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Liu Zeng was born in Wuqiang County, Hubei Province, China in 1969 and graduated from the Beijing Technology Institute in 1991. From 1991 to 1997, Zheng worked as a photojournalist at one of China’s most prominent newspapers. As he traveled throughout China from 1994 to 2001 for his series The Chinese, Zheng documented a society struggling with the contradictions between traditional culture and modernization and presented a broad cross-section of society including the wealthy; the poor; transsexuals; coal miners; opera performers; and museum wax figures. In The Chinese, Zheng photographed archetypical Chinese in contemporary incarnations and often surprising situations; staged tableaux exist alongside documentary images. According to the photographer, the self-imposed project was grueling and disheartening. After The Chinese he created more fictive figural representations, as evidenced by the series Dream Shock. Again both staged and spontaneous images coexist but this time the work, mainly nude portraits, explores the dream of what China could be and the shock of what it has become.
His photographs are held in collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Mary O'Donnell Hulme

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Photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia (American, b.1951) is acclaimed for his evocative photographs of figures and street scenes, which combine both documentary and conceptual elements of photography. Born in Hartford, CT, he studied photography at the University of Hartford in the 1970s, and later at Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and at Yale University. At Yale, diCorcia photographed friends and family in shots that appear completely candid, but in actuality involved hours of staging and elaborate lighting techniques to blur the lines between the everyday and the fabricated. In addition to pursuing his own work, diCorcia worked as a commercial photographer throughout the 1980s, creating spreads for publications including Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, and Harper’s Bazaar.
Between 1990 and 1992, he spent his time in Los Angeles, working on his Hollywood series, in which the artist paid prostitutes, hustlers, and drug addicts to pose for him in his characteristically staged, orchestrated images, often with ephemeral lighting; diCorcia titled each work with the name of his subject, as well as how much he paid them to sit for the photograph. In later works, he photographed crowds on the streets of cities, from New York and Paris to Tokyo, placing flashbulbs at several places around a site and then waiting for the ideal moment to capture a photograph of an unknowing group, again mixing artificiality and theatricality with the spontaneous and candid.

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'Zheng became interested in the narrative and romantic potential of photography during his early career as a photojournalist for the Chinese newspaper The Workers’ Daily.'-https://www.artsy.net/artist/liu-zheng
Liu Zheng's style of photography is influenced by Diane Arbus and August Sander, later on Liu Zheng quit his job and traveled around China for eight years to take portraits of Archetypical Figures such as convicts, Peking Opera performers, monks and corpses.

As Liu Zheng traveled throughout China from 1994 to 2001, he made his best known work called "The Chinese" where Zheng documented 'a society struggling with the contradictions between traditional culture and modernization and presented a broad cross-section of society including the wealthy; the poor; transsexuals; coal miners; opera performers; and museum wax figures. In The Chinese, Zheng photographed archetypical Chinese in contemporary incarnations and often surprising situations; staged tableaux exist alongside documentary images.' - https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/liu-zheng?all/all/all/all/0

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Liu Zheng's work particularly four beauties has a theatrical effect to it, because you can barely see shadows in the picture, this series also has a very dramatic mood to it which is caused by the combination of the lighting and the emotion of the models that he used. He used a black backdrop to which creates a high contrast to the light resulting to see every bit of detail in the picture which is very interesting.

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Shizuka Yokomizo (横溝 静, born 1966 in Tokyo, Japan) is a Japanese photographer and currently based in London. Yokomizo began her college career studying philosophy at Chuo University before earning her Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography at London's Chelsea College of Arts. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree at Goldsmiths, University of London. For her "Dear Stranger" series, Yokomizo sent subjects an anonymous letter proposing that they stand in front of a window in their home at a specified date and time so she can photograph them. If they choose to participate, Yokomizo set up a tripod and camera outside their home to photograph them.The pictures show various people posing warily

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BOKEH CAMERA CONTROLS

*Shutter Speed
- Depends on what kind of photograph you want, but if you like portraits and stills you can use anything not less than 1/60 of a second because as you go lower than that your pictures will create blur.

