Location - Queanbeyan

Location - Civic

To be honest this type of photography is not my cup of tea. Although the people are in a public space i do feel like I was invading people's privacy. this probably has something to do with my technique i suppose. I found 'sniping' people from affair was more comfortable for everyone and obtained better and more natural results. Civic was easier in this way than Queanbeyan because there was more room to maneuver in.

HEROES - My Hero. Presentation Methods

SKIN HOLES - Pres Methods

Vanity Fair

Caption: Philip Johnson wearing the PPG Building (costume designed and constructed by Joseph Hutchins, Works N. Y.), by Josef Astor, 1996, publ. July 1996.
Credit: Josef Astor

Caption: Augustus John, by Malcolm Arbuthnot, 1920 publ. February 1920.
Credit: Courtesy Condé Nast Archive

To gauge a persons personality from a photograph is difficult I believe. What is captured in a brief moment can not represent there whole being with all of it's complex layers. Even photographs of people in real life situations (not arranged portraiture) gives us no real further insight into their character - A picture of an heroic firefighter saving someone from a burning building may portray the man as being brave - but it doesn't show you that when he gets home he kicks the cat across the room and slams a bottle of whisky. What I think that you can see (sometimes) in a portrait, is how seriously someone takes themselves (see above portraits). Some people never smile for the camera - this maybe through vanity or maybe they always want to be taken seriously. I like people who don't take themselves too seriously - therefore if i had to choose some people, whom I didn't know, to hang with, from a selection of photos - I would probably choose the ones who were smiling or doing something silly in their photo.

Compared to their contemporary counterparts the photographs from the earlier era could be identified by their size - being smaller, and most of them were simple head and shoulder shots.
Some of the contemporary portraits were enormous - the giant Margaret Thatcher shot is the stuff of nightmares. I also had a sense that in a lot of the contemporary shots the subjects wanted to be portrayed as being "cool" even slightly above being beautiful - this is where the photographer comes in to help make this image, by arranging that carefully constructed "hey i didn't know there was going to be a camera here - I'm this cool everyday" look. Maybe I'm being too cynical. I've never really liked the celebrity elite - overpaid, over idolised and they get a loud public voice to boot.

In conclusion, i don't feel that there is much "truth' in most portraits, but especially not celebrity portraits. It is in their vested interests to portray a certain image. A real truth would be the smile on a three year olds face looking at the camera their mother is holding for granny's Christmas photo.

Dirty Old Town - by The Pogues - Presentation Methods

sourced@http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVUZuVZWHkk

DIRTY OLD TOWN
I met my love by the gas works wall

Dreamed a dream by the old canal

Kissed a girl by the factory wall

Dirty old townDirty old town
Clouds are drifting across the moon

Cats are prowling on their beat

Springs a girl in the street at night

Dirty old townDirty old town
Heard a siren from the docks

Saw a train set the night on fire

Smelled the spring on the smoky wind

Dirty old townDirty old town
I'm going to make me a good sharp axe

Shining steel tempered in the fire

Will chop you down like an old dead tree

Dirty old townDirty old town

Photogravure - Visual Culture

Photogravure was a process derived from trying to make an image more permanent - it then evolved into a method for reproducing an image in large editions. The process involved using a gelatin to carry an image. The image is exposed onto the gelatin- the gelatin would harden in proportion to its exposure to light. The areas not exposed to light would then wash away. The remaining gelatin would then be pressed onto a copper plate. Acid is then used on the plate - where the gelatin is thick the acid dissolves the metal slowly, where it is thin it dissolves faster - the result is an etching in the copper matching the tones of the original print. This plate can now be inked for printing. Wow, they used to use their smarts a lot back then - because they had no TV.

Breezy Marshland, 1889Peter Henry Emerson, 1856 - 1936Photogravure

Author Unknown. (). Photogravure. Available: http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/processframe.php?processid=pr017. Last accessed 8 August 2009.

Jabberwocky - Presentation Methods