David Bailey

David Bailey is a well known name in photography, for his portraits of the famous, including pop groups, actors, celebrities, Princess Diana and even the Kray Twins.

 
When I was starting in photography, it was David and his straight no nonsense portraits of people. At the time it was David who was the most talked about photographer, partly due to his appearance in television adverts for the Olympus Trip 35mm compact camera, but when people spoke about photographers, in particular portrait photographers it was always David Bailey they mentioned.

David was born on 2nd January 1938, and lived in Leytonstone until he was three when the family house was destroyed during a bombing raid.

David struggled at school, it was not until many years later that David was diagnosed as dyslexic. After leaving school David did anything to make money: carpet salesman, tallyman, shoe salesman, window-dresser

David signed up for his National Service in 1956, serving in the RAF, where based in Singapore David started getting more interested in of photography. Here he discovered the work of Henri Cartier Bresson, a portrait photographer, which inspired him, and this started him looking through copies of LIFE and various American photo journals. In 1957 he bought his first camera. "I was smitten, and gradually the prospect of becoming a photographer became less remote, perhaps even attainable."

He was demobbed in August 1958, and determined to pursue a career in photography, he purchased a Canon Rangefinder camera. Unable to obtain a place at the London College of Printing, he became a second assistant to David Ollins, in Charlotte Mews. He earned £3 10s (£3.50) a week, and acted as studio dogsbody. He was delighted to be called to an interview with John French.

In 1960, at 22, he was already working as a freelancer for British Vogue, and soon became almost as famous as the people he was photographing: fashion designer Mary Quant, and everyone who was involved in Bazaar, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, The Who, singers Marianne Faithfull and Sandie Shaw, actresses Mia Farrow, Catherine Deneuve and Geraldine Chaplin, actors Peter Sellers and Michael Caine, and models Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy and Penelope Tree.

But David also photographed the period's current fashions on the streets of London and New York for magazines like American Vogue and Glamour. "I wanted to be like Fred Astaire, but I couldn't, so instead I went for the next best thing, which was to be a fashion photographer." But he is best known for his iconic images of the swinging Sixties and glamorous fashion shoots,

But David's love of portrait photography was always there. His career and personal life seemed to thrive during the Heyday of the "Swinging Sixties," and while at times the public seemed more interested in his colourful exploits than in his photography, but it is his work which really speaks for itself and withstands the test of time.

In an interview, he has described Picasso as being his greatest inspiration. "The first half of the century belongs to Picasso and the second half belongs to photography. These days everyone is called an artist from Madonna to someone who can hold a paintbrush, but it is Picasso who really started the whole thing off and made me want to go and take pictures."

Below are some of David’s portraits:

Sources of information include National Portrait Gallery, David Bailey.com, photography-now.net, Professional Photographer magazine, numerous books

 

Evaluation of Images

David Bailey is the first photographer that I heard about when I was young.

What I like about David's work is his no non-sense portraits without props, where it is the subject of the portrait that is the focus in the shot, without distracting foregrounds or backgrounds.  David has used plain backgrounds for almost all of his work, with few exceptions (like some of the Beatles, etc).

Looking at David's portraits I can see that he has favoured head, and head and shoulder portraits, cropped very tightly, with some half and some three quarter length, but more, of the former, than some photographers.

Most of his portraits have used the full tonal range, although there are a few which seem more black and white only with very few midtones.

It is interesting how David's portraits, show men's faces as more textured, e.g. Jack Nicholson (column 1 row 7 of the images above) and women's faces as smooth, e.g. Princess Diana (column 1 rows 1 and 2) although in some cases this could be more down the the make up artist's work.

Most of David's subjects are looking directly at the camera, capturing their expressions.

The lighting of the portraits is mostly even, with a few examples of side lighting (Michael Caine column 2 row 3).

It is interesting how David has varied the format of the portraits where more than one person is the subject.

History of Portrait Photography

Images of people have always been very popular, from the early cave paintings to images of Egyptian Pharaohs right up to modern portraits.

Ramses II

For years artists were the only way to capture true likeness of people, which involved long sessions and this resulted in the portrait costing a fortune. Hence the early portraits only featured royalty, the rich and the famous.

Jose Manuel Balmaceda

Although artists like Lowry featured ordinary people in their normal day to day life.

It was not until around the eighteenth century that the increase for good, low cost, portraits and the development of photography (sorry) made portraits more available to people. Film stars, music hall performers, singers suddenly found a new medium available to promote themselves.

Irving Penn, for example, took a series of portraits entitled “Small Trades” which featured tradesmen with the tools of their trade.

Suddenly everyone could create a portrait of a loved one, their family, their pets or their friends.

Becky

Today, portrait photographs have another use, that of identification of people. When I started this course I had my photograph taken for my college ID card, which is becoming more and more common place with many companies now insisting on ID photographs. In fact Richard Avedon used to take ID photographs when he joined the Merchant Marine’s Photographic section.

