Rethinking Photography

PTG 2020
Alexander Mitchell 23424288
INTRODUCTION

When deciding what to do for this I

wanted to take a mixture of two very
different styles to do the portraits, this
was because I wanted to try and create
a new style of portrait, one that doesn’t
really have any identifying
characteristics, but instead uses the
colours, pose and clothes to try and tell
you about the person. So for this I
turned to two photographers, the first
being Nadav Khander and the second
being Kyle Thompson.
I spoke about both of the photographers in my
presentation, but I liked the way that Kyle
Thompson presents his subjects (top image) and
I really like the lighting with coloured gels that
Nadav Khander incorporates into his work
(bottom image)

My idea for the portraits is to have the subjects

control everything apart from the setup, for
example, they had the choice of the colours that
represented them, the pose they pull and the
outfit they wear, my only pre-requisite is that
they wear a white bag over their heads and have
greyscale clothing.
ARTIST RESEARCH

Nadav Khander
Starting off in Johannesburg, South Africa, Nadav
Kander would start taking pictures when he was 13
in 1963 with a Pentax camera and would later
receive formal training when he was drafted into
the air force and worked in the darkroom
developing aerial photographs. (“Commissions,”
n.d.)
Kander has also done several internationally
recognised images, such as ‘Diver, Salt Lake, Utah’
and has done portrait work for former U.S.
president Barak Obama, and the then vice
president, now president, Joe Biden for the New
York Times.
When photographing his subjects Kander preferred
to have little to no interaction when doing a portrait, as in an interview with
the national portrait gallery he states “I like to know
how they look, so I recognise who’s who when they
walk in the door, but not much more than that. I
really like the connection human beings have when
there isn’t a great knowledge”(Road to 2012, 2012).
Alongside this he finds that there’s often more
communication between people who don’t know
each other well due to there being a tension of first
meeting someone.
The reason I wanted to use Kander for my portrait
photograph inspiration is because of his use of
colour and lighting, angles and shot composition a
to create interesting gradients and ways of
highlighting people in different and new ways, as shown by these portraits
(pictured left). Overall, I would like to take these elements into consideration.
ARTIST RESEARCH

Kyle Thompson
Kyle Thompson is an American photographer who was
born in Chicago, but he moved to Portland, where he is
currently based. He started off taking images of
abandoned houses when he was 19.
He describes his work as being based around having a
singular moment of a story, and that it’s the “collapse
of a narrative” and that they are destined to be looping
stories. (“Biography,” n.d.)
What’s interesting about his self portraits is they
often incorporate elements of masks and different
ways of obscuring the subject, such as putting the
subject further away from the camera, as shown
here with these two images. what I want to
incorporate into my work is the element of using a
mask to try and obscure information about the
subject, and then almost taking the image with
some more typical lighting and framing of the
image, but again, just obscuring the face in some
way, and when I did this image I took it in the studio
in order to provide a contrast to the source material
as Kyle Thompson doesn’t work in studios.
CONTACT SHEET

For each subject I took around 20-50 pictures (hence why I just showed a small
selection here), where before I took the image I told them to make the first
pose that they felt comfortable doing, and for a few of them I yelled the first
thing that came to mind, for example, one of the subjects likes americana so I
asked him to pull a stereotypical American hero pose, but overall the
important point was the subject had complete control over how they were
presented, bar the outfit colour choice.
DEVELOPMENT AND EDITING
When it came to the process of taking the images, I worked
with an expanded Rembrandt set up in the studio, I had
two lights on a white background, each with a different
colour gel, I then had two lights on the subject, one on the
front and one as a backlight. Each subject had complete
control over the pose and the colours that were present in
the image as I asked them to come up with two colours
they felt defined them.

When it came to the editing side of the photos, I modified the different sliders
depending on the image, so for example, the images underneath, the left one
shows how the image started and the right one shows what I did. The two
images underneath them show the changes this made.
DEVELOPMENT AND EDITING

Once I had done the basic corrections and was happy

with how the subject looked I moved on to using masks
to modify the background of the images, I did this by
taking two linear gradients, one for each colour on the
backdrop and then using the subtract tool to remove the
subject from the mask. I then followed the same steps as
the basic corrections in order to get a look that I was
happy with for the masks.

After this I moved over to

photoshop in order to
remove the seam lines and
chairs from the headgear
and image, some of the
images had elements such
as other rolls of paper still
visible in the top parts of
the screen so I had to
remove them. I mainly did
this with the spot healing
tool for the seams and the clone stamp for
pretty much everything else. I also used
the healing brush tool in order to modify
any parts of the backdrop where the two
colours had blended together weirdly.

I did these steps on ever image and I was

left with this set of 7 images:
REFLECTION

Personally, I felt this project went relatively well, I created 7 images that I am
really happy with, one of which I do intend on going on to make a piece of
artwork around that I’ll likely try to get into a gallery.
But, the few things that I would change where how I handled the time
management side of the project, as if I had given myself more time to work on
the project I would have liked to have expanded upon the other two images I
created (shown in the video), however as I mentioned, this set of images was
the one I was most happy with and I feel that I have successfully expanded
upon the original idea.
The subjects I used were all close personal friends and I am happy to say that
they enjoyed the studio work and feel that the images I did capture their
personalities quite well, with one of them currently using it as their phone
background.
For future expansion I think that I could use elements I developed in this
project to make a good piece on personal identity, perhaps mixing it with other
mediums of artwork, and looking back at a few of the images from the self-
portraits I did for this project, there is definitely scope for expanding the
project down this route I feel.

And with that, I hope you like the images and have a wonderful day!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Biography [WWW Document], n.d. . Kyle Thompson.
URL
http://www.kylethompsonphotography.com/biogr
aphy (accessed 11.19.23).
Commissions [WWW Document], n.d. . Nadav Kander.
URL
https://www.nadavkander.com/commissions/singl
e (accessed 11.19.23).
Road to 2012: Aiming High - Nadav Kander, 2012.