Dorothee Deiss

Dorothee Deiss is a portrait photographer from Berlin. I have particularly looking at her project 'visibleInvisible', in which she, on her website said "In my portraits I want to show how their honesty and self-awareness makes the invisible visible." and that's the reason she made this project. She is also a doctor and mentioned that she believes in the importance of facial expressions. "Faces are vivid maps of human experience which I have to read to understand somebody else to some extent.".

This image, while subtle, is very effective. The grey background makes the image feel rather flat, especially in conjunction with the grey hair, dulled down blue shirt. The rosiness of her cheeks and forehead bring a bit more life to the into the picture, but what is most interesting about this image to me is both the eye contact and the facial expression. Her face doesn't show any emotion, which in a way, to me, makes the image look rather sad. the lighting isn't overly bright or overexposed, it appears rather subtle and natural, which makes this image feel very real like it's telling the real story of a real person rather than being all for show. However, of course, the image has been set up to look like this for that very real, and so how fictional and set up it is is debatable.

This lighting was most likely using studio lighting rather than portable flash such as a metz. This does appeal to me, however the portablility doesn't. I believe i'm mostly likely to take influence from the facial expressions in this image rather than the lighting, as for my project portablility is a high priority. 

The focal length and distance from the subject to camera also feels very natural to the eye and makes it every easy to take everything in.
The soft look in this image is further emphasised by the soft textures; there's nothing overly texturous in this image. Her skin is soft, the top has soft blue tones which also looks soft in texture, as you can tell by the soft creases in her tshirt. Her hair too looks soft and well cared for. The only thing in the image that doesn't appear very soft is the look she gives to the camera and therefore the viewer.
The framing gives her a small gap at the top of the image, and mostly central on either side. This leaves no room to be distracted, especially as her eyes are also central. This is also because of the use of a studio background being very standard and consistent.