Jim from this course takes wedding photographs, which include the portraits of the happy couple and their guests, amongst other photographs.

Suzy, also from the course, takes animal portraits and rock band concert photography.

So portraits are a art form, as well as an area of photography that is here to stay, and with the increases in technology, can only lead to further changes in the genre.

Ironically, some photographic editors are now used to create artistic impressions from actual photographs. Obviously artistic talents are still important.

Statement of Intent 2 - Portrait Photography

Portraits of Photographers

Intention and Purpose of this project

For this project I wanted to capture some of the other students of the course on the other side of the camera.  One reason for this is that many photographers tend to remain behind the camera and I wanted to bring these talented photographers in front of the camera.

Having looked at portrait photography before I wanted to improve and learn more about this area of photography, as this is a very popular area of photography both for families and friends but also for corporate use (promotions, magazine articles, etc) and identity use.

 

Reasons and inspiration

When you talk about taking photographs, the first thing people talk about is portraits, sometimes leading to a little favour ! and in this area I would like to take better photographs.  I have looked at the work of David Bailey, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon and I like how some of the classic photographers work with little fuss (very important with some people !).

 

Equipment and Medium

For this project I again used a DSLR but using the 18 – 200 mm lens as this gave me a wider range of focal lengths, because mid length telephoto lenses (70 – 90 mm) lenses suit portrait photography better because they can compress the perspective.  I have seen portraits taken with wide angle lenses but these exaggerate the perspective leaving the subject with a very uncomplimentary portrait often with extra large noses !

Again I will be using the battery grip as this allows me to take portrait orientated photographs easier and gives me access to the camera controls.

For this project I will also be using the photographic studio facilities of Burton College.

With this being the 21^st century I will be using the internet for presenting the images as it can showcase your work to a much wider audience than a portfolio ever could.  The internet is being used more and more by photographers to present their work to potential clients.

 

Techniques

This area of photography is very people orientated, as opposed to air displays, landscapes and product photography.  Like some photographers I do worry about organising people in front of the camera, and working with such a good team as this I hope to gain more confidence in this and get some guidance as I go along.

For this area I will be working in the studio, looking to capture the personality of the person who’s portrait that I am taking, so I will be using a 18 – 200 mm lens as this gives me more latitude giving me the option to zoom in or out to frame the portrait as I want.

Again working in the college’s photographic studio, I have the opportunity to develop my skills with the lights and thanks to a chart I have seen, I can explore different lighting angles.  Although I would also like to have an opportunity to work in much the same way as David Bailey, with a single light fitted with a beauty dish, directly in front of the subject. 

 

Light Quality

One thing about working in a photographic studio is that the photographer has full control over the lighting, without having to wait until the sun is in the right place as in landscape and other location based photography.

I am looking at taking portraits in different lighting conditions, I have taken high key portraits before, but with some people I would like to take low key portraits.  I did take some low key portraits before and I am proud of some, and I would like to take similar ones again.

But I would like to capture not just the portraits but the people themselves.

 

Health and Safety Considerations

Working in a photographic studio, you have to be aware of what is around you.  One advantage of the studio at Burton College is that the studio is kept clear and safe with no cables lying around.  Steve Davies gave us all a health and safety induction to the studio, warning us of the dangers and safe working practices.

The college use ceiling mounted lighting:

 

The main precaution with these are because they are suspended from the ceiling, you have to be aware of where they are so you don’t hit your head on anything !

I have not done this, yet !

Other than this you must be aware of the chance, however small, that something could drop, so basically a case of no working beneath anything, just in case.

Using this lighting means that the photographer can move around the studio with very little on the floor, and by using wireless triggers there are no sync cables from the camera to the master flash.  The other flashes are triggered using slave units.

Electricity and chemicals are the only other concerns, but with digital photography there are few chemicals used.  Taking the normal precautions with electricity is very important, and second nature with most people.  Flash units produce a lot of heat so it is important that you are aware of this and take care when handling flash units, to avoid burns, but also with the flash bulbs being very fragile you must be very careful.

Health and safety is covered in more detail in the photo shoots.

Wales Meet Again

Sorry I could not resist that !

Well time for us to visit beautiful Wales, and try to capture some of its beauty.

This time there was only five of us; Steve, Jim, Eric, Pippa and Me.  Jim brought along Layla for some portrait photography.  Steve drove me there, thanks again Steve,  whilst the others went with Jim, who had to pick up Layla.

First of all we met at a wood just outside of New Quay, where we found some derelict old stone buildings and a small river, so some good photographic subjects here.  There were some dodgy looking characters as well !

 

 

Next, we walked to the first of the three beaches we were to visit, whilst in Wales.