*Aperture
- To achieve Bokeh, you will need to use  your lowest f-number or the biggest aperture your lens allows you i.e f1.2 - f5.6 will work.

*ISO
- ISO depends on the available lighting conditions in situation.

*Equipment
- If you want to be creative, you can use cut-outs or stencils that will fit in your lens to create very nice light shapes out of the bokeh you created, you may also use a tripod if you want to.

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The Four Beauties  are four ancient Chinese women, renowned for their beauty. The scarcity of historical records concerning them meant that much of what is known of them today has been greatly embellished by legend. They gained their reputation from the influence they exercised over kings and emperors and, consequently, the way their actions impacted Chinese history. Three of the Four Beauties brought kingdoms to their knees and their lives ended in tragedy

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Cindy Sherman is a white female Photographer and film director born in New Jersey 1954, she is famous for her portraitures which she takes photos and models herself. The themes of her Photographs are about; race, gender, horror, sex dolls, and sexual violence. All the elements like make-up, hair and costumes are by herself, her most known works are Film Stills, Bus Riders, Clown, Disaster/Fairy tales and Historical – Master Painter. Cindy Sherman is a contemporary master of socially critical photography. She is a key figure of the "Pictures Generation," a loose circle of American artists who came to artistic maturity and critical recognition during the early 1980s, a period notable for the rapid and widespread proliferation of mass media imagery. At first painting in a super-realist style in art school during the aftermath of American Feminism, Sherman turned to photography toward the end of the 1970s in order to explore a wide range of common female social roles, or personas. Sherman sought to call into question the seductive and often oppressive influence of mass-media over our individual and collective identities. Turning the camera on herself in a game of extended role playing of fantasy Hollywood, fashion, mass advertising, and "girl-next-door" roles and poses, Sherman ultimately called her audience's attention to the powerful machinery and make-up that lay behind the countless images circulating in an incessantly public, "plugged in" culture. Sexual desire and domination, the fashioning of self identity as mass deception, these are among the unsettling subjects lying behind Sherman's extensive series of self-portraiture in various guises. Sherman's work is central in the era of intense consumerism and image proliferation at the close of the 20th century.

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Xi Shi (c. 7th to 6th century BC, Spring and Autumn period), said to be so entrancingly beautiful that fish would forget how to swim and sink below the surface upon seeing her reflection in the water. Xi Shi's hometown is Zhuji, Zhejiang Province. Zhuji was the capital of Ancient Yue Kingdom. Gou Jian, the King of Yue Kingdom, endured ten years hardship (sleeping on brushwood and tasting the gall) to accomplish his ambition to beat Fu Chai, the King of Wu Kingdom. Xi Shi was part of his plan. Despite that Xi Shi had Fan Li as the man of her dreams, Gou Jian sent Xi Shi as a gift to Fu Chai who was dazzled by her beauty and fell in love with her. Fu Chai lost his fighting will after he met Xi Shi but spending his time entertaining with Xi Shi. Finally, Gou Jian defeated Fu Chai.

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Diaochan (c. 3rd century, Late Eastern Han/Three Kingdoms period), said to be so luminously lovely that the moon itself would shy away in embarrassment when compared to her face. Unlike the other Beauties, there is no evidence she actually existed historically.

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Wang Zhaojun (c. 1st century BC, Western Han Dynasty), said to be so beautiful that her appearance would entice birds in flight to fall from the sky

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Yang Guifei (719–756, Tang Dynasty), said to have a face that puts all flowers to shame.

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-Black Backdrop
- use as many lights as possible to eliminate the unwanted shadows to mimic his work and create a rather theartrical photograph
-use a tripod (if possible) and frame the camera properly making sure it is levelled.
-props

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Lighting:
- We used multiple lighting set-up and used six lights, two coming from the front side, two from the side back and another two in front coming from below. I think we got the Lighting set-up correct in out test shoot, but I believe that we can still adjust it a litte bit to make it better

Props:
- We need to get ....or borrow some proper props to make our narrative photo more interesting and try to make it look like a professional photograph
--  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --  --
- In my opinion we have to change the expressions and poses of our models to tell the story a little clearer and better in a form of a photograph, get proper props and if not make the lighting better atleast we adjust the lighiting that we did earlier and make sure there are no harsh shadows and only soft shadows.

