Faceless Portraits

I chose to do the faceless portrait assignment as opposed to the subway option. I wanted to involve the wife and I was also nervous about taking photos in public. However, the night I was going to shoot faceless portraits of my wife at home, I decided I needed to challenge myself, so we went to take pictures at the grocery store instead! There's a sign at the entrance of the Gowanus Pathmark that say cameras aren't allowed in the store without prior permission from the manager, so I was going to sneak in our little camera instead of the Nikon SLR camera I borrowed from work. But again I was challenging myself, so I took the SLR. No one paid me any attention once we were there, so while I'm glad I didn't get kicked out of our local grocery store permanently, it was sort of anti climatic.

The photo shoot itself gave me a greater appreciation for photographers. Trying to think about lighting and composition is much harder than I thought it would be, especially when you don't have full controll of the lighting. However, thinking about Zettl's composition possibilities gave me some fun ideas for photos. Below are some of the several photos I took and descriptions of some of the lighting and composition elements.

Our trip to the grocery store began with the wife driving us there. (Yes, even though we only live 4 blocks from the grocery we drive there... it beats pushing a granny cart, and what else are you going to do with a car in brooklyn?) In the parking lot we watched a guy push a shopping cart into another car's door and then drive away. This is the wife watching the car drive away. You can see that the light is coming from an above street lamp. This outer orientation lighting helps us know it's night. There is a slow falloff of light on the parking lot. The wife is looking away causing a continuing Index Vector.


Once inside, we grab the circular and sit in the Dunkin Donuts to see what on sale. Here is a picture of the wife shot through the shopping cart. The lines of plastic that make up the cart are graphic vectors though they do not point in a single direction so they have a low directional magnitude.



Once we leave DD (we didn't get any donuts or coffee... just used their space) we head to the produce section. You can see in these photos how the bright lights of Pathmark created Flat Lighting. You can also see how the attached shadows of the apples and especially the pears give us definition of their shapes. The apples in the first photo are an example of Center Object Composition and the pears in the second photo show a Magnetism of Frame composition with the pull being the Top and Left side. Also, our Psychological Closure will cause us to see the apples as a square and the pears as a triangle. It's our way of mentally putting the objects in a manageable pattern.

Using my wifes hand as a reference we are able to see what size these peppers are. Also, their attached shadows define their shape and the glare of the lights cause lots of little fast falloffs.

I didn't know they still made Count Chocula! The cast shadows of the cart behind the wife helps show that it is sitting on the ground. This composition shows us an example of Figure and Ground.

Here the shelves of spices are graphic vectors pointing in one direction.




Here are two examples of a Tilted Frame Composition. In the first photo the tilt makes the composition more dynamic adding energy to the perspective of the shelves. In the second photo as the wife's leg is off the ground the tilt adds stress to the composition. With her leg up, it looks like she is leaning in to balance herself.

In this centered object photo, we have Inner Orientation: Dramatic Lighting. The light source is in the photo (the freezer) and helps give emotion to the scene.
Clearly the wife is sad that there is no ice cream in the freezer!

In this photo we have an example of Chiaroscuro lighting. The lighting puts focus on my wife with her hands to her head. I've just told her she has to load the trunk herself while I keep taking pictures, and the stress was too much for her. The attached shadow on her arm (whith its fast falloff lighting) shows the roundness. The Outer Orientation of the lighting reminds us it is night time.

Thank you for coming on our weekly shopping trip. There are more pictures if you want to see them... some include meat.