One thing we were hoping to capture was a sunset, but even though the weather had been beautiful during the day, towards the end of the day it became a little hazy, which prevented us capturing a beautiful sunset, this is the best I could get:

What is Product Photography

Product photography is where items like drinks, toiletries, jewellery, cameras, etc are photographed for use in advertising and marketing to promote the company.

Prior to the explosion in the use of photography, artists would draw the product for use in the advertising material.  Some of these, in particular the images used for the Pears soap advertisements are seen as classics.  An example of one of these classic images, the ‘Charm of youth and the joy of age’ Pears soap advert from 1916 is shown below:

 

In fact some companies still prefer to use illustrations.

But when traditional, film based, photography became more widespread advertisers could use life like images showing the target products either in isolation or with suitable props (items used to create an atmosphere or a particular scenario).

The use of photographs also resulting in cost reductions for the advertising companies who no longer needed the services of an artist.  But in turn, limited the advertisers to realistic images which had to be creatable within the studio or at the location.

The increasing use of digital photography where images can easily be manipulated, far cheaper than when traditional film based photography was used, and a photograph can be manipulated to almost look like an artists sketch or painting, more elaborate designs can be used.

But, with the increase in three dimensional computer generated imaging, promotional companies can explore even more options where photography is absent from the whole process.  One example that I have seen is where a company had a car computer designed, with textures and lighting applied and then placed in front of a fractual generated landscape with a computer generated sky.  At no stage during the production of the finished image were any cameras used, even the driver who was added at a later stage was a computer generated model.  But this technology is still far too expensive for many companies to even consider using.

But, many people still prefer to so lifelike, or photographic, images of the products that they are interested in so, at least for the near future, product photography is still very important to the advertising and marketing industry.

Applications of Product and Advertising Photography

Early advertisements for products involved newspaper adverts, usually describing the product and its benefits, later drawings were added to the adverts.  Later billboards were used to promote products or services, as you can see below these are still used today:

 Bill Boards

 Shop Windows

Next came radio and television advertising, which although very powerful can be very expensive.

With the explosion of the internet, which was actually a former US military project called “ARPANET” designed to maintain contact between military computer networks in the event of a nuclear war, companies have now the most powerful advertising medium available. 

With the internet advertisers are no longer limited to static images, but can now have animations and videos used to promote their goods, and it is here, on the internet, that both large and small companies can advertise side by side.  In fact I have even seen some better designed and laid out websites from smaller companies who need to work harder to promote their goods than some larger companies who are more relying on their name and brand !

With the development of the internet and its various formats (Flash, Siverlight WML, and XML) they ways that advertisers can promote their goods and services is increasing.

Although there are some unusual ways of promotion:

Simple, effective, but illegal !

Product Shoot One

Aim of the Shoot

For this first product shoot in the studio, I wanted to try a few ideas I sketched whilst on my dinner break.

The first ideas featured fruit juice drinks, including J2O.

First, it was discussing with Steve Davies the ideas that I had and what I was looking to produce, Steve gave me some suggestions and helped with the positioning of the lights. After carrying out a quick risk assessment for health and safety, we started the photography.

The Set Ups

After some test shots and tweaking the aperture (both the ISO and shutter speed were limited), I got the results that I was looking for.

Using the set up above, with two light boxes backlighting the product table, one light under lighting the product and a snoot to the left of the camera.

A studio overhead diagram is below:

The camera itself was mounted on a camera stand, which was far more flexible than the traditional tripod, and far more stable.

The first idea, which I called Quality First featured four bottles, with a J2O bottle, which I used as the target product.

The next idea for the juice drinks, used a little improvisation:

But, at the end of the day, if the photograph looks good

(and they cannot see how it was done) the end justifies the means.

 

Here is the end result, which I entitled 'Above the rest':

For this photograph I had to position and rotate the J2O bottle so that the label showed the brand as best I could, whilst keeping the two front bottles together, which not only produced the effect that I wanted, but also hid the rolls of tape used to raise the J2O bottle.  One trick I used during the setting up of this image was to use the focus frame, in the viewfinder, to line up the bottles.

The next idea I worked on still involved the fruit juice, but used a different approach.

This image I entitled 'Quality not Quantity' was used to promote the target product in an environment where it was clearly in the minority to the other products, but demonstrating that it is not the quantity but the quality that counts. 

Toiletries

The next product I looked at was some toiletries, that I had been given as a gift.

Toiletries and perfumes are a very popular product to be photographed, because of there appeal to people, sometimes being promoted by celebrities, often shown with backlighting illuminating the bottle and its contents.

A studio overhead diagram is below:

In this case the bottles are black and opaque, so back lighting would not work with these.  An added problem with these items is that the camera might expose for the black packaging and not the white labelling, so some post production work in Photoshop will be necessary.

Canon A720 IS

The next item was a compact camera.

