Tuesday 9 December 2014

Inspirational Work





I take my inspiration from many different photographers and for many different reasons, some of the photographers that interest me most include Collin McPherson, Chris Steel-Perkins, Yousuf Karsh, Dave Lachapelle and Jason Bell. These photographers have impacted the visual styling of my work, sending me down one creative path or another. I have tried to take on their methods and techniques by researching the photographers and their work. some of the most important information I have gained from this lies outside of the direct creative process and is more based around building rapport with models and clients. Doing this makes it possible to really understand what they want or in the case of a model to capture a moment of real emotion, something you cannot do without talking to people and allowing them to forget they are being photographed.





Collin McPherson

Collin McPerson is a photographer based in Scotland I was first introduced to his photography last year when he came to the college to discuss his work. The images that grabbed me the most were from a set called "Catching the Tide." This was his first long term set of photography which was taken over several years, but what really caught my eye was the crop the images were taken in. They are a very wide format, taken on a camera designed to take panoramic photographs. The photographs are shot on film, giving them a much more impressive dynamic range and level of tones, adding to the cinematic quality of the images. Seeing the images in such a wide format really intrigued me and I now use this style of crop regularly within my photography.








 Chris Steele-Perkins

A member of magnum, Chris Steele-Perkins is a highly renowned photographer, he has worked all over the world as a photojournalist and was educated in Newcastle. A vast body of his work is based around the Northeast and wider UK which is brought together in the form of his book "England My England." I was lucky enough to be given this book for my 18th birthday and have read it many times since, his photography is powerful, often shocking or hilarious but always contains a beautiful intimacy with his subjects. This comes back to rapport and how important it is to be able to connect with your subject









Yousuf Karsh
Karsh is one of the masters of portrait photography, capturing a true image of each of his subjects. The contrast created by incredible use of light creates imagery with real depth, showing every detail of his subjects expressions. Karsh also had a wonderful ability to make people at ease with him, whilst photographing George Bernard-Shaw he remarked  "He said I might make a good picture of him - but none as good as the picture he had seen at a recent dinner party where he glimpsed, over the shoulder of his hostess, a perfect portrait of himself: “Cruel, you understand, a diabolical caricature, but absolutely true.” He pushed by the lady, approached the living image, and found he was looking into a mirror! The old man peered at me quizzically to see if I appreciated his little joke. It was then that I caught him in my portrait. Whilst Karsh photographed some of the most influential people of the 20th century he also worked on assignments in an editorial style capturing incredible images.








   
 LaChapelle studios

Dave LaChapelle  studios are located in L.A. and is essentially everything I aspire to within my own career. Whilst I do enjoy and appreciate his images sometimes I find them to loud and garish, but his images always resonate his style and his detailed personal symbolism. But even more than this it is the way that he works that interests me. LaChapelle uses huge sets built on site at his studio to create both stills and moving image with great theatrical imagery and originality. This method of set building interests me as a direction to take my photography as I already have qualifications in technical theatre production and have built several large sets for events and productions. 









Jason Bell

Jason Bell is a High level editorial and commercial photographer, I was lucky enough to attend a lecture at the collage by him earlier in the course. He is an enigmatic character and talked us through his work in detail, explaining the ways he builds stories for his models to act in. His images push colour to its extremes with lighting and post production, but maintains a very tight colour pallet within the styling and setting of his images, usually sticking to a single major colour for the whole image or using one contrasting colour to pick out the model.












1 comment:

  1. nice reading. Searching for Chris Steele-Perkins, of whom I saw several photo's from "Fuji" yesterday in Museum De Lakenhal I came at your blog. Just out of interest: what's your feeling about Roger Ballen. Since my art is Assemblage, his work comes closest to mine.
    regards, Drager

    ReplyDelete