When looking through the galleries of portraits taken by others in the class, Ashley’s portraits of Lauren stand out to me. There is something overwhelmingly professional about the images. When looking at my own pictures, I feel like it is immediately obvious that my goal was to take portrait images. With Ashley’s pictures, this seems to move beyond the level of photography with the obvious goal of fitting into a particular category, and the images instead convey something about Lauren.

These images, especially the edited ones, would work well on a musician’s website or included with album art. The high contrast and soft focus of the first images is a good touch. Lauren’s expression seems genuinely happy and natural, which can often be a tricky aspect of photographing people. The second image also stands out. It is only one of two black and white images in the collection, and the contrast again is a strong aspect. There is a good balance of light and dark areas, complemented especially by the background fabric.

One of the strongest elements in all of the pictures is the framing. In nearly all of the images, Lauren appears off to one side. In many cases, the border of the images actually crops off part of her head or shoulders. Despite the tight cropping and strong weight on one side, the images all feel balanced. Often, this is aided by the fabric in the background or the lighting of the photograph.

Lauren’s dark shirt and relatively light colored face and guitar often help to balance the image, especially against the plain wall background. The lighting on her face is also a strong aspect, especially in the fourth image (the only other black and white image). Without the guitar, I think that her expression and the lighting could make this image appear scary, but because the guitar is present, I think the lighting only adds emotion to the shot.

Overall, this is a solid, well-balanced collection of portraits.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a journalistic photographer from France. He was born in 1908 and lived until 2004. He grew up in France and attended several different art schools. Painting was his first medium, especially surrealist painting, but he eventually became frustrated with it and destroyed many of his paintings. He then took a trip to the Ivory Coast where he discovered his passion for photography. During the Second World War, he was captured by the Nazis and held prisoner for nearly 3 years. He escaped on his third attempt.

He began his professional photojournalism work in 1937 by photographing the coronation of King George VI for a French news publication. His most famous journalistic photographs came from his documentation of Gandhi’s funeral in 1948. He is also well known for his coverage of the Chinese Civil War and the regime change that followed in 1949.

Several years later, in the early 1950s, he published his first book, which was titled in English “The Decisive Moment,” a concept that is common in photojournalism, and all photography today.

He describes his interpretation of photography as follows: “For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.” Though his photojournalism intends to document events, he also succeeds at conveying meaning and emotion more effectively than he could even with surrealist painting.

His photography was so successful because he truly did understand the importance of the decisive moment better than many others. He also succeeded at photographing the unexpected. In his photography of the coronation of King George VI, none of his photos actually include the new king. Instead he focused exclusively on the reaction of the crowd that attended the event.

I first found out about Cartier-Bresson through the fact that he was a primary influence for James Ravilious, who in turn influenced Peter Adams, a photographer I have already written about. Despite the vast changes in technique and equipment over the past 50-70 years, there certainly are similarities between these two artists. Both succeed at capturing the unusual and presenting it in as straight-forward of a manner as possible.

Peter Adams is a 50-year old British travel photographer. He has been shooting photographs from around the world since a college trip to India. His work since then has led him to nearly 100 countries and has been published in the form of travel guides, including National Geographic’s Traveler edition, calendars, and posters. Many of his photographs are also available for licensing as stock photos in advertising and other commercial use.

In the world of stock photography and travel photography, one of the major challenges for a photographer is to create something unique and original that other photographers don’t offer. People are used to seeing stellar, nearly unbelievable images when they browse travel magazines, so the task of creating something that captures the viewer’s attention is particularly difficult. I believe that Adams does this especially well, which is one reason that I was drawn to his work.

While Adams’ portfolio includes the expected breathtaking scenery photographs, he also includes a wide variety of images of people that capture a very human element of the culture that he is visiting. In an interview, he commented that the best way to represent a culture is to photograph the people. When travelling, he often stays in homes or locally-run hotels. He says that by doing this, he is placing himself near people who give him good suggestions for subject material for his photography. He avoids stereotypical travel photographs by capturing what the local people consider important about their own culture.

Another element that adds interest to his photography is the fact that he endures challenging and inconvenient circumstances to capture the perfect moment. His photography of China’s Great Wall was taken extremely early in the morning so that the wall would have no other visitors. The frozen yak image was also taken early in the morning, with temperatures colder than 20 degrees below zero. He said in one interview that he often thinks that he would enjoy taking a short walk without a camera, but he is always too afraid that he will miss the perfect photo opportunity.

As far as equipment, Adams shoots almost entirely digital photography at this point, uses a variety of lens filters for color effects, and does some editing in Photoshop.

