Alison Russell

Alison learned how to cut silhouette portraits from her grandmother, Mary-Lou Russell (1928-2009) an established painter and silhouette artist herself for more than 50 years. Alison cut her first silhouette aged eight. She keenly observed her grandmother's expert technique and was encouraged to develop the skill by practising on friends and family.

After gaining her Bachelor of Arts Degree in illustration Alison began to carve out a career as a freelance silhouette artist cutting at all kinds of events from weddings, anniversaries and birthday parties to charity balls, trade fairs, festivals and corporate functions.

Info from: www.alison-russell.co.uk

Evaluation

Photography And The Self

This project was the 2nd part of the themed projects, as before we had the Vision Machine one. This one was named Photography and the Self. For this project, we looked at self portraiture, and anything relevant to us. We didn't have to do self portraiture, but I decided to focus on it a bit in my work, as I've always liked portraiture and decided to take my own approach to it. Thinking this, I decided to use silhouettes. I also wanted the final image to be of myself as I went with the title "photography and the self".

I used silhouettes but I didn't want to do the conventional silhouettes, which are cut out portraits of people. I wanted to do full body, and action silhouettes like skateboarding ones. The idea of this came to me when I was shooting some skateboarding in sunsets, and was creating silhouette photos. I wanted to focus on it and learn the technical side of it as I like to focus on the techniques of photographs.

The reason I wanted to shoot action silhouettes is because the common silhouettes are boring in my opinion, and not actually as fun to look at, where as if you had a skateboarding silhouette or something else with something happening in the photo, you are more interested and the photo is much more eye catching.

I chose silhouettes because I like the idea of knowing what the subject is, without actually seeing it. As with a silhouette, you see the subject, and the outline, and you may or may not know what it is, but there is no detail telling you what it is. Such as with a skateboarding silhouette, you'll see the skater, but not know if it's a boy or girl, or anything about the person, or who it is. But you know it's a person skateboarding. So I like the fact it's a sort of hidden identity.

Pros: The good things about this project is I learnt alot about silhouettes, and the technique of it. I also learnt how to think conceptually about the project and why I liked doing the photos. I loved taking some of the photos I took, and think some came out really well. I also learnt some new techniques such as using smoke infront of the light to bounce it off.

Cons: I had alot of bad things happen with this project, one of the main ones was weather. Because I wanted to use smoke as it was the best way (other than sunset) to cast the silhouette, the wind kept messing up the photographs, especially my final image. Also because of the rain I couldn't go out to shoot alot so couldn't do the action silhouettes. Also because I used car lights as my final photo, where I hadn't run my car properly and the weather was bad etc, the battery died on me the next day, and I had to sort that out later on.

Conclusion: Although I had a few bad points I did have fun doing the project, and enjoyed it alot. I took some good photos that I like, but would change alot of things about it. If I had more time I would definitely do this project again, or even just if it was better weather, I could of got much more successful results, and a much cleaner final image. I do like the photo, I just don't like the way that the smoke has been blown infront of me and cut off a piece of my board. Also my board got soaking wet in the process as it was wet on the floor. I love silhouettes and will continue to take the photos, and experiment more with the smoke and lights. Especially through out summer where there isn't as much wind. I did enjoy the project and learnt alot, but would definitely change a few things.

Final Image

This is the final photo I produced for this project. I used car lights as the light source and a smoke pellet infront of it. It wasn't exactly the photo I wanted, but i had to make do with it. The original plan was to go to the skatepark and produce a much better photo, but due to wind and bad weather it wouldn't of worked. I had the idea to do the photo in my alleyway/drive because the two fences would block the wind, and then use my car lights for the light source because of the constant light so my brother could shoot the photo as a multishot. The fences didn't block the wind as much as I thought it would, which is why the wind blew the smoke infront of me, which is why the silhouette hasn't come out as well as it could of. I do like this photo though as it worked well, but I may reshoot this on a summer day with less wind and maybe a different trick etc. but for now this was my favourite shot.

Silhouette

Dog.

Side portrait silhouette of my dog.

Black And White

Even though I was shooting using the sunset to cast the silhouette, which is very colorful, I tried one in black and white to see the contrast of it against the sky. I really liked the result of this photo.

Sunset Tree

Here's a few silhouettes of a tree I took last night, as it was a very colorful and bright sunset, I decided to shoot, and there isn't a great range of things to shoot in my garden, and I was just playing with settings whilst shooting. 

Skateboard Silhouettes

A quick couple of silhouettes that I took at the skatepark of my brother using the sun for the silhouette lighting

Window View

A silhouette of my window frame and my blinds.

Conceptual Thinking

This photo is a quick brainstorm of my conceptual ideas about silhouettes, by doing this I have figured out why I like silhouettes and taking them.

Why I like to take them is because I like the way you can hide a subjects details yet still have an idea of what it is or who it is. I also like how when you see a silhouette, most of the time people pose, by doing an action such as jumping. This is where skateboarding comes in, as i love to mix skateboarding with silhouettes as you can see the action happening, but not see exactly what it is, yet you still know it is skateboarding. I like this sense of not knowing. I also enjoy the technical side to it as I am a very technical person, i like to take the photo myself, and learn how to create the silhouette, by casting the light behind the subject rather than the traditional infront.

This is why I enjoy silhouette photography.

Smoke Pellet Silhouettes

Here's my first attempt of silhouettes with the smoke pellets. Will be doing loads more and much better ones too.

Incense Sticks

Here's a couple of silhouettes I tried doing using smoke from incense sticks to bounce the flash. This worked the best so far, I had to use about 6 incense sticks to get enough smoke, but it did work very well. Which is why I will be using smoke as my main way of producing the silhouettes. 

Flash Silhouettes

These silhouettes were done without placing anything infront of the flash/behind the subject. Just the objects infront of the flash. The one of my beanie was really weird, as it bounced off of the beanie. The colour also bounced off, creating a red coloured flash which looked pretty cool. But wasn't the effect I wanted.

Screen Silhouette Tests

Here's the test photos I tried with the sheet/paper behind the subject and infront of the flash, worked ok but these took ages to get right. And I would of liked it to be alot better.

Smoke Or Screen?

As all of the most sucessful silhouettes have been done using sunset and the sun as the light source behind the subject, but I can't always use the sunset as it means I would have to travel every evening to somewhere good enough to shoot the silhouettes. Luckily the sun has been out at the moment so I have been doing quite alot of sunset silhouettes. So I have been looking at indoor techniques and figuring out my own way of producing silhouettes, using flash behind the subject. The one problem with this, is that if you use flash on it's own, it has nothing to bounce off and doesn't work too well, or will only work with smaller objects. I will be posting my results of this soon. I then realised I needed something for the light to bounce off, so I tried using paper to spread it a bit more, and that did work better but still not as well, and I couldn't get the paper to stay up. I was thinking how to make a good silhouette, and with a big background to shoot with, such as a big sheet or something, but with the flash to bounce off enough to light a full body. I was thinking about it and talked to my mate about it. I then realised smoke would make the flash bounce off widely and probably would work really well. I then tried this with incense sticks, and some small objects and it worked really well. I then thought about how I could produce a smoke cloud big enough to get a full body silhouette, without starting a big fire or doing anything illegal. I looked around and bought some smoke pellets, that are used for testing chimneys. I had a test play with these, but the wind ruined it a bit, so I'm going to have another play with this soon and try and get my final images out of it, as I think if I practice enough I can get a really good shot with them. And have some ideas in my head of how to do this.

Dog Silhouette

Quick silhouette shot of my dog, had to slightly change the contrast as it was still really bright. But didn't want to do it too much.