Photography 11
Lesson #8 - The Faceless Portrait
The inspiration for this assignment came from a challenge that Marie McGrory (Producer, Nat Geographic Travel) put out in February of 2015 called - The Faceless Portrait Challenge - check out link for inspiration
The Un-Selfie: Taking Back the Self-Portrait By Marie McGrory
"Our eyes are often attracted to the face first. Being very social beings, we read emotions and stories on faces all day long. But what we may often neglect in our portrait photography are the clues that seep into us more subconsciously —the context clues. While elements like what a person is wearing, their body language, the scene and objects around them often tell us much of the story, the face may tell us how they're feeling about that story.” Marie McGrory
Big Idea : To learn how to photographically describe or represent “people” in photographs without taking an actual image of their face. What does the context, colour, lighting, body gesture say about someone’s identity or their story?
Assignment: The assignment calls for you to go out and photograph images that represent identity without representing the face in the image. We are drawn to faces and generally they are the focal point of our imagery when included. When you do not include the face that requires the viewer to visually travel about the entire frame to find meaning. Photograph images that conceptually, theoretically or abstractly represent your subject. You should incorporate the figure in some way but it can just be parts of the body, a reflection or shadow. Do not forget to actively use of rules of composition and depth of field when capturing your subjects.
Presentation: Uploaded to the server organized in a folder.
1 contact sheet (20 images, your best! - must include date, aperture, shutter speed and ISO), order images so the ones that you are most proud of are at the top of your contact sheet.
3 edited images - sized 8.5" by 11" at 300 dpi (resolution), saved as jpegs