I found Neil Winokur by searching the Chicago Art Institute’s website for color photography. Even on a page filled with color images, Winokur’s supersaturated images stood out from the rest. If color images were my goal, Winokur’s series on the letters of the alphabet were the perfect result.

The concept of Windokur’s alphabet is fairly simple; for each letter of the alphabet there is one image with one solid color background. In true children’s book form, each object is easily identifiable and easily associated with a letter of the alphabet. An apple is the obvious choice for beginning the series, and the alphabet progresses from there. The series is in part a tribute to his own children. Winokur hoped to make a book of images to help them learn the alphabet, much like many children’s books. His photographic competence and artistic eye are what truly set this work apart from similar projects.

Winokur began his photographic career in the 1980s as he focused on portraits of famous people from Philip Glass to Andy Warhol. He claims that his earliest influences were Hollywood glamour portraits. Through the techniques and style that he learned in shooting portraits – working with dramatic light sources, a simple background color, and an obvious subject – Winokur began to develop his own unique style of photography. He took these principles and began to apply them to non-human and non-living objects. This created a stunning view of simple, inanimate objects.

While his artistic style set him apart as a photographer, it is the colors in his images that truly catch the viewer’s eye. Even during the days when Winokur was shooting portraits of people, he began experimenting with brightly colored backgrounds. This continued into his more recent series on the alphabet. Even when using brightly colored backdrops, Winokur found the colors to be too dull. He began experimenting with colored gels, used to mask stage lights, to create more intense backgrounds for his images. He often layers these gels to create new colors.

The final prints are made on Cibachrome paper. This positive-to-positive process is known for its color saturation, which helps achieve the vibrant effect.

Terry Evans is a photographer from Chicago, and her work shows a close connection with Chicago and the larger midwest. She has created many collections of photography, but three of her collections that interest me the most are her series on Chicago from above, her series titled, Prairie Specimens, and her series titled Industrial Artifacts.

One thing in particular that intrigues me with her work is her focus on environmental protection. Many of her photographs are of nature, but the series that she may be best known for is her series titled, “Revealing Chicago: An Aerial Portrait.” Even this series, which focuses much more on urban life than many of her other collections, was commissioned by the Openlands Project, which promotes environmental restoration and preservation in northeastern Illinois. This series of photographs was the one that originally caught my eye. In many ways, the photographs in this series are what would be expected from cityscape pictures, but the element that holds the photographs together is the perspective. The pictures were all taken from high up, sometimes even above the tall buildings. Often times, the camera is even looking down at the buildings. Also along the environmental theme, one of her most recent projects was a photo shoot of melting glaciers in Greenland.

She also spent more than 20 years living in Kansas, where she did many photographic studies on the prairies. These prairie pictures make for an interesting comparison with one of her themes from the Chicago series: Industrial Artifacts. Both focus on objects rather than city- or landscapes, but the objects are fairly different. Many of the prairie pictures focus on grass, and occasionally animals (usually dead), while the steel mill pictures focus on machinery. Interestingly, the steel mill pictures are in color while many of the prairie pictures are in black and white.

Joel Meyerowitz was born in New York in the late 1930s. His earliest claim to fame was his support for color photography. In 1962, Meyerowitz embraced color photography, making him one of the first artists to encourage the medium as a true art form. Interestingly enough, I found him by browsing the color photography on the Art Institute of Chicago’s website.

His more recent claim to fame is the fact that he was the only photographer initially allowed near Ground Zero after the attacks against the World Trade Centers in 2001. Since then he has done other work in New York, including a current project on parks, called “A Year in the Parks.”

His project that most interested me, however, was a project that I believe is an ongoing project on the four elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire. The project began in 2007 when he was working on a video about Olympic divers. Instead of simply shooting pictures of each of these elements, Meyerowitz adds the creativity of looking at these elements in pairs. The first pair, and perhaps the only pair so far, I’m not sure, is Air/Water. Meyerowitz was intrigued by the bubbles that were created in the water with each dive, while he was working on the video. This led him to a study with underwater photography and a comparison of these two elements which turned into this current project.

In my opinion, the photographs from this series almost don’t seem creative or interesting, but there’s something about the active motion of the bubbles and the bright blue of the water seems to hold these pictures together, and for some reason I keep coming back to them. There is also something mysterious about the underwater aspect, as well as the rotation of some. My favorite is probably the image of the diver that is turned upside-down, so the diver appears to be coming up out of the water.

So far this year I've taken various pictures relating to winter as well as reflections in puddles. These are the 4 winter pictures and 1 puddle picture that I have edited.

Trying to figure out some of this blog stuff.