Brandon Wood

AO1 – understanding photographers – portrait

Robert Capa

This work is going to be based a portrait image category. Portrait photographers take pictures of people or living things such as animals This will involve using a range of techniques such as rule of three, which means that the main focus of the image is on the cross over of the rule of three lines. There is also leading lines this involves two lines that lead up to a certain focus of the e.g. images such as a straight road leading up to a building. Also you have filled the frame, which is a close-up of a person or for example a close up of a bottle that fills the frame and there is no background.

The photographer that I am using for this work uses different images taken in the war of people and setting e.g. battlegrounds and army bases. The photographer that I use is called Robert Capa he is known especially for his images of the war.

Rule of third has been used in this image, as the rule of thirds line is going across the mans face in the image this is a good example of rule of thirds as it is very clear.

The lighting such as the black and white background shows that these images where taken during the war this being when cameras only used black and white.

You can easily she the focus on this photo as the man at the front is in focus and the background is blurred and out of focus this showing depth of field and that the image Robert capa has taken is focusing on the man at the front.

This image is set during the war this can be seen from the background clothing and also the black and white colouring used for the image.

From this image you can tell it hasn’t been cropped this can be told from the year that the image has been taken in their was no computers to crop images and

Brandon Wood

therefore to get a close up image the camera operator would have to assure that he takes a close up of the main focus point. This being the man standing in the centre of the image the reason that Robert Capa used this image could be due to the emotion on the soldiers face and also the background captured behind him.

The reason for the image is to remember war and the people who fought in the war. The black and white symbolises that it was taken in the 50s this shows that it is an old image.

Second portrait photo

This is going to be a portrait photo a portrait is a photo of a person or a living things e.g. animals, humans and every thing else living this will involve arrange of techniques such as rule of third this means that the main focus of the image will be in line with the rule of third line most common they will be where the lines cross over. There are also leading lines these are two lines that lead up to a building or a person. Another example of this is a road leading up to a building. You also have fill the frame this involves a close up of someone’s face and it’s that close you can’t see any backgrounds just the face of the main focus.

The photographer I’m using for this piece is Robert capa he uses a range of images that he has taken during the war this include images of people saluting, Soldiers showing emotions, even people dying and old images during the war of big city’s and the everyday life of people walking the city streets.

As you can see the main focus of this image is a man that is being shot the photographer has used the rule of three as the main focus is on the point where the lines meet this is very effective when showing who/what is the main focus in the image and really helps to separate the solder from the background.

The black and white background suggests that these images where taken in the time of the war.

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You can tell that the main focus is the man being shot as he is in focus and the sky is out of focus this shows that the photographer wanted to capture a picture of the guy being shot.

The image is set in the war as you can see from the gun that is being used and the clothes that are being worn.

You can see that the image has not been cropped as you would not be able to crop the image in the olden days this would have to be done by setting up the image right and he would not take time taking the image as he is In the line of fire.

To show that Robert Capa is a portrait photographer you can see that in his images he focuses on a specific people and mainly on their face this being a portrait and is seen throughout most of his work the reason that Robert Capa is successful is due to his images being taken during the war and the idea that to take all of these successful images he had to put his life in danger and also the amount of things he had to see to take these images. The images that he had take also capture a lot of emotion due to the men in the images showing that they are scared and so on and these images really capture that. Through the angles and different camera techniques that he uses one of the main ones being rule of three and the idea of zooming right in on the main subject as if to make the image looked cropped to show the main focus.

These images where taken to show the impact that the war had on the men fighting and the emotion. It could also be used to show the bravery and the tragedy of the war and could also be used as a remembrance. These images would be shown in places like museums and put up on display as history.