Traditional Regalia

DIARY ENTRY

I have had good experiences with this project. I enjoyed creating ideas for it, and seeing how they would turn out. My ideas I came up with were: the subject carries a ceremonial sword and hang a towel/cloth over the sword (like bullfighters do); The other idea was for the subject to wear a Mexican sombrero, a cloth/poncho around his neck or over his shoulder, and carry a guitar. An idea I shared with someone else was the idea of having a female subject have a cloth around her shoulders and face (Muslim traditional style). After shooting, I worked on them with Photoshop, and have been satisfied by the final prints.

THEORY NOTES

This portrait is of the French King Louis XVI who lived during the 18th century, and who died at the hands of the French Revolution. It is a very good example of how formal portraits with traditional regalia look like. Many other portraits of royalty in the 17th century, 18th century, such as this one are good examples of that look. The pose is also very formal, which is very typical in royal portraits. In those times, people in portraits (not necessarily royalty) did not smile, which made the portrait even more formal than it already looked with the poses. Today, royalty can be seen smiling in pictures, however most portraits of them show them without a smile.


This is a very good example of formal posing in contemporary portraits. Weddings are events where many formal photographs are made, of the wife and husband (such as the one to the left). This has been a widely known and existent tradition in the contemporary world. In a way, it resembles those 17th century/18th century portraits. The people are slightly turned at an angle from the camera/painter, while their heads are facing straight at the camera/painter. Again, the subjects are not smiling, they keep a straight, formal facial expression, as well as keeping their backs straight (part of keeping a formal pose).

IMAGE BANK

Bob Langrish-

A British internationally known equestrian (horse) photographer. He has over 37 years of experience in equestrian photography, and has a library of photographs containing over 400,000 images, which he adds 20,000 to every year. He takes pictures for the top equestrian magazines which are located in 20 countries. He has taken pictures of horses at 6 Olympic Games, and travels more than 400, 000 miles each four years to take pictures for calendars and magazines. All the photography skills Langrish knows has been taught to him by himself. The relevance to our project is that in some of his images he added Arab traditional costume to a person who poses with an Arab horse.

This is a picture taken by Bob Langrish of an Arab horse next to a person dressed in traditional Arab clothing.

Lauren Fitzgerald-

She is an American portrait photographer. She is specialized in children photography,

and uses studio lighting as well as natural lighting. She has won awards, and her interest in

photography and writing has led her to getting a degree in Journalism at the Philip Merrill

College of Photography at the University of Maryland. her style is different from other

portrait photographers as she does not tend to get the subjects in a pose and instruct them,

she just takes a photo without instructing them. This gives the pictures a more natural look

than most other portraits. The relevance to this project is shown through some of the images

taken of babies dressed in traditional clothing of their country of origin.

This is a picture taken by Lauren Fitzgerald of a baby

with Chinese origin dressed in Chinese traditional

clothing.

Bipinchandra-

An Indian photographer working in the UK. She has a wide variety of things she takes pictures of revolving around Indian culture, and some non-Indian things as well. Her portfolio includes an abstract section, a section of hand photographs, buildings, interiors, food, signs, people, and a section on religious belief as well. Her relevance to our project is high, as many of her photos are of Indian peoples in cities such as Calcutta, new Delhi, Varanasa, and many of these pictures show Indians in their traditional clothing.

This is an image taken by Bipinchandra of a Rajasthani woman

in New Delhi wearing traditional clothing.

IMAGE BANK+

William Hogarth-

Born in 1697 and died in 1764. He was a London-based cartoonist and engraver. During his years of work, he was well known for his satires of society and politicians. He started off as an apprentice of silverplate engraving with master engraver Ellis Gamble. After finishing his apprenticeship, he met his work's inspiration, artist Sir James Thornhill. He decided to go to Thornhill's free art classes, and eventually became friends with him and married his daughter, Jane. Horgarth worked for print sellers, and published his own work as well. Some of the famous works he published were The Harlot's Progress and the series The Rake's Progress. In his works, he made fun of society, including immorality, drunkeness, and so on. Close to his death, he made anti-war works, which made him enemies in the Parliament. However, he continued working on it nevertheless until his death.


A painting of Mary Edwards by William Hogarth
showing a formal pose related our project.

Annie Leibovitz-

American photographer born in 1949. She is well known for her commercial photography. She began by studying art at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1967 to 1970. After that, she began working with the rock magazine Rolling Stone as a staff photographer. Within two years, at the age of 23, she was promoted to chief photographer. She was the one who took the photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono some hours before the death of John Lennon. In 1983, Leibovitz left Rolling Stone and started working for the entertainment magazine Vanity Fair. While working for them, she made many good portraits of celebrities, ranging from presidents to well known actors to beginning teenage celebrities. known Vanity Fair cover photographs made by Leibovitz include a preganant Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg half-submerged in a bathtub of milk. Later in the 1980s, Leibovitz began working on advertising campaings. A very well known advertising campaign she worked on was the American Express "Membership" campaign, which featured celebrities such as Elmore Leonard, Tom Selleck, and Luciano Pavarotti, which Leibovitz won a Clio Award for in 1987. In 1996, she was chosen to be the official photographer for Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.


Photo of Nicole Kidman taken by Annie Leibovitz. It is relevant to our project because of the formal pose involved (straight back is the major contributor to the formality of the photo).

PRINTING COMPOSITIONS

This is my first print. The subject is Fabrizio, and he is carrying a ceremonial sword with a towel hanging over it. It's meant to represent Spain (the subject carrying a bullfighter's sword and cloth). When this image was passed through Photoshop, I made the towel look more like a cloth a bullfighter would have, and I got a rather satisfying result. I couldn't find a bullfighter costume to make the picture even more authentic, however I made sure the main focus in the image was what he had in his hand by showing only half of Fabrizio's body, and having the towel and sword be closer to the middle than Fabrizio's torso.

For this image I had to use myself as the subject, since we couldn't find Mr. Jimenez to do the part. For this picture I used my guitar, a sombrero I had in my house, and my bathroom floor mat (the same one I used for the bullfighter style print). This one looks authentic except for the jeans, so it is definitely the second most authentic out of the three behind the Muslim-style print. I used Photoshop to erase part of a Jimi Hendrix symbol that was on my shirt.







I didn't come up with this idea. I was thinking about it, but then I saw someone else already used it. So I shared the idea with them. This is probably the most authentic print out of all three prints. The subject is wearing a scarf, but since the photo is taken from the shoulder up, it looks like the subject (Barbara) is wearing a full body cloth. The only Photoshopping I did for this print was to make the background uniform in color, and to make a little uncovered area on the shoulder black.








This is the cartoon version of my third, where I used Photoshop to whiten the eyes and make the face one single color. I thought this version was pretty good, it gives it a little more of the dramatic look.