Work Diary

During this session we were tasked to photograph in Mapplethorpes style whilst on location, at first I found this very difficult because I was unsure what Mapplethorpes style was however after looking through some of his images and making an image bank I found that I understood how he liked to photograph people. When we went out to photograph we were in small groups and this made it easy for us to complete this task as there was a few people I could use within my images. Towards the beginning I was struggling to focus on the face of the person so the background was blurred however after a few attempts we realised that the model must be standing away from the background and this would let the camera focus easier on the face of the model. I liked photographing in this style and found that I was able to produce quite a few images in Mapplethorpe’s style.

This is one of my Location Mapplethorpe images, I like this because I have captured similar emotions to what Mapplethorpe tends to photograph and the composition is also different to other images that I took. To improve this image I could have taken the photo against a different background as the lines are not straight however if i straighten them then George would not be straight.

This is another of my location Mapplethorpe images, I like this image because in my opinion, this background is much more suitable as it it simple however I do not like this image very much as Josh is not looking towards the camera and I prefer Mapplethorpe's images where the model is looking directly at the camera. I could have also taken this image slightly closer to Josh as I feel that I took this image too far away and included more of his body. 

Progress

If I was to go out and photograph Mapplethorpe’s style images on location again I would focus on the backgrounds a little more as I felt my backgrounds made it slightly difficult for me to edit as quite often I used a background with lines and sometimes these were not straight however if I straightened them, the model would then be slanted. Therefore if I was to repeat this lesson I would try and find some plainer background to photograph against as I felt the pink and orange backgrounds were very effective.