Sunday 25 September 2011

Image and text (Self portrait)

35mm format: 36x26m 
35mm film is normally used for chemical still photography,  it’s advantages are that it is affordable so if you have a tight budget then this would be a perfect option. As it’s so small and lightweight it’s very portable so you don’t have to worry about it being awkward carrying it around, meaning that you can take it with you practically anywhere. You usually tend to get 36 shot per roll of film. As it’s so affordable you somehow have to expect that some of the images do only give you limited qualities so you shouldn’t expect to have professional photographs.  
This type of camera format is generally only used for photojournalism, family pictures, sport and amateur photography.


Medium camera format: RB67

120 film; 6x4.5cm, 6x6cm, 6x7cm, 6x9cm,6x12cm, 6x17cm, 6x24cm

The RB67 is a medium format SLR: 6x7cm
What’s included in it:
  • The body
  • A revolving adapter, usually still attached to the body, but you need to be sure, these almost never come attached to the film back
  • A film back
  • A screen and a finder, waist-level are the most common
  • A lens
A medium format camera normally takes about 16-3 shot per roll of film, this may not seem like a lot of images however the quality you get from them are a lot better compare to a 35mm they are quite expensive so you have decide to whether you want quality compared to quantity. It is portable however as it is larger than a 35mm camera format then it is a bit more difficult; it’s not the type of camera that can just be put in your bag. Its applications vary from being studio based i.e. fashion to portraiture landscapes.


Large format cameras

5” x 4”, 10” x 8”  


Large camera formats produce excellent quality photos, this does come at a price though as these types of camera are very expensive they only produce 2 sheets of film per dark side so this isn’t much considering how much it cost, however to some people it doesn’t matter as they want the best quality image that they could possibly get. They weren’t really created for their portability as they are quite difficult to move around as they have so much that goes with them so for practicality they aren’t the best. This type of camera format tends to be used for landscapes and studio based things i.e. advertising, pack-shots and food. They are best to be used on things that aren’t moving or are static.


Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director born in Glen Ridge; New Jersey on the 19th January 1954, she’s mostly well known for her still films where she took photos of everyday life and then put them into a short film; in each of her photos she never looks the same so this is one of the monumental things about her work.
From her work Cindy Sherman’s has raised questions on how women are represented in society.
She works totally alone and takes up roles of being a author, director, make-up artist, hairstylist, wardrobe, and model.  Some people think of her photos as being feminist however she does not; people do have reason to think this as the 1981 shots show the stereotyping of a ‘typical woman.’
Her most recognised work is the stills that she took in 1977- 1980, it consisted of 69 black and white images of her posing as different roles and also in different settings. In this work she did not include anything textual as she wanted it to have some ambiguity.



Cristina Nunez


Cristina Nunez is a professional artist photographer, she started taking self portrait photographs since 1988. Her work as an artist-photographer has been internationally awarded, shown in many exhibitions and published in several photography books. She created a book titles ‘Someone to love’, the self portrait experience.’ 



                                                         Finished self portrait


Evaluation

My final image came from a 35mm film; I also took photos on a medium and large format camera. I chose the photo of me with my body turned away from the camera and I’m touching a zebra that is painted onto the wall; I chose this as it had a lot of detail in it and I though it would come across as a great affect.
I started off by getting the negative that I wanted to use and fitting it into the contact print frame, one i had done this I then fitted it into the enlarger and then set it to it’s brightest once this was done I then ‘Stopped down’ (turned down) by at least two stops so I could work with the negative in a good exposure light.
I then set the timer to 5 seconds and collected my test strip so I knew what exposure time I should use for my final copy, after doing this I decided that 8 seconds would be an adequate timing so one I had dried my test strip I then began on my main image.
After exposing it for the required 8 seconds I then placed it into the developer for 1-2 minutes, I then washed it off with water and put it in the fix for roughly 5 minutes after this the developer was washed off and then I dried the image.

Once the image was fully dried is scanned it onto the computer and created a new Photoshop file for it I then opened the required image and made the image rotate from portrait to landscape, once the image was the appropriate size I then tried to put a new York background behind it by changing the opaqueness of the image however with the zebra stripes and all of the building lights in the new York picture my image resulted in looking messy so I decided to scrap this idea and instead kept my image as it was. The text i used was ‘Concrete jungle where dreams are made of’ from Alicia Keys, Empire state of mind. I though these lyrics fitted in perfectly as it was an animal from a jungle, and it was written on a concrete wall. When the text was written the words got a bit lost in the zebras stripes so i just created a small opaque box and put the text in it just so it was easier to read.









































































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