Here are the two selfies I have entered for the Saatchi and Huawei Competition in London, the images were taken on a Mamiya RZ67 with a Phase One H20 data back which was tethered to an Apple Mac computer running Capture One to load the files so they could be checked and adjusted slightly.
Lighting Diagram
The Lighting setup consisted of a front clam shell light setup using a beauty dish with blue and purple gel sheets attached to it, the bottom part of the clam shell was the soft-box with an orange gel taped to the inside to reduce excessive white light spill. Two standard lights were positioned one on either side of the subject and facing toward the back of the head to create a lovely soft orange rim light using orange gels. This created a 1-3 lighting ration for the image.
Upload Evidence
This piece for the Saatchi competition with Huawei proved quite difficult trying to use a Mamiya RZ67 medium format as a selfie camera was a ‘silly idea’ but I had a go and got some very interesting results for the exhibition.
With this been a project with a short time span before and upload was to be sent to the Saatchi Gallery I found this constraint fairly hard to not only be creative for the images but also fitting in time to get in the studio and do the shoot itself. on reflection this was a challenging project which I thoroughly enjoyed even though I created some shooting issues for myself.
I now see why a good workflow and working practice is required to be able to manage projects like these at short notice.
Research
Selfie – Self Portrait
What is a selfie according to the Oxford English Dictionary its a derivation of the term Self Portrait meaning a representation of the an artist either by drawing, painting or photograph which goes back not only hundreds of years but thousands of years to the first cave paintings of hands or indeed writings about ones self, Traditional self portraits as we know them know where by great artist such as Rembrandt as well as Lucien Freud and David Hockney, Cindy Sherman, Tracy Emin, but with the advent of camera technology it has become a medium that virtually anyone can now participate in because of smartphones with cameras built.
Jake Hicks
Part of my inspiration for the shoot was to use some of the colour gels that Jake uses in his own work so the idea of using bold colours such as orange, blues and purples. Jake is a fashion and hair photographer working from his base in Reading in the United Kingdom, as mentioned above his signature work is using bold bright colours
Cindy Sherman
Tracy Emin
Keith McDonald Photography 