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Crewdson was born in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. He attended John Dewey High School, graduating early.

As a teenager, he was part of a punk rock group called The Speedies that hit the New York scene. Their song, "Let Me Take Your Photo" proved to be prophetic to Crewdson's future career. In 2005, Hewlett Packard used the song in advertisements to promote its digital cameras. Crewdson's photographs usually take place in small-town America, but are dramatic and cinematic. They feature often disturbing, surreal events. His photographs are elaborately staged and lit using crews familiar with motion picture production and lighting large scenes using motion picture film equipment and techniques

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We learnt that Gregory Crewdson uses amazing framing and links it in a narrative order, and if you pay enough attention in his photographs you will notice that there are some recurring elements in example half-full glass of liquid, baby blue and pink colours and medicines in his pictures. He uses a high number of f-number because you can see that his pictures are all focused which he may be using f22-f32. Another point about his framing is that he uses interesting inside-outside and outside-inside technique in framing, he also uses voyeurism in his photographs which means that the models act like they are not aware of the camera. We have discussed that the camera setting that he uses are; Shutter Speed is a very quick one because we can see that there is almost no blur in his pictures, Aperture as I have said is a high f number because everything is in focus, his ISO is very low because you will not see any grain in his pictures.

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Compared to Liu Zhengs, this photograph is not really similar to his work, in my opinion our test shoot has been more successful than our actual shoot. We went wrong when we only used one light instead of using five or even six lights because as explained above Zheng's work has very minimal to none shadows in this series, in contrast our final picture has a lot of shadows in it and yes it is still a dramatic and a good photograph but we didnt do what we are really asked to do.

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International Center of Photography. (2017) Liu Zheng - Taoist Priest [online]. Available from <https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/taoist-priest-white-cloud-temple-beijing> [14th Sep 2017]

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International Center of Photography. (2017) Liu Zheng - Dreamshock [online]. Available from <https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/dream-shock-19> [14th Sep 2017]

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International Center of Photography. (2017) Liu Zheng - A Rural boy in school uniform [online]. Available from <https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/a-rural-boy-in-school-uniform-fengxiang-shaanxi-province> [14th Sep 2017]

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Artsy. (2017) Liu Zheng [online]. Available from <https://www.artsy.net/artist/liu-zheng> [21st Sep 2017]

Bright, S. (2005,2011) Art Photography Now 2nd Edition. United Kingdom: Thames and Hudson Ltd

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Shoot Preparation

-Move the chair forward to match the bars.

-Try to open the container door

-Try to figure out the lighting that we will use

-Position the models (expressions/emotions)

-Moving the camera to the left to shift the angle of the building on the background.

Narrative of the shoot

We were planning to let one model sit on the far bench showing miserable emotion while looking at the other two models (lovers) sitting on the front bench holding hands and staring at each other. While all this is happening there will be another female model looking at the rejected guy from the back of the tree looking at him. We will be doing two different shots, one which is the female model behind the tree and one where she is positioned inside the container looking out for the guy

Camera settings

F:8

Iso:125

Ss:1/100

Wb: depends on the weather/lighting condition

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- I think she is a student (?)
- maybe she is an employee or working (?)
- she is on her way to work/school
- she's sleepy, maybe tired from yesterday a didnt get enough sleep

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I think that we had a good attempt on creating our own 'Crewdson-like' photograph, although it is hard because of all the preparations which is honestly boring me out but aside that, I really am happy with the final photograph that we produced even though it is really not the ideal weather this day because it is very gloomy and windy. Before we went to the shoot we asked Andrew about our ideas on deciding the final positions of the models, how can we frame it better and is our story good enough to touch Crewdson's work, at the end of the day they were all really helpful and made our Final photograph better

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- I think he/she is in a higher class of living
- he/she is on the way to a party(?), a date.

