Portraits

A portrait is an artistic representation of someone, it can be many different things; a photograph, a sculpture or a painting. The aim of a portrait is to show the mood of the person, or their personality.

Irving Penn

Irving penn was born june 16th 1917 in New Jersey. He worked for vogue and is well known for his fashion photography, portraits and still lifes. He died in october 7th 2009.

This image is quite an abstract exaggerated example of a portrait. Penn has used colour and lighting to draw attention to the features highlighting the obsession with beauty found in todays media. The texture of the face along with the many parts where it has captured the light makes it seem plasticy and unrealistically smooth, similarly the makeup is bright, heavy and unavoidable, on the lips, cheeks and eyes. The photo is striking to anyone viewing it as it is a direct contrast to what one would expect to see, rather than a perfectly finished headshot this is a deliberately over the top example.






Wes Naman

In this photograph there are two subjects, a young girl is holding up a small dog, they're both positioned in the centre of the image against an unspeaking background in the form of a rather weathered wall. Everything we can see in the image is in focus yet the viewer is drawn to the distinctive eyes of both subjects staring in the camera. The contrast in the image is relatively low with very little perfect Black or White areas, there is a dark, eerie tone throughout, this is emphasised by the colour, contrast, background and even the subjects involved, it isn;t particularly inviting.




















Ulric Collette

Born in 1979, Collette is a self taught photographer, his work has been used on various websites, magazines and books. 

This portrait is an unusually intense example, it shows a females head standing on a surface without a body, it sits in a puddle of pink liquid. The picture is taken against a rather muted background, the use of colour is dominated by the subjects vivid hair however. The head is positioned in the centre of the image yet the subject is positioned facing off to the side, she appears deep in thought, her eyes longing for something, possibly she has lost something or feels there is something missing, the lack of a body serves to reaffirm this to the viewer further.

My images


For my portrait images I had some time in the studio, I used several props to help portray the weird and wonderful theme. I was just trying to experiment with all the props I had and different angles. I then had a chance to use photoshop on my images, I tried to make the subject look weird and scary.