Me Skateboarding Silhouette

I set my camera up for my brother to snap a few photos of me doing an ollie, as a silhouette.

Self-Portrait Silhouettes

The theme of the project is self portraiture, and as I'm doing silhouettes, I took a few side portraits of myself as silhouettes.

I had the sun against me to cast the silhouette, and made it have an extremely quick shutter speed, to under-expose the sky behind me, to make it slightly darker, as the sun is so bright, to do this you need to lower the settings alot. Which makes anything in the foreground black, giving the silhouette.

These were just quick shots, but I will do this again, and make the exposure darker, as there is still some detail in me. The first one I added some contrast to on the computer to make it darker as it was too bright.

Skateboarding Silhouettes

A couple of skateboarding silhouettes I took the other day.

Action Silhouettes

Most silhouettes are just portraits and side on profile shots of people. I have been taking skateboarding silhouettes and looking at "action silhouettes" so skateboarding and other action type shots using silhouettes as the style.

This is what I will be focusing on with my project. As it shows the action shot, but it's not the usual type where you can see all the detail of the action.

Iphone Silhouettes

A couple of silhouettes I have taken last year on my iPhone.

My Brother

Took this a while ago on my old camera on the beach.

Bird Silhouettes

Birds silhouettes

Here's a couple of silhouettes of a tree I did a while back.

Silhouettes

A silhouette is a representative of a person/subject, by having the person/subject in complete black, with white/a light behind the person/subject. There is no features in a silhouette, which hides the identity of the subject, so unless you know the shape perfectly or know the person who may be in the silhouette, you may not know what it is actually of.

Silhouettes can be made from drawing, photographs, or cutting out a subject from a photograph, with black card placed behind it, to create a silhouette.

Wikipedia - "A silhouette is the image of a person, an object or scene represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, its edges matching the outline of the subject. The interior of a silhouette is featureless, and the whole is typically presented on a light background, usually white, or none at all. The silhouette differs from an outline which depicts the edge of an object in a linear form, while a silhouette appears as a solid shape. Silhouette images may be created in any visual artistic media, but the term normally describes pieces of cut paper, which were then stuck to a backing in a contrasting colour, and often framed.

Cutting portraits, generally in profile, from black card became popular in the mid-18th century, though the term “silhouette” was seldom used until the early decades of the 19th century, and the tradition has continued under this name into the 21st century. They represented a cheap but effective alternative to the portrait miniature, and skilled specialist artists could cut a high-quality bust portrait, by far the most common style, in a matter of minutes, working purely by eye. Other artists, especially from about 1790, drew an outline on paper, then painted it in, which could be equally quick. The leading 18th-century English "profilist" in painting, John Miers, advertised "three minute sittings", and the cost might be as low as half a crown around 1800. Miers' superior products could be in grisaille, with delicate highlights added in gold or yellow, and examples might be painted on various backings, including gesso, glass or ivory. The size was normally small, with many designed to fit into a locket, but otherwise a bust some 3 to 5 inches high was typical, with half- or full-length portraits proportionately larger.

From its original graphic meaning, the term "silhouette" has been extended to describe the sight or representation of a person, object or scene that is backlit, and appears dark against a lighter background. Anything that appears this way, for example, a figure standing backlit in a doorway, may be described as "in silhouette". Because a silhouette emphasises the outline, the word has also been used in the fields of fashion and fitness to describe the shape of a person's body or the shape created by wearing clothing of a particular style or period."

Faceless

This is the "faceless" task we had to do, I did a long exposure and shook my head whilst trying to remain still.

Self Portraiture

A self-portrait is a representation of an artist, drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by the artist. Although self-portraits have been made by artists since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid 15th century that artists can be frequently identified depicting themselves as either the main subject, or as important characters in their work. With better and cheaper mirrors, and the advent of the panel portrait, many painters, sculptors and printmakers tried some form of self-portraiture. Portrait of a Man in a Turban by Jan van Eyck of 1433 may well be the earliest known panel self-portrait. He painted a separate portrait of his wife, and he belonged to the social group that had begun to commission portraits, already more common among wealthy Netherlanders than south of the Alps. The genre is venerable, but not until the Renaissance, with increased wealth and interest in the individual as a subject, did it become truly popular.

Info - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-portrait

Introduction

This blog is for my project - Photography and the self. For this project we have been looking at self portraiture, and have done a few tasks, such as taking a photo to represent ourselves, and also a "faceless" task, where we have to take a photo of ourselves, without being recognisable. I enjoyed this task and it helped build my approach to the project, where I have been looking at being able to know a photo of a person without seeing it's truly them. Which is why I picked silhouettes, as you can tell it's a person and maybe even a certain person, but without seeing their true identity.

For the project I will be looking at silhouettes, and how to make them, and looking at a technical side of it. I will also be developing a conceptual side to this.