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- she is a rude(?)
- she only thinks of her self

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This is our first attempt in emulating Cindy Sherman's work. We analysed the lighting positions she used in her 'Bus Riders' series, we also used a white background to copy her work in our own attempt. In this shoot, my character is a single mum who is very out-going and has a lot of friends from different cultures, colours, and orientations. I believe my own attempt was very close to a really good emulation the only thing I believe that I can change the next shoot is to slightly over-expose it like Sherman's work because my work is more in the darker or under-exposed side.

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Daylight ---> GOLDEN HOUR

*Warm Colours such as red, orange, pink.

*Lasts for about 30-40 mins

*defined by the sun being between +18 degrees to +6 degrees

*Direction = strong side/front/back

*Intensity = strong - weak (If cloud covers)

*focus = strong - weak (If cloud covers)

Mood: Positive, happy, dramatic, romantic

Golden Hour ---> BLUE HOUR

*Cooler Colours such as blue, purples, greens

*Lasts for abput 30-40 minutes

*Defined by the sun being +6 degrees to -18 degrees

*Direction = from above reflected off of sky

*Intensity= half as strong of the Golden Hour. pretty weak can be compared to reflected light.

*focus = Diffused shadow is even + coloured

*Artificial lights ---> leads to new colours. Artificial lights are always coloured

Mood: mysterious, depressing, negative, dramatic,

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These are my final 3 photos that I believe were successful, I used a similar lighting setup as the first shoot attempt, at the first shoot my lights were kind of further from me compared to this shoot which is better because as I have mentioned in my first shoot that I have to make my pictures a little bit brighter because they were on the under-exposed side last time and in this one I think its more balanced in contrast or my blacks and whites. This Project has been one of the most challenging for me because I am more comfortable behind the camera and take pictures but this project proved to me that its not always bad to step out of your comfort zone because the results might be beyond what you expect. Overall I love this project and looking forward to do this type of shoots in the future.

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-For my shoot I will be portraying the character of a guy that I played against in basketball recently. Here are his Characteristics that I observed:

- Mean
- Stingy
- Obnoxious
- Very aggressive
- Obviously Talented basketball Player

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what diCorcia did to capture this image is he set up a flash  on a pole/street light or traffic light pole and put a mark on the ground so he will know when to press his shutter. In order to focus the picture, he asked someone to stand on the point that he marked and carefully focused the camera to capture a really crisp and focused picture whilst being a really long way down with his big telephoto lens. These photographs are my chosen favourites because even though it does look like planned but in reality it is not, some pictures are somehow giving like a mysterious characteristic and it also gives like a dramatic or cinematic characteristic to it because of the lighting.

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We studied Shizuka Yokomizo's 'Dear Stranger' where she takes pictures of strangers from their windows, but before she takes their pictures, she wrote them a letter beforehand introducing herself saying she is an artist and she didn't force those strangers to have their pictures taken, hence she wrote in the letter that  if they don't want their pictures taken they can  draw their curtains close as a rejection. Upon taking pictures, Shizuka hides herself making sure that the person she is taking pictures off doesn't see her. Shizuka's pictures are composed of these characteristics; Stalking, Obsession, frames-in-frames(windows), outside looking in, portrait, frozen moments(fast-shutter, tripods), focus on subject in mid-field, slight grain. In her 'Dear Stranger' her subjects are often standing, with neutral emotions and contemplative.

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I am planning on modelling my work similar to Philip DiCorcia's 'Hustlers' series, but the difference is I am not going to take pictures of hustlers hence I am going to take a picture of a new comer here in london or immigrants who lived here in a long time. I want to show how their lifestyle or how they are living as an alien in a very unfamiliar place long from home. What I plan for the location of the shoot is that I will just follow them wherever they go and just capture pictures of how they are spending their day, but I was told that instead of following them for the day they told me that my shoot should take place in where they hang out a lot. I will model my pictures from the pictures below which inspired me.

