Portraiture is an art form that has been around since the very beginning of art. Statues in Ancient Rome, Statues of great men and women were made in their image in a very similar fashion. Artists have been painting portraits since the 1100s and ever since the invention of the  Still Camera, portrait has been adopted by the photography world since Robert Cornelius in 1839 took the world’s first portrait photograph ever made (Opam, 2011). Since then the world has been almost taken over by the concept of portraits whether it’s taken by a professional photographer or “A fast self-portrait, made with a smartphone’s camera”(Saltz, 2014) also known as a Selfie (Ibid).

For my Portraiture Project, I chose to give mine a specific theme. Mine was based around the use of Drugs, both legal and illegal.

For this image, I went to a student I saw having a casual cigarette on his break and asked if he wouldn’t mind me taking a picture of him smoking the cigarette. WHat I found interesting about this image is that the only direction I gave him was “Just act natural and look into the camera”, when taking the photo, he attempted to relax and accidentally looked very aggressive when I took the picture. We both agreed that the aggressive looking picture was a better choice than the others taken so decided to go along with this idea. The natural lighting for this image was directly shone onto him from the front, resulting in a slight washed out look to the subject as his clothing includes a white shirt which caused a lot of reflection.

I was originally going to have a picture taken with someone with a fake “joint”, a combination of Weed and Tobacco, however it was found to be far too difficult to make and then photograph and the Joints tend to look very similar to cigarettes so the message would not have been received as well. As a result of this, I decided to focus this on Smoking cigarettes as it is currently one of the leading drugs in the UK.  This subject was very reluctant to to have her picture but as a friend, she agreed. It should be mentioned that the subject had a habit of laughing whilst I was attempting to take the picture so I pretended to take the image and waited for the perfect moment.  I wanted to have a female with a cigarette in the next piece because the comparison between the male above and the female in this picture is very interesting. Having told them both to relax, this was the result. Please note the difference in posture, this woman is carefully upright whereas the male leans and relaxes. There are also many similarities such as the way they both hold the cigarette between the middle and index.

When taking this portrait, I walked up to a stranger in the street and asked them if they wouldn’t mind, this man accepted and so I continued to explain the purpose of this project and explained that I would need him to hold this bottle of Jack Daniel’s Sour Mash Whiskey as part of the alcohol aspect of my drugs project. When taking this photo, it was important to get the background out of focus but with the lens I had it was very difficult so  was only able to manage a slight soft focus on the background. The natural lighting was mostly being blocked by surrounding buildings giving a much more drowned out look of the colours surround thie subject, not to mention the subjects clothing matched the tones of his surrounding making a level of coherency very effective.

This was the only portrait that offered me any issues as it included the use of fake illegal substances so the approach of the request was vital to the success of taking the image. This image was based on Cocaine. This subject was very interested in this and looked forward to the picture after explaining the situation. I asked the subject to present the objects and if he was proud to be using it at which point I gave him a card to represent the cutting of Cocaine. The lighting for this image was fantastic as it was very sunny on the top of Steep Hill and the light reflected off the surroundings to give a nice, naturally hot temperature effect on the photo.