Learn: ART 256 + Composition & Creativity in Photography

04: Technical Tips / Portraits

Photoshop Basics for Toning & Touching Up Scans

Document Size vs. Target Size

When scanning your film (120 or 35mm sizes) be sure to distinguish between your document size and the target size.

• Document Size: Is the size of the area on the scanner that is being scanned. This size is determined by the size of your selection square in the Preview window.

• Target Size: This size determines how big the image will be scanned into Photoshop. For class requirements, this size should be at least 8” on the shortest side, at 360 ppi. The image size should be bigger than your final size, to accommodate any cropping that may be done.

Image Rotation

To rotate your image after it is scanned, or to flip the image horizontally, (if the negative was laid on the scanner upside down): Image>Rotate Canvas

The Crop Tool

Use the crop tool to trim away any area along the edges of your image. For class assignments, all images are required to be full frame. (Uncropped.) When using the crop tool, be sure that all presets in the Options bar are cleared. This will allow you to crop your image without resizing or changing the resolution.

The Clone Stamp Tool

Often when images are scanned on a flatbed scanner, small dust specs will appear in the image as small white markings. These need to be removed using the Clone Stamp Tool. To use select an area near the dust spot that can bu used to cover up the spot. Option + Click on the area to sample the pixels. The paint the sampled area onto the dust spot. When used delicately at very small brush sizes, the tool will remove all of your dust from the scan.

Level & Curves Adjustments

To correct and adjust the exposure of your scan, use either the Levels or the Curves Adjustment: Image>Adjustments>

Read: The Difference between Curves & Levels

Portrait Photography

Of all reasons and motivations to make photographs, taking pictures of people has always been the most popluar. Portrait photography was immedeatly made into the first commercially viable means of using a camera, and was paramount in the early years of photography and it’s developing industry; and still drives photography in both commercial and artistic aspects today.

Daguerreotype, circa 1850s

Portrait photography flourished among the gentry class in the decades immedialty following the birth of Nicéphore Niépce’s camera 1826. Portait photography began to steal the market of portriat painting, which until the mid 1800’s was a luxury available on the wealthy. With the camera’s “immediate” image, (relative to a sitting for a portrait painting: exposure times lasted as long as 30 seconds, hence the stoic and rigid postures and expressions in early portraits) and is cheaper cost, portraits became more accessible to the upper middle class of France and to a lesser extent in England ( where Louis Daguerre, inventor of the era’s most popular process, the Daguerreotype, controlled the practice with a patent). Soon after, portrait photography became a vialbe profession in America during the Industrial Revolution.

Contemporary Portraiture

Taking Photographs of people has been intrepreted and reinvented through the 20th century. So too has it’s uses. Portrait Photography has always had commercial value, but has also found strong and impactful use in fashion, journalistic, social and historical documentary, and fine art contexts.

Photographer Focus: Mary Ellen Mark

Born, March 20, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Damm Family in Their Car, Los Angeles, CA, 1987. By: Mary Ellen Mark

“Social documentary has always been the major part of my photography. I take pictures of people and most of the people I photograph are not famous.

Working commercially for magazines, film companies and advertising agencies enables me to support myself and my personal work. Recently more than ever, assignments from the magazines are about taking portraits of the famous. Over the years I’ve learned how hard it is to make a great portrait of a well-known person. By great, I mean a photograph that can transcend the familiarity of someone’s renowned face. A portrait of a person (famous or not famous) works if it tells me something very personal and insightful about the subject. This, of course, must be accompanied by beautiful light and perfect graphics. A really powerful portrait can uncover secrets about a person.

The trend in today’s celebrity photography is for the photographer to be totally conceptual. This is often easier for the famous subject because well known people are more cautious and less willing to expose their real personalities. It’s far less revealing to hide behind someone else’s theatrical fantasy. The result is a formula that can be graphic and slick but seldom gives any insight into the real personality of the celebrity. At the end of the week or month the magazine is thrown away and the portrait is forgotten.

People who are not known are much different to photograph. They’re not used to the camera. They trust more and give more. You can look into their souls and reveal their secrets. It is difficult but definitely possible to make powerful and honest images of the famous.

Editing my photographs for this book was an interesting experience. I have collected some of my portraits of the celebrated and paired them with my portraits of ordinary people. I’m trying to perceive a relationship between photographs of the famous and the not famous. I’m also comparing pictures to see if images of the famed can be as candid and as lasting as images of the “unfamed” and if so, which ones and why so. I’m looking for answers and trying to learn.

Photography continues to fascinate me. I’m sure that I’ll take pictures for the rest of my life. Hopefully I’ll continue to grow as a photographer and make stronger and stronger photographs of the famous as well as the not famous.”

Mary Ellen Mark
Monday May 29,1995
New York City

-From the introduction of Mary Ellen Mark’s: Portraits
(1995, Motta Fotografia, Italy.)

OTHER LINKS
Salon.com Article, March 2000. Article, March 2000.
University School of Journalism & Communication

Class Reading: Chapter #6

Assignment: The Portrait Photo-assignment #3 [.pdf]

Last Updated 16 September 2006 by Todd Roeth

Commenting is closed for this article.

| 02: History of the Camera →