Alan Sugar

Adobe Photoshop CS6

Hot Keys: 

L for Lasso

Q for Quick Mask

Copy a layer with ctrl, cmd and J

Scale a layer with ctrl, cmd and T

I first lassoed the face of Alan Sugar and then used the feather tool to tidy up the shape of his face that i wanted to cut out. I then cut out the head and dragged it to the other picture which was a pile of sugar. I expanded the size of his face, whilst keeping the Shift button held down to prevent his facial features from becoming disfigured. After this I had to create a number of layers so that I could successfully use more then one layer to move multiple replicas of the face and this is how the image above was achieved.

Fashion Photography Questions

When is an image a portrait and when is it a fashion photograph?

In my opinion I think that an image differs between a portrait and a fashion photograph quite significantly. For example, portraits were used to show emotions and the expressions shown from a particular person, where as fashion photography is when the person is photographed to advertise and sell the products and accessories that they are wearing. However, in some cases fashion photography can be used to show the emotions of a character, similarly to a portrait and there is a fine line between the two. Additionally to this, a fashion photograph is also a way to publicise certain products and this is used by an abundance of fashion companies to propagandize people into buying these items that they sell.

Conversely, in some ways portraits and fashion photographs have similarities as well as differences. As stated before, they can both be used to show feelings or moods and tones when the expressions and use of colors are presented correctly. In some cases, celebrities are used to sell items for companies as they will be pictured on the front of magazines or even on adverts such as Rosie-Huntington Whiteley on the new Marks and Spencer advert. This is an example of when a portrait and a fashion photograph are presented together as people will want to buy the items as someone famous is wearing them and people often idolize these types of people. Additionally, the photos that are used of the celebrities are portraits and so this blends both types of photography.

To what degree should a photo be manipulated to go into a fashion magazine?

In my opinion, I think that photos should not be manipulated at all other then maybe a pinch of make up in fashion photographs. This is because people are so obsessed with having the 'perfect' image and look and this is originally created by the media. Everyone has different perceptions of what is and what isn't pretty or ugly so I think that manipulating pictures of people stereotypes genders such as females showing passive femininity being innocent and skinny. For example, the Dove advert exposed the way in which fashion companies manipulate images to make people seem more beautiful than they actually are, such as extending the neck and enlarging the eyes to accentuate the color. I think that this is ludicrous as fashion photography should be showing true and natural beauty but it is overshadowed by the way that they change the look of people to benefit themselves to make money. If I were one of the models being used to sell products for a company, I would be extremely insulted as the facial features of a subject should not be tampered with and this is just one more reason as to why I think that fashion photographs should not be messed around with. Not a lot of people seem to notice that so many images are edited until the Dove advert exposed it and from then on I think that it is a massively negative thing to do as it portrays people in ways that do not actually reflect them or give a true image of what they are like in order to benefit a particular company to gain the interest and profits that they desire.

Portraiture

Portraiture has been a style of photography for a long time, dating back to many decades ago. At first they were used by the rich and wealthy to show power and authority, for example, kings and queens would often have portraits done of themselves. However, nowadays this technique can be used to show emotions and feelings as well as catching photographs of people by surprise can show unprepared reactions.

Portraits are also used to give people an identity, such as mug shots used for prisoners. The content of portraiture seemed to change following the invention of the camera. Photographers such as Tony Vaccaro would often do portraiture and take images at the 'decisive' moment, catching his subjects by surprise and generating unexpected reactions of people within the photographs. This is just one way in which photographers have developed portraiture and there are a vast number of artists that take portraiture pictures in a different way to how they used to be taken when they were first used.

Another example of a photographer that did portraits is Diane Arbus. She would take photographs of people with extreme circumstances such as deformities and disabilities. She has been described as "the photographer of freaks". Her most famous photographs are that of a boy holding a toy hand grenade and her photo of identical twins in New Jersey. All of her images were in black and white. She began as a writer doing advertisements with her brother Allan for her father's company and then moved onto photography later in her career. Sadly she committed suicide in 1971 after suffering from depression. Despite this, her work to this day remains of intense interest and her life was also the basis of the 2006 movie Fur.

Conversely, another photographer, Larry Clark began doing portraits but he had his own twist on the subject. Clark would take photographs of the life that he lived, this consisting of taking drugs, having underage sex and showing the traditional masculinity of males through violence in the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Some film makers and photographers would say that they were influenced by Larry's work, but others have criticized it for showing graphic scenes of things people would not usually like to see: especially with people that they do not know. In ways, his photography was like a diary as it was his own life in a story of pictures. He then went on to do Filmography with several films, the most famous being Kids in 1995. Similar to his photographs, he always got criticism for showing such explicit and depicting footage of children known to be underage having sex and taking drugs. On the other hand he has been elected as a nominee for various awards in his life, this showing that his work was very famous and different in a way that know other has done the same.