What’s the difference between a common snapshot and a portrait? What does it take to transform a portrait into fine art? Some say that a portrait has to be oriented vertical. Others believe that the subject must look straight to the viewer or that the photo must be black and white. All these are far from being reliable criteria for judging the artistic value of a portrait.
Snapshots are candid photos taken randomly without any intent of making art. There is no or very little planning, no attention to lighting and composition. Snapshots are good for capturing everyday moments and sometimes a portrait make come out by accident. But this happens very seldom and is rather an exception. Portraits generally have a lot of creative work behind. For the artist, this work begins at the first contact with his customer. This can happen over the phone, e-mail or face-to-face. Meeting the customer in person if possible is the best way to go. This allows you to study his/behavior, gestures, posture, learn about his/her personality, likes and dislikes etc. All this information will help you in planning the photo so that it says something about the subject. It is also important to have some sort of chemistry or at least be able to work together. However, it is very common that the first face-to-face meeting takes place at the moment of the photo. While this is not optimal, it can be done. After all, not all portraits have to be works of art. Picturing the person realistically in his/her best pose is a portrait.
Good portraits are achieved by paying attention to every element including camera technique, lighting and posing. It is also important that it reflects the personality of the person being photographed. This is not typically achieved in chain store photo studios. It is much better to schedule a couple of interviews to find out more about the person. Then you can build on the conceptions for the portrait, evoking personality traits. You should portray the person in such a way as to allow the viewer to feel something about what that person is like just by looking at the photo. If you’re including more people, like families or group, it is important that the photo reflects the relationships between them.
Good portraying also requires post-production or finishing work. Before digital photography, retouching used to be made on the negatives and prints and there were limited changes you could make. Complicated chemical processes were used to improve the photos. Nowadays, everything from dodging to burning, blurring and highlighting is done on the PC using photo editing software. While it is certainly much easier than it used to, it still requires artistic vision, planning and expertise, as well as work. A photographer spends about 15-30 minutes on a photo featuring one or two persons before it is ready for print. The time is longer if you have more people in the photograph or you need to make a collage of several images.
All in all, the ingredients of a great portrait include getting to know the subject (usually through pre-interviews), thorough planning, mixing the information you have on the subject with your own artistic vision, good lighting and camera technique and guiding the subject into poses to portray his/her personality. You also need cooperation from the subject.
By: Alex Don
Posts Tagged ‘Works Of Art’
Marilyn Monroe Artwork by Andy Warhol
February 7th, 2010
Andrew Warhola (known as Andy Warhol) painted a variety of paintings of the actress Marilyn Monroe after she committed suicide in 1962. Warhol made it his goal to mass-produce his art by using a method called silk screen. This method involves enlarging and transferring a photo on to silk. A variety of colors are printed on to a screen using a rubber squeegee.
For his paintings of Marilyn Monroe, Warhol used a photograph by Gene Korman from a publicity shoot for the film, Niagara. Andy Warhol painted Marilyn Monroe’s paintings with one color: green, blue, lemon yellow turquoise. Next he silk screened her face on top. In this way, he created different styles and depicted many different colors. In the paintings, she was either by herself, multiplied in a grid or doubled. After four months, Andy Warhol’s paintings were complete. Andy Warhol issued a portfolio of his Marilyn Monroe paintings in 1967.
Andy Warhol interest in fame inspired him to make his Marilyn Monroe paintings. Warhol admired Marilyn Monroe as a star. He was fascinated by her beauty and thought of her as a role model. In his art work, he portrayed Monroe as not only beautiful, but also dark and mysterious. Warhol invented the phrase, “fifteen minutes of fame” which means a celebrity such as Monroe catches the public’s attention for a short lived period of time. Then, the media moves on to other celebrities who fascinate the world.
Andy Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology with a major in pictorial design. After graduating, he started his career as a commercial illustrator. After failed attempts at exhibiting his work in the 1960s, Warhol decided to incorporate pop culture into his works of art. Known as pop art, Warhol used every day objects as subjects for his paintings. He became famous as “Pope of Pop” for his paintings. In addition to Marilyn Monroe, Warhol painted other celebrities in “The Factory”, Andy Warhol’s studio in New York.
Those interested in Andy Warhol’s artwork and paintings of Marilyn Monroe can view them at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Andy Warhol Museum is one of the biggest museums featuring only one artist in the world. The museum features more than four thousand works of art by Warhol. His works of art include paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, films and videos. In addition to Warhol’s artwork, visitors can find information on Andy Warhol’s life.
By: Mark Traston
