I chose to use my older Brother, Andrew, as my model for this exercise, and decided that the series of images would be a documentation – in chronological order – of a specific day in his life. As a musician, I have always wondered what my brother’s daily routine consists of on the day of a gig. I understood that this would vary depending on where the gig was and the enormity of it, but was interested to witness for the first time what he actually did, prior to his performance.
After researching both Harry Callahan and Julian Germain’s work, I felt inspired to use a combination of their photographic methods and believed by doing so, my series of images would perhaps be visually more interesting. I wanted to capture images of my brother in two ways. Firstly, in posed positions, where I would purposely place him in specific spots and direct him in regards to his actions, before taking the shot. And secondly, in situations where my brother was aware of my presence but unaware of me taking photographs of him. In both instances, there were times my brother was looking directly at the camera and times where he would be acting more ‘natural’, so to speak. The purpose of me implementing both Callahan and Germain’s practices’ to this exercise was to differentiate between what was a posed portrait and not – according to the viewer. However, with a couple of the portraits, the viewer should be able to easily tell which method had been adopted for that specific shot, though may find it harder with the remaining few. Deciding on how to present my images – colour or monochrome – was a difficult decision, as Germain tends to use colour, and Callahan, monochrome. In the end, I felt the images presented better in monochrome, mainly due to the fact that the majority of images showed a lot of contrast.
Overall, I’m very happy with the portraits’ I have produced and think the series works well together. I think it shows, in this situation anyway, that my brother is very calm and almost unfazed by performing live and depicts the gradual progression of preparation to performance.
Iain Barbour - BA (Hons) Photography 