*ooof*: Armitage – the Trip Hazard

Today’s *ooof* comes not only with my customary dedication to the task but with a dedication. The image was suggested to me by our very own Katie70 – whose birthday it was yesterday. Lots of love to you, Katie – this is for you, in recognition of your continuous support and commenting on my posts.

Warning! This Man is a Trip Hazard! Richard Armitage in a shot by Joe McGorty, 2010. Source.

Mr Armitage is waiting. He is standing in some inhospitable place. Metal roof, bare bricks, bars and many locks. Wait a minute. Has he been imprisoned? No, his posture and his largely unconcerned look on his lovely countenance tell us he is not worried about his freedom. He is leaning against a metal door, his hip slightly cocked, his hands casually buried in his jeans. His shoulders are relaxed, he is not worried or overly defensive, just waiting to see what will happen. There is a look of concentration on his face – his brow slightly furrowed, two lines appearing at the root of his nose. The head slightly inclined to his right, gives away his thoughts – he is not disinterested. He is patiently waiting, half-interested in what is going on. Oh yes, of course, he is taking part in a photo shoot. And even though he is not particularly keen on strutting his stuff on (stills) camera (as opposed to baring his soul in front of the film camera, which he does masterfully and easily), he plays along. There is a certain intensity in Armitage’s expression. His eyes are focussed on the camera. He is right there, in the middle of the shoot, and despite looking passive, he is collaborating with the photographer, helping McGorty get the shots that he needs.

Photo shoots can be boring. Not for the photographer. It is a sweat-inducing business, moving back and forth and up and down, contorting oneself for the best possible vantage point to picture the sitter from, concentrating hard on the brief to produce printable images. For the model – especially when they are celebrities (and therefore not quite expected to work their pretty peaches face off– it is only half as hard. Of course, they too have to work, reacting to the directions and delivering the poses and expressions that the photographer is asking for. But there are often lulls in a shoot when the photographer is busy fiddling with his camera settings, exchanging batteries, adjusting lights or simply taking a pause to think up new angles and ideas, during which the sitter can just observe. Maybe that is what Mr A is doing here.

Despite the look of concentration, Armitage exudes an air of calm. The relaxed pose is responsible for that. But also the colour composition of the image. The image is characterised by a blue hue. Apart from the dark blue shirt of the sitter and his blue jeans, there is blue paint visible in the background, and the strong shadows appear blue, as do the metal bars. Blue, as I mentioned before, has a calming, peaceful effect, and McGorty uses the blue hues to emphasise his portrayal of the sitter as a calm man.

A by-product of the calm blue hue, however, is a general cold tone. This is mainly due to the harsh light that illuminates the scene. We can tell from the shadows on Armitage that this picture has been made some time in the morning or the late afternoon. The sun is not particularly high on the horizon. Since the light is fairly cold and bright, I suspect it is in the morning, as the afternoon sun tends to have a warmer, yellower glow than the morning sun. Shooting in conditions like that is not really ideal. Photographers prefer cloudy skies, not happy sunshine. And that is not because photographers might be morose, depressed individuals, but because bright sunlight produces unsightly shadows and difficult highlights. You can see both at play in this image – Armitage’s face is in shadow while the left side of his swan-like, beautiful, kiss-worthy… ooops, I am getting carried away… neck is nearly blown-out white. The photographer had no other choice but to metre the light from Armitage’s face – because the face is the most important part of this image. Sorry to disappoint all clavicle-lovers, chest-cherishers and nose-appreciaters, but that is the truth – the eyes and face are the centre of conventional portraiture. In order to set the exposure in such a way that the face will be clearly visible in the image, McGorty must set a slower shutter speed, enabling enough light to be reflected off the shadowy face onto the sensor. This, however, results in the more reflective surface of the neck, which is bathed in sunshine, throw more light back into the camera. Hence this area of Armitage’s body appears over-exposed in the image.

