my mother back into a punk was not as difficult as it sounds and she got well in to it! Overall recreating the punk era took me a few hours, to do the make up, hair and crazy clothing which me and my mum had made by hand! Note, creating the clothes had taken a week beforehand.

The Hair

The hair was the hardest part of creating this awesome idea. It took a whole lot of gel and hairspray and straightening! My mum had actually cut her own hair for this project!

The Make Up

Outrageous make up was a huge part of the punk style, mainly around the eyes and was always very dark, big and bold. I didn't want to over do it with the make up and make it look like one big mess so I made it quite simple but also quite detailed, using some bright red lipstick to bring out the sharpness and color of my mums face.

The Clothes!

The clothes which me and my mum had designed and made were the Destroy t shirt, one of Vivienne Westwoods most famous designs so I decided to use my own interpretation in my final images. The skirt we had made out of some old tartan material and used some old ripped leggings which were kicking about. The boots and the jacket were NOT made by us.

The Final Product.

After a lot of hard work and effort, my mum was finally a punk!

After I had finished recreating punk, I had this crazy idea to shoot some photographs of my mum smoking and drinking in a phone box, she wasn't actually doing this! A lot of punks back in the 1970's would hang around phone boxes just drinking and smoking and looking mean and this gave me the idea to incorporate this set in my final images after seeing some old photographs of the Sex Pistols.

Test Shots

For this particular shot, I love the face that my mum is pulling and the pose she is doing, this pose is just typical punk! The shirt she is wearing which says "Destroy" is a re creation of Vivienne Westwood's original design and I covered the top in safety pins.

My Final 2

After taking about 40 photographs, getting extremely frustrated about which ones I would choose and which ones would look better, I decided to pick these two. I felt that these two particular shots represented what being a punk was really like, smoking a cigarette where you're not really supposed to, drinking out in the open and not caring what no one thinks! I feel that my mum had interpreted this brilliantly and I was able to capture the moment and she was able to relive it again and overall the experience was breath taking. I feel that my final outcome was achieved with brilliance, I am very happy that I took the time and effort to recreate something that really was an eye opener back in the 70's and is still somewhat around today and I hope people will enjoy these photographs and understand the true meaning that lies behind the images portrayed.

Documentary Photography

Don Macullen

Donald Macullen was born on the 9th October, 1935 and is an internationally known British photo journalist, particularly recognized for his war photography and images of urban strife. Macullen's period of National  Service in the RAF saw him posted to the Canal Zone during the 1956 Suez Crisis, where he worked as a photographer's assistant. He failed to pass his written theory paper and so he spent his service in the dark room.

Macullen received the World Press Photo Award in 1964 for his coverage of the war in Cyprus. In the same year he was awarded the Warsaw Gold Medal and in 1977 he was awarded and was made a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society.

I chose to research Don Macullen mainly for the realistic and striking scenes he portrays in his images. The photographs are striking and instantly capturing due to the fact they have happened in real life and mostly all of his photographs are in real time.



Above is one of Don Macullen's photographs, this represents what I mean by his images being simply stunning and so vivid. This photograph is of a homeless man lying by the embers of a fire in Spitalfields, London, 1969.

"Many years ago, I used to walk the streets around Brick Lane in the East End of London, looking for homeless people. I was doing a story about derelicts - the human beings who are pushed aside and ignored by our society. Among the pictures that I had taken I managed to take one of a man lying in the embers of a fire. You can see the truth in these photographs, I think. If you slept on the streets for a few weeks, I wouldn't need to manipulate a photograph of you to show it."

Vivienne Westwood



Vivienne Westwood (born Vivienne Isabel Swire) born on 8th April, 1941. She is an English fashion designer and business woman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream.

Westwood came to public notice when she made clothes for Malcolm McLaren's boutique in King's Road, which became famous as "SEX." It was their ability to to synthesize clothing and music that that shaped the '70's punk scene, dominated by McLaren's band, the Sex Pistols. She went on to open five shops, selling an increasingly varied range of merchandise.

I chose to research Vivienne Westwood because she is one of my idols and also played a main part in me deciding what to produce for my final piece. One of the clothing items created by Vivienne Westwood was the well known "Destroy" t-shirt which was worn by McLaren's band the Sex Pistols, this particular design I had tried to re invent in my final images by making cuts in to the t-shirt, creating the all important "Destroy" logo and covering the t-shirt with safety pins, an item widely used in the punk scene.



Above in a photograph of Vivienne Westwood in 1977 wearing one of her infamous punk creations - the Destroy t-shirt. Made from Muslim cloth and printed in lurid color, the confrontational silk-screened art combined images of an upside down crucifix, a swastika, and a small profile picture of the Queen of England. While misinterpreted by many, the graphic was meant as an angry denunciation of government, religion and fascism.

Lewis Hine

Lewis Hine (born Lewis Wickes Hine) was born on the 26th September, 1874 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He was an American sociologist and photographer. He used his camera as a tool for social reform. His photographs were key for influencing the change of child labor laws in the United States.

