Michael Goods reflective journal: February 2011

Monday 21 February 2011

The Technique Behind Martin Schoeller’s Photography

I came across a very interesting and amazing photographer while planning research for my next studio brief.

Jack Nicholson

Barak Obahma

Christopher Walken

http://martinschoeller.com/

Schoeller grew up in Germany and worked as an assistant to Annie Leibovitz another of my favourite photgraphers. He then became a freelance photographer producing street portraits of people he met.

He uses the same photography lighting techniques for most of his studio portraits, he also seems to use a close up style portrait technique similar to one that I favour. As well as a medium format camera.
I love his style and technique, he has undoubtedly stamped his own style on each portrait. In fact more so than many other portrait photographers manage to do.

His use of strip lights creates a really interesting lighting technique and the catch lights in the eyes become very unusual, they draw you to the centre of the image. The details in each portrait are phenomenal, this is achieved using medium format cameras. Another technique that I would like to study further.

You can find more detail on his very interesting lighting techniques here :

http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/aroundthemall/2009/09/the-technique-behind-martin-schoellers-photography/

Also a rather interesting video of several of his videos here :

http://www.mediastorm.com/publication/close-up

Friday 4 February 2011

Exhibitions

I went to the Faye Godwin Exhibition recently : Land revisted.

http://www.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/AboutUs/PressOffice/2010/August/LandRevisited.aspx

It was very inspiring. Although I am not a natural landscape photographer I love landscape photography. It was an amazing exhibition and really useful to see, particularly in terms of how the photography was displayed.

In fact I enjoyed it so much that I went twice. Once on my own and once with a friend.

There is a new exhibition on which I would love to go and see, sadly it's in Durham. Which is a bit of a trek. So wether I get there will be debatable.

The exhibition is by a photographer I really respect Chris Steele Perkins, a Magnum photographer -

A summary of Chris Steele Perkins quoted from the following website :

The award-winning Magnum Agency photographer, Chris Steele-Perkins came to England in 1949 when he was two, the son of a Burmese mother and English father. Remarkably calm and unprejudiced, he was uniquely qualified to chronicle England's evolution into an ethnically diverse society. Not that his aim in his England, My England anthology was to produce a sociological survey; instead, his collection is a kind of antidote to the rose-tinted myths peddled by the tourism industry. You won't find pomp and circumstance here, no Changing of the Guard, or a Henley Regatta. You will find people that you'd cross the street to avoid though.
In concentrating upon "everydayness and how that can be special" he unflinchingly records the absurdities, the pleasures and the tragedies of English life, invariably with wit and humour.
A University Gallery touring exhibition.

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Ten images to reflect upon

Select Ten images

My tutor asked us to pick ten images so that we might group them or categorise them in class.

I never thought that what should be a relatively simple task turned out to be so tricky.

I'm not sure why, maybe it was because I was trying to pick quite different images as requested.

Or maybe it was because I was trying to pick images that meant something to me. Either way I spent a long time mulling over which images to include.

I also decided to include 1 of my own images. Something that the 1 or 2 other students did also. We were then asked in class to separate the images into 4 different groups

• Frame

• The thing itself

• Viewpoint

•

This proved a tricky task as well, as it quickly became clear that several images worked on many levels. I guess that was the purpose of the task though. To show that some images worked on one level, while certain images worked on many levels. Which in turn made them more successful.

As usual one of the students decided to challenge theses ideas (frustrating as usual) rather than listen. Luckily for me my dealings with this person are fairly minimal now.

It was a very interesting lesson and it will certainly make me consider how I view or read my own photography & that of others.

It is clear that the skill of reading photography is an important one which needs developing further. Deconstruction of images is something that all photographers need to develop in my opinion.

Here are the images that I picked :