If you compare the other images from the McGorty shoot – all accessible on RAnet – you can see that McGorty has experimented with the amount of shadow he allows on his subject’s face. He has directed Armitage to move his face towards and away from the sun, catching light and shadow on different parts of his face. None of the other half-length portraits in the same set-up are quite pleasing in terms of light and shade. In fact, the composition of the shadow on Armitage’s face is never quite right – he catches too much sun, leaving the shadow edge like a scar across his right or left eye. The image Katie has chosen, is the best one in terms of light composition, as both eyes are in shadow and therefore the line between the light and the shade is least distracting to the viewer.

The comparison with the other images from the series will also reveal that McGorty has experimented with perspective and framing. If you tear your eyes off the subject for a minute, the image is very strongly characterised by the many lines that appear in it: there are the grooves in the metal roof, mortar lines in bricks, metal bars and frames, doubled by the shadows that the metal bars create on the subject. But observe how McGorty has tried to make the best of the difficult set-up: He has composed the image to make the lined background look pleasing to the eye and hold only a minimum of distraction by placing his subject with his back to the bricks and at a right angle to the metal door. Shooting dead-pan, the main lines in the frame appear horizontal and vertical. The existing (diagonal) perspective lines are the thinner grid from the metal door, and therefore less obtrusive.

The setting, however, is very busy – not only because of the lines but also because of the variety of textures in the shot. Brick, metal roof, grid, plus skin and shirt material. In this shot he has thankfully left out the yellow Trip Hazard warning sign (cf. the other shots from series), but he could have minimised the distraction by shooting with a larger aperture which would have suitably blurred out the lines in the fore- and background.

Instead he has opted to shoot with a small aperture, leaving the environment in sharp focus, including, for instance, a number of locks on the metal door. That is not coincidental but by doing this, he has given the subject a clear context to be seen in. Presumably, McGorty deliberately portrays Armitage in an industrial setting. The location is oddly reminiscent of a location for a spy drama – a conspicuously non-descript warehouse. The typical playground for a spy man: backyards and disused factory floors, where agents wheedle secrets out of assets and enemy spies are surreptitiously bumped off. And of course – if this shoot took place in April 2010, then Armitage was just in-between Spooks series 8 and series 9. He was well-known at that time as the actor who portrays MI-5 agent Lucas North. The shoot takes this into account, by picturing Armitage looking like LN – straight from the costume dept. (the same haircut, the same styling). This way the actor is made recognisable – through the look a connection is created between Armitage and the character he is known for, as through the location of the shoot, that recreates the context that Armitage’s TV-character is associated with. (And sure enough, an image from the McGorty shoot accompanied an article in the Sunday Times just at the start of Spooks 9.) In fact, it is likely that the shoot took place in a little half-hour tea break while filming Spooks on location. McGorty quickly popped in, popped the shots, and popped out again.

Whether there is much personality in the shot or not – as the viewers it is up to us to interpret what we see. I see an attractive man, waiting on an outside staircase. He has been standing there for a while, patiently anticipating his date for the evening to appear. She caught his attention earlier that day, when bumping into her in the building they both work in. After he had helped her gather the folder that had slipped from under her arm when they collided, he plucked up the courage to ask her whether she would like to meet him later for a cup of coffee – to make up for crashing into her. Here she is now, she has stepped out into the staircase where they agreed to meet, and after initial introductions he is now listening to Katie telling him she wasn’t sure if he really meant his suggestion for a cup of coffee. “After all I bumped into you, too.” He is leaning in slightly to Katie, his brow furrowed, worried if this is the pretext to being dumped nicely, and yet still hopeful that she will not. His hands are burrowing defensively in his trouser pockets. ‘I don’t want to be sent packing by this lovely woman. I’d like to get to know her’, he thinks. He inclines his head in an effort to regain her trust. There’s the first flutter of a smile on her face. ‘Maybe, after all, she doesn’t think I have been coming on too strong’, he thinks. Katie’s heart is beating in her chest. Jesus, this man is quite the trip hazard. “The coffee is on me”, he suggests softly.

Happy birthday, Katie!

All text © Guylty at me + richard armitage, 2013. Please credit when using excerpts and links. Images and video copyrights accrue to their owners.

~ by Guylty on August 13, 2013.