One Square Mile: Portraits As Documentary

Lesson 3: Taking strangers portraits with a white background.

Some photographers who also use a white background are:

Clay Enos

Clay Enos sets up a full long sheet of white paper on a street and using natural lighting positions himself where the sun isn't direct but is visible. He interacts with his subjects, trying to make them feel comfortable with him photographing them whilst telling them exactly what he's going to do.  Clay Enos' style is to get up close to people using quirky angles.  The photographs are in black and white and they enhance the wrong features on the subjects face. 

James Mollison 

James Mollison uses a white background for photographs in many of his projects. One of his projects is 'Where children sleep'. This project is about children all over the world and how diverse they are for example the little girl is from Tokyo and the little boy is from Brazil and their bedrooms are completely different. James uses portraiture for the children and they are placed next to their bedroom. 

Another project that James Mollison uses a white background for is called 'The Disciples'. This project is about James going to concerts and photographing people who are there that dress up like the person they are going to see and then montaging them together as a series. 

Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon uses a white background for his latest and final project 'Democracy'. He wanted to capture the country in the election for a new president. He attended conventions well beyond his studio in New York, Texas, Reno, San Francisco and many others but cerebral haemorrhage this project was left unfinished. 

We took out on location some white paper and tape/blue tac to stick it to an object or wall. We had to ask people if we could photograph them whilst positioning them inside the white paper but because I am small, people didn't fit into the white square. After a while the wind blew the paper away and I was forced to find a white background in order to continue taking my photographs. Which I think was better than using a piece of paper because I didn't have to worry about fitting them into a square.

I wanted to go for the deadpan photography style but I wanted their personality or their interests to shine through in my photographs such as laughing, listening to music and looking at their mobile phone.

As I was working with someone else not all of the images are mine.

This is how I edited my images:

I re-edited my images because some of the backgrounds weren't white enough and when I used levels I was making sure the subjects faces or features weren't being too overexposed. 
So using the clone tool I managed to fill in the gaps where the white paper ended.

I enjoyed this lesson because even though I was nervous to ask people I got over my fear and ended up asking most people that walked past me. I explained that I was doing a college project and some people turned me down but most people said yes. 

My photographs were not very up close or in people's face because for me I like to take a picture as a whole and then decide later when I'm editing in Photoshop if cropping very close is right or not. I did crop into some photographs quite close and they looked better but some didn't.