Research for Portraiture

Thomas Ruff:

Thomas Ruff is a portraiture artist. Personally, I do not like his images as I believe they're boring, and not 'art', due to the fact anyone can easily photograph images like these. 
Ruff may have used deadpan expressions to highlight the various details in individuals faces. The people in these images appear almost as dolls/not real people. Thomas would have done this using the lighting.
These images challenge norms as in the image on the right the man is on a pink background, whereas the woman is on a blue one. This is strange as blue is associated with boys, and pink with girls. 
 These images are extremely structured, and not free. Ruff used the deadpan expression to highlight how you don't know what the subject is feeling, whereas in normal portrait imagery you capture emotions. These images would have been shot on a high aperture score, due to the face, and the background being in focus (wide depth of field.)

Alec Soth:

 I like Alec Soth's images as he also captures the environment, and backdrop in which the image is photographed, as well as the portrait. This gives you a sense of perspective, as to how small us as humans are too the environment/world around us. In the image to the right, and the one below the backdrops are grand, which implies they're more than us as humans, and were merely a pinprick in the world. 
I like how in the photograph below, the man is captured with toy planes, this gives us an insight into his hobbies or likes- as clearly he enjoys planes/ building things, as his clothing appears as though he has been making objects, due to the splattered paint over it. 



Muted colours are used in Alec's photography, these imply calmness and silence as they're not saturated and extreme colours which would imply business and fun. However, the image above of the man lying down has slightly brighter colours, in contrast to the other two images. This image has more autumnal images, in the organs and browns. These images (especially the one of the man holding planes) would be shot on a lower aperture, due to the background being blurred (shallow depth of field.)

Alec Soth is considerably more interesting to me than Thomas Ruff as his images are not just on plain backgrounds, and include the environment in which the images are taken too.