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I like this picture of her, because it will make the viewers look deeper inside of the photograph to know what is in it, in short she used a very effective and clever use of frames within frames technique using the window, window rails, and grills(?) I also like the effect caused by the frames because I felt like it made me look into four different pictures.

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For this shoot our camera settings will obviously depend on what type of light is available from where we are standing, but the basics that we should know when it comes to camera settings is that we should use the lowest shutter spees as possible without creating blur in the picture which is 1/60 of a second and if we want to go slower than that we might need to use a tripod, for aperture we are going to need to focus on our subject and it will be hard to focus it if we only use a shallow depth of field so I am going to use a fairly in-between depth-of-field which ranges between f8-f13 and I will experiment from that range, we dont adjust the ISO too much so I am going to put it in ISO 400 or 800.

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Different to what DiCorcia did, I didnt use a telephoto lens but I used an artificial light source depending on the lights from around me because I dont have a flashgun. Some shots were not planned and some were, in my opinion his Photography is really interesting yet its really challenging to achieve and to be honest I found it hard because you need to get the right timing to capture a really good picture and I will need to be familiar and good in using a flashgun.

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Bokeh is an artistic blur created by out of focused parts of an image which is pleasing in the eye because it helps you focus more on the subject. It can be achieved by using a shallow depth-of-field or a really big Aperture which means the lowest f-number, f1.2 - f5.6 can be used to achieve Bokeh.

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I like to model my photograph in this picture because I like how dramatic this picture look and also the phenomenal lighting and I figure that my picture will look as good as this if I execute the plan properly

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As an immigrant, I think there is something special thing reminding me about bus stops and immigrants and maybe it is because sometimes you can meet new people from your country in bus stops and its funny that you were strangers but as soon as you knew that you have the same nationality as them you become instant friends and seem to know each other for a long time

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I just like the elements in this picture, the line, the framing and especially on how this picture instantly tells you that this picture has a story behind it.

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THE PLAN ABOVE DID NOT WORK OUT!!
It should have been a great plan for me, but some things didnt work out specifically my models, because they have their own plans and agenda's in the week that we were supposed to have the shoot. And to resolve the plan I told them to do it on a different day and they agreed and just didnt show up that day.  Since that day I cant seem to contact them after that so I ended up with none, and now I will come up with a different plan.

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For this Plan, I am going to be emulating Cindy Sherman's work, And I am Planning to do it in Black and white and will reference my work in her History Portraits where she turns Historical Paintings to Portraits, likewise I am going to turn the pictures below into my own version, the pictures were photographs of terrors. We are all aware that terror can happen anytime and anywhere so I am going to try to portray their character from what I know them.

Lighting:
I will use either 2 or 3 point lighting set-up for this shoot and Im going to position them in mainly in the front area.

Props:
I will be improvising in this shoot for my props and will try my best to be creative.

Camera Settings:
My ISO will stay in ISO 100 ; Aperture will be around f5.6 - f11 but it will depend in the actual shoot ; Shutter speed will be 1/60th of a second to 1/500(?) again this will depend in the actual shoot but I will be ranging from the numbers I mentioned.

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The Following photographs are  what I am going to try to copy 

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The Following photographs are  what I am going to try to copy 

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As I was running out of time, I tried my best to be creative and thought through on what my character will be with just the available things I have with me, but overall my shoot went through smoothly even though I experienced a little bit of problems even the littlest things like my lighting thinking where should they come from, how many lights should I use, do I like any shadows and other unnoticeable things that will give impact on the overall outcome of the picture. I also had a hard time on thinking about what my poses are going to be, I had problems with my props but thankfully I found something at that moment that can be used as my gun as a terror. I also had problems with the focus in my pictures, and it took me a while to get the right one with the help of Isaac. I took pictures in Coloured but I changed it to Black and white in the editing process because I think it will look more interesting for the viewers. I am happy on how this impromptu shoot and pictures and I am very pleased to show it.