Cameras are a very popular consumer item and here product photography is a vital advertising tool, often the cameras are shown in a dim lit or even dark environment.  I therefore thought that I would give it a try first shooting in a light environment, especially as the camera has a silver finish and compare this to a photograph taken in a dark environment.

I did not want to take too many photographs as I was unsure how these would turn out, and my priority was the fruit juice bottles and the toiletries.

A studio overhead diagram is below:

Below is one of the photographs that I took in the light setting:

The angle of the photograph captured both the front of the camera and the top.  This is a popular angle when photographing a camera as people like to see as much detail, particularly in a single image.

Choice of Equipment

 

For these photographs I used the DSLR with a 18 – 55 mm lens, as this would give me a range of focal lengths to play with.  The lens had a macro setting which would be essential for these photographs. I will also be using the battery grip enables me to take the portrait orientated photographs, whilst still having access to the important controls.

 

I also used the camera stand as this would reduce time adjusting the focusing and any metering changes.

I used the infra red trigger for the flash units which gave me more portability and prevented any tripping over type accidents.

 

Health and Safety

When working in a photographic studio you have to be careful of a number of things:

Environment

Fortunately, working in the college photographic studio which is kept clear of any obstructions, we had a clear and safe working environment, which is very important because, once the lights are out and we have only the modelling lights from the flash units to see by, any cables or props left lying around could cause an accident.

Electricity

Although the voltages for many lights may be lower, especially for portable lighting, you must always check that the cables are in good condition and have firm connections (to the equipment and to the mains power supply) and that nothing is overloading any sockets.

Any use of liquids, especially with some of my photographs, was controlled to prevent any liquid coming close to any electrical appliances.

Cables

The lighting is fitted to a series of tracks which are fixed to the ceiling, this reduces the number of cables that are near the ground, and any slack in the cables from these lights is taken up to prevent any tripping over accidents.

Heat

Because of the use of flash units, which generate a lot of heat, these were only handled before any photography started, using the light from the modelling light to ascertain the lighting. Also nothing inflammable was placed any where near any lighting equipment. It is important with so much lighting equipment that can be triggered wirelessly that any unused equipment is switched off, both for safety and causing unwanted lighting.

Flash Photography

Flash photography, in particular the use of strobe lighting can affect someone who has photosensitive epilepsy, where by an epileptic fit can be triggered by flashing lights.  This is why announcements are made prior to showing on television, for example an interview, where there is rapid flashes from photographers flash guns.  Although no one I know suffers from this, it is an important consideration to think about as some people are unaware that they are sensitive to light in this way until something happens. 

Chemicals

Because we are all using digital cameras, most of the chemicals involved with photography, in particular the processing and development of the finished photographs, have been removed.

Contact

Although this might seem an unusual heading, it is still a very important consideration.  Whilst working in the photographic studio at the Burton College, we are aware that the rest of the group is nearby and in the event of an accident there are people who could assist (some members of security staff at the college are trained first aiders), and if required call for an ambulance.  If we were working alone in a studio or with a single other person, it would be essential to ensure that in the event of an accident someone could raise the alarm and call for help.  In the event of an accident, especially a serious one, the casualty must not be left alone.

This is an important factor when working on location, especially where there is little or no mobile signal, which could prevent a distress call getting through.

 

Selecting Images

I had decided on some of the uses of many of the photographs that I had taken, so when selecting the images it was a case of looking for images that were well exposed, in focus and that I could use for the ideas that I had been looking at.

Below is a contact sheet of all the photographs that I took during this photo shoot.

  

Post Production

J2O

All the J2O images have had minor issues corrected using Adobe Photoshop, because although you set the lighting up for the product there are so many considerations to take into account, which in some cases would counteract each other.  For example I was happy with the lighting of the bottles and the liquids, but the labels on the J2O bottle were not as vibrant as I wanted, so it was a case of selecting the separate labels on the bottle, and copying them to separate layers:

I then adjusted the levels on the individual labels, on separate layers, so the labels were vibrant and clear, without altering the bottles or the other label.

Toiletries

The first part of the workflow was carrying out adjustments in the Camera Raw, tool for importing and carrying out some adjustments using the raw image from cameras using a raw image format.

Once any adjustments are performed an xmp file is saved with the raw image, which retains the settings used when making adjustments to the image.

Once the adjustments have been made the image is opened in Photoshop.

The first priority was cropping the image, there is little point working on the whole image when you are only intending to use a portion of the image.

The next priority was working on the lettering on the packaging (which was a very long job !!).

 

Then I copied the selections to a separate layer, because there was so much text to work on I used three separate layers, I then adjusted the levels on these layers so that the text was clear.

This is the result of a number of hours work - before and after:

 

More Research

Looking at different product photographers, in particular, if possible, looking at UK or even better local product photographers.