* Light and Shadow

The theme I have chosen is "Light and Shadow". I am going to capture this theme through portraiture photography. I intend to use portrait photography as a way of using a subject to contrast with an object and background that you wouldn't expect. By using light and shadows, I will use subjects to create a juxtaposition with a model.

This is a moodboard based with images based on what I would like to do in relation to the theme.

Brandon Woelfel

A New York based photographer who has gained a massive followibng from his social media, especially through the app Instagram. His work includes uses of light or colour in most of his photos and he edits them in a very distinctive way. Across all images is editing is consistant, enhancing his nightime portraits to be lighter and creating a more whimsical feel through the use of his editing of lights. Brandon Woelfel spends a lot more time during post-production to create the types of images that he likes. He uses colour correcting methods in his work to create his own individual style. Lightng is a reaccurance throughout much of his work, he uses backlit images, fairy lights or anyother type of thing that he can to create light and shadows in his images. Much if his focus is on portraiture photography and how the lighintng sources he has, has an effect on the subjects face and how they look. Much of the light he uses in his work is edited in post production to appear much brighter and give a different effect on his work. Brandon's images also have a blue tint which is added to his images through changing the colour balance in post-production.

I like Brandon Woelfel's work as it has many elements of what I would like in my work in order to link to my theme. I love how he focusses on light but does this in more than one different way. His post-production editing of changing colour balances and emphasising different parts of the image to create a different look is something that I would like to try and recreate with my own take on it. I like how his portraitures are simple however they use of light distorts how the face of the subject is seen slightly. The shadows create a darkness on places of the face and these in turn can tell their own story. However the composition of some of his photographs are something that I would change when recreating work in his style. He uses large objects and these are sometimes more of a focus of the photograph than the model themselves. I would prefer to have a focus on the model and tell a story through the way that light is used to reflect different feelings and emotions.

Sølve Sundsbø

A Norwegian fashion photographer based in London. His images are very different to many of the photographers who work in the fashion industry. Sølve is quite experimental in his imagery and has how pictures which show the contrast between light and dark. The shadows in this work seem to give a pop-art effect to it, this style off photography is quite post-modernism and almost has an aspect of film-noir. The series of images where he uses this contrast in light and shadow is called "Points a la Ligne" this means "points to the line". The images have a simple concept and are simple to look at. They are powerful however due to the contrasts shown between the very pale skin of the model and the darkness if the patterns that the shadows are casting. The images could be said to be almost abstract and look painted however Sølve Sundsbø’s has managed to capture this as a photograph.

I really like his work as I love the dark and light showing large contrasts. This links to my theme of light and shadow very well. In my work I will try to recreate his uses of shadows as this  is something that gives an individual look to the model and shows them in a way that you wouldnt expect. I like the way that the image looks like a painting however I feel as if this is not the image that I am going for in my work as I would like it to have a less futuristic feel to it. I do however like how  Sølve Sundsbø has managed to create such a dark contrast and shadow in his image without putting a black and white effect on it in post production as the use of colour in the photograph, like on the models lips, is something that gives the image some extra definion.