In early life, after his fathers death in a tragic car accident, he began working and saved his money for a college education. He studied sociology at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and New York University. He became a teacher in New York City at the Ethical Culture School, where he encouraged his students to use photography as an educational medium. The last years of his life were filled with professional struggles due to loss of government and corporate patronage. Very few people were interested in his work, past or present, and Hine lost his house and applied for welfare. He died at age 66 on November 3rd, 1940.



Above is a photograph which was taken by Lewis Hine in 1908 in Carolina Cotton Mill of a girl worker. This photograph to me represents of how what life used to be like back in those times and how young they would have to work, life today is not even close to what it was like to live for those people back then. Lewis Hine's photographs are visually stunning, he photographs in real time and captures the moment perfectly through his camera.

My Personality Test

Personality Test


Today we had to do a personality test which would result in showing us if we were an introvert or an extrovert and how are personalitys reflected us. Below are my results, I am an extrovert.

Is TV Dead?

Is TV Dead?



Today Cam had intorduced us to a programme called "Is TV Dead?" During watching this particular programme it really intrigued me so I decided to write a bit about it and why.

On average I would probably spend about 8+ hours on the internet daily. I use the interent on my phone, my laptop, my Xbox and my iPod. To me, TV is dead in my opinion or on the verge of being so because for me, if I want to catch up on a tv programme or watch something then I would just go on the internet and watch it.

Teens aside from me probably spend about 5 hours a day surfing the internet. They used to spend abouy 30 hours a week watching TV but there has been a drop in audience figures between 16 - 24 year olds due to the internet and what it now can offer.

When BBC iPlayer was introduced, I think it generate a lot more teens to go online and watch tv episodes from there because having to be in on a certain time to watch a certain programme can sometimes seem somewhat challenging, especially when you can just type it in on the internet and watch it when and how you please.

Social Networking sites nowadays are the way forward. Websites such as MySpace, FaceBook and Twitter allow people to keep up to date with whats happening and keep in touch with their friends. FaceBook can even be used to post links to TV episodes or people can hear about whats happening on certain programmes via the "Status" so therefore people don't really need to sit infront of the TV.

16 - 24 year old have revolutionised the way television is percevied these days. They are the next generation of adults; if they do not watch televsion while they are young then the chances are they will contintue to surf the interent for things instead when they are older.

Advertising is affected by the youth market. There are constant adverts pictured all over the internet. There may be certain advertising such as for a new TV programme involving teenages to try and win the younger generation back in to watching television. 

Skins used the media to promote itself. It was advertised over such social networking sites like MySpace. This was a smart way to promote itself as they used a teen website to promote a teen programme and Skins proved to be a big hit. Most teens who watched this programme were on average 16.

My Movie Poster

Movie Poster Research

A Nightmare On Elm Street





Denotations Of Poster

Images portrayed on this particular movie poster consist of Freddy's razor fingers (a major part to this movie which instantly captures peoples attention because in your head you're thinking "that just looks creepy.") the young boy who appears to look like he has just woken from a nightmare but could still be dreaming as Freddy's hand is appearing over him. The writing on this poster, particularly the logo for the film is blood red, meaning this film with be bloody and of course, it is.

Connotations Of Poster

The colors and images shown on this poster are all very dark and sinister. The main colors are black and red, black and red meaning Freddy is coming for you and white for the bed sheets to mean you might think you're safe but really you're not, hence Freddy's hand appearing over the young boy. The look on the young boys face means to me in my opinion that that the poster is trying to grab you, it's trying to lure you in and grab your attention. "If you don't wake up screaming, you won't wake up at all."

Target Audience Of Poster

The target audience for this particular film and poster is definitely for ages 18 and over but due to the jokes that Freddy's speaks throughout the series of films, it portrays him as a comedic horror character therefore younger than 18 is possible because the way Freddy can put himself sometimes makes him less scary, looks can be deceiving, Freddy may look scary but once he speaks it's a whole different story. This particular downfall for Freddy was a major problem to audiences out there and the press. They argued that a horror character should stay scary and be a horror character, not a comedic horror character which takes away the main factor and concept of the whole film. Terrifying.

Silent Hill



Denotations Of Poster

There is only one main image pictured on this particular movie poster for the film Silent Hill. The girl portrayed on the front is the dark side of Allessa which is also Sharron, the sweet and innocent young daughter adopted by a loving couple but with a secret and a past which is not known to anybody not even herself until she finds herself lost in Silent Hill. And of course the title is also pictured which is pretty much self explanatory.

Connotations Of Poster

I think the main reason that lies behind the image portrayed is the way that the young girl is pictured and the way the mouth is not visible can represent the good side of Sharron and the bad side of Allessa both in one. The way that the young girl looks so sweet and innocent represents the good side and the way the mouth is blanked out could represent the dark side of Allessa meaning to not speak, the world will lie to you.

Target Audience Of Poster

Throughout the film there are a series of scenes where all things dark and sinister are pictured and the whole concept of being lost in Silent Hill is a ghost town, meaning this film would be targeted for audiences 16 and up. due to the creepy and monster like characters portrayed throughout the film.

Pet Semetary



Denotations Of Poster