Trine Sondergaard
Studio Portrait Lighting Research
Guldnakke
Trine's project 'Guldnakke' focuses on 1800s Danish bonnets, and their status symbol. Highly specialised needlewomen would make these bonnets, that Trine found in a local museum, and this type of textiles would be reserved for royalty. The images created are beautifully painterly, perhaps due to the use of film when taking these images, capturing the gold bonnets in a subtle light, with neutral backgrounds to allow the bright colours and glittering of the needlework and threads to show prominently.
Strude
Trine focuses on another garment found in a local museum within this project. A Strude is a garment worm by women in the past to protect their faces from the weather. Here she focuses on the idea that portraiture can 'capture the soul', whether this myth is really true. She positioned her models so there gaze was not direct, as this is often how a traditional portrait is taken, and how the 'soul' can really be seen, through the subjects eyes and expression. Within her images, not only does the composition stop you from seeing the full face of each model, but the Strude itself covers part of the lower face and head, to cover many distinguishable features that traditionally make a portrait capture ones identity. These images are very stripped down, beautifully simplistic, with natural light and a very neutral background, allowing for the model to stand out in full focus.
Both of these projects by Sondergaard really inspire my creative work in terms of both theoretical concept and visual composition. Guldnakke and Strude both focus on objects that women use to construct their looks, both very materialistically, covering themselves with objects that give them status and link them to a culture and therefore to an identity. They are both symbols of status and culture and allow women to construct their looks using materialistic objects for personal benefits. However, my main inspiration from Sondergaard's work is the visual composition. As soon as I saw her images, I knew I wanted to look into shooting in this visual style, mimicking the natural light in the studio. This was due to the fact that the neutral background colour allowed the subjects to stand out from the background, and in my work would allow the hair to be obviously the main focus of my images. The simplistic lighting (obviously natural for her images) will be great to mimic in the studio, using one light for the background, defused with a soft box to create the beautiful painterly effect, and one light with a soft beauty disk honeycomb filter on the face so the model lights up from the background. Sondergaards lighting and colour choice have inspired my next shoot, the softness allows the aesthetic painterly effect, which makes the models and their hair look beautiful, and advertising the beauty of hair construction, and the lighting is much less harsh than my previous shoots, using chiaroscuro lighting, which means that the images will look a little flatter but much more pleasing to the key and the hair will be able to be seen much more clearly.
In terms of positioning and composition of the actual images, Sondergaard was trying to figure out whether the myth that is portraiture photography can capture ones identity, ones soul, was true or not. The way she directed her models to look away form the camera, to stop the gaze connecting with the audiences, means that we as viewers have less of an idea who we are looking at, because we don't see as many distinguishable features. In terms of my work, I've been inspired by this composition and will ask my models to look off to the side of the camera, mainly so I can get a shot of the hair with part from front. back and side, allowing me to capture as much of the hairstyle as possible. But this idea of a portrait capturing someones personality allows intrigues me and has done with previous projects, as I still believe that photography is one persons interpretation of reality rather than reality itself, and in relation to my project now, I'm trying to capture how people wear their hair, and then how they CONSTRUCT their identity, rather than capture that identity itself, and so therefore I don't see any harm in directing the models gaze away from the camera and away from the audience as an experiment.
In terms of positioning and composition of the actual images, Sondergaard was trying to figure out whether the myth that is portraiture photography can capture ones identity, ones soul, was true or not. The way she directed her models to look away form the camera, to stop the gaze connecting with the audiences, means that we as viewers have less of an idea who we are looking at, because we don't see as many distinguishable features. In terms of my work, I've been inspired by this composition and will ask my models to look off to the side of the camera, mainly so I can get a shot of the hair with part from front. back and side, allowing me to capture as much of the hairstyle as possible. But this idea of a portrait capturing someones personality allows intrigues me and has done with previous projects, as I still believe that photography is one persons interpretation of reality rather than reality itself, and in relation to my project now, I'm trying to capture how people wear their hair, and then how they CONSTRUCT their identity, rather than capture that identity itself, and so therefore I don't see any harm in directing the models gaze away from the camera and away from the audience as an experiment.