ANDREA KOPOROVA
ARTIST ANALYSIS
Andrea Koporova is a self-taught photographer who is based in Austria. She is best known for her use of colour and her minimalistic, simplistic compsotition. I am specifically focusing on a project of hers called 'femme' which focuses on the way that people express themselves in this world. Koporova follows the theme of identity as she explores with vanity and ways to express yourself as well as parts of your life that you experience as a human and how you process it. She uses colour to create kaleidoscopic pieces of work.
Koporova shoots her photographs in various different setting, expressing freedom through her images. She constantly uses different backgrounds, coloured lighting and patterns to make her work distinctive from any other photographers. she also has several different focuses and colours incorperated into to her photographs, in my opinion, flooding your eyes with colour and imagination. I would say that some of her photography is similar to paintings and the contrast of her colours sharp yet coherent, making her work seem simplistic. What initially interested me in her work was how she sets the tone of her photographs through lighting.
I can see that each detail and colour is coherent with the setting or focus of any of her images, adding the sense of consistecny in her work which I am trying to replicate throughout all of my portfolio. I think that by doing this artisit, it will allow me to grasp the way in which to make my work more coherent and allow me to think more about the reasons for my photography and what it represents.
Overall, I am interested to see how I can use Koporova's lighting and texture in her work to add and encorperate it into my future photographs so that I can make higher developments.
I think that the way in which she minipulates lighting to create patterns and moods on her 2016 project 'femme' makes her work look fragile and delicate. I think that the way in which Andrea Koporova composes her photographs and uses lighting to highlight different parts of the female face in 'femme' creates the fragile look as it makes her models skin look pearly and shine, similar to a porcelain doll. This interests me as I would like to explore on how to minipulate lighting myself and how to refine my photographs and create better and more successful developments.
What makes Koporova's work so captivting yet consistent is her use of angles. In the project 'femme' you see her use many different angles but with one prominent feature standing out in the photograph she is capturing (in this instance being the model's face). She also ssues textured materials and projects them on to her models face through shadow and again, lighting. This compliments her work as by her use of shadow and natural (as well as some artificial) light, it creates a natural glow and smoothness to her models skin. What I particulary like about her photography is the way that she makes her photographs look as natural and clean as possible. I can see that her attention to detail is key in her work to achieve this affect and it that, in my opinion, creates a sense of surrealism.
PHOTOSHOOT 1
INSPIRATION PHOTOGRAPHS
PHOTOSHOOT PLAN
Material and props:
Colour Scheme:
For this photoshoot, I will be capturing my photographs at home on a canon camera. I will be putting makeup on my model in pastel and light colours to represent the lightness and natural, glowing tone that Andrea Koporova creates. I am also going to use a piece of metal mesh to create the lightint and texture projected onto the face of the model. I have decided to use a canon camera to capture my images as it will create better quality photographs and highlight the smaller details as well as glowing skin. I will also be photographing in various angles to make the developments that I create more interesting instead of all through one angle. This will make the photographs better and less continuous, making it more interesting to look at. I am also going to think very carefully on the placement and colour of the eyeshadow and oil that I will be using. I will be using eyeshadow purely to replicate the same photograph as my inspiration and to create the same impact but I have decided to add oil to my face to create that shiny, glowing porcelain doll-like skin. I think that the biggest challenge that I will face will be creating that natural light and texturised skin without ''overdoing'' it. I think that this type of photography is out of my comfort zone but will push me to be more creative and think more about my reasoning.
DEVELOPMENTS
For these edits i decided to not put on any makeup on my model because i wanted to keep my models face as natural as possible to further enforce the idea of natural beauty in femininity. i used a fabric netting and a projector to create the blue tones photographs. first i projected a blue light video from youtube onto my models face and put vasaline on the sides of her face to create an oily skin look.to enhance my images further i have edited the most successful images using Photoshop. after looking at all my images closely when editing if think the technical aspects of the images have improved from my previous work and the artificial lighting seemed to work much better as i didn't have the edit in the blue tones that Andrea Koporova uses in her work. i used Photoshop to develop my images focusing mainly on accentuating detail are perfecting each image until i was pleased with the outcome. with some of the images i had increase the brightness so that i could make the features of my models skin more prominent. i think the contrast of the shadow of the netting on the skin worked really well as it created a sense of contrast but also the colours almost harmonise, linking in with the theme of my project as i am starting to get a sense of how to incorporate my theme into different elements of photography. i think i could improve the work by capturing a larger range of angles in my photographers and focusing on the composition to get a neater and cleaner outcome, so i think i could have taken a bit more time on the camera angles and aperture and generally more of the technical sides. after completing this photo shoot i think i would like to go on to focusing more on the little details with some close ups. I think that capturing movement or attempting to capture life in my developments was most challenging to me.
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
DIGITAL COLLAGE
To develop my work, and improve each of my images I have edited each image using photoshop. I tried to make each edit the similar in composition so there wasn't too much irregularity, to do this I followed the same techniques and 'framing' with each images. firstly I turned up the brightness and contrast, to aims to achieve the brightest images. I then turned down the curve this made sure the image did not look too over exposed but also enhanced the detail within each photograph. then i pulled the canvas of the image further in photoshop to create a white base for my the image that i wanted to copy and paste on top. i then used the colour select tool and selected the most prominent colour in my original photograph to paint as a background in the frame that i created. My aim for editing these images was to enhance the different elements of composition that I focused on more in depth but keep my developments as simplistic as possible. I think I was able to achieve this though this way of editing. I think the use of negative space has worked well though out both of my photoshoot as I was inspired by Koporova's simplistic style.
PHOTOSHOOT 2 CONTACT SHEET
DEVELOPMENTS
FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS
DIGITAL COLLAGE
In response to andrea koporova, I produced this set of photographs. I captured my images by putting a fabric-mesh material in front of the camera lense that i was using and photographing my model. It was photographed, similar to my first photoshoot, in artificial light, which i believe koporova does not use in her photography. i chose to photograph in 'artificial' lighting as it added different tones of pink and blue that i could i have not achieved with natural/sun light.