Photographer Assignment

William Eggleston

Book Ideas

Pops of color around the city:

I will wander and discover recognizable and unknown parts of New York City paying close attention to where vibrant color is alive. I hope to capture bright and electric color within nature, architecture, clothing, and more. Also, I will manipulate my images to bring out the contrast and saturation within the photographs. This will help to enhance the resemblance of color through my images. The color may also be visible through contrasting colors in the environment.

Home:

Throughout New York City I have some places I find I spend the majority of my time at. The locations I will focus on are: East Village, Upper East Side, Brooklyn Heights, West Harlem, Chinatown, and Jersey City. These diverse and different areas are close in proximity but not in culture or environment. I hope to capture the essence of how it would feel to be in these locations. I will capture photographs the eyes can easily see as well as more unusual perspectives. 

Assignment 4: Composition

Line

ISO: 1600 Aperture: 5.6 Shutter Speed: 1/800

Shape

ISO: 1600 Aperture: 10 Shutter Speed: 1/800

Repetition 

ISO: 1600 Aperture: 25 Shutter Speed: 1/800

Contrast

ISO: 1600 Aperture: 9 Shutter Speed: 1/800

Texture

ISO: 1600 Aperture: 9 Shutter Speed: 1/800

Rule of Thirds

ISO: 1600 Aperture: 14 Shutter Speed: 1/1000

Complementary Colors (Blue and Orange)

ISO: 1600 Aperture: 18 Shutter Speed: 1/500

Monochromatic Colors (Black and White)

ISO: 1600 Aperture: 7.1 Shutter Speed: 1/800

Assignment 5: Exhibition Review

I visited the Staley Wise Gallery located in Soho to view David LaChapelle’s exhibition of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” The Gallery was on the third floor of a multipurpose office space building in a small suite. The suite was small and had white wooden floors to match the white walls. The exhibit was in the shape of a “Z”. It had three turns which created more wall space to display artwork. All of the artwork were photographs of various sizes. The smallest were around two feet by one foot and the largest were around four feet by five feet. The photographs were evenly spread out on the walls allowing consistency and clarity while viewing. David LaChapelle is known for the unusual trust between himself and his subjects. He mainly photographs extremely famous celebrities such as: Elton John, David Bowie, Dolly Parton, Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Hillary Clinton, and Courtney Love. He is interested in displaying the obsession society has with public figures and the absurdity of fame. The consistent subject matter of his photographs are the celebrities themselves. Through the objectified person his subject reveals the infatuation society has with fame. LaChapelle’s use of vibrant and creative use of color is the main component of his form. The way he manipulates his photographs he creates bright, color, almost neon images. His style is very unique he also shoots photographs of celebrities in a colorful scenarios which may seem comical at first. By simply viewing his work one can create the internal context that he has a large interest of manipulated portraits of public figures in odd and unusual circumstances. Through research I gained external context that David LaChapelle made his name by photographing famous celebrities for advertising purposes. Eventually he hated the process of working with celebrities and making this type of work. He moved off the grid and joined a nudist colony swearing to never photograph celebrities again. Today, he found an outlet with his talent of shooting public figures but distorting our expectations and showing the negative reality of fame. Personally, I have never seen photographs of celebrities in such bizarre circumstances, therefore I do not believe his photography can compare to any other photographers. While viewing, I found some of the situations the subjects were in to be funny until I looked deeper into the reason and purpose why some of them were put into these circumstances.

The photograph I will evaluate is “Courtney Love: Water 2” which was taken in 2007 of Courtney Love. The subject of this photograph I believe is to demonstrate how Courtney Love feels suffocated and drowning within the confines and pressure of fame. The Subject matter is Courtney Love herself. The Form of this photograph uses color very lightly. The water is blue with a white light in the far distance and the subject and other items are a darker shade of blue and black. The artist left a lot of negative space available on the top of the image and the content is confined to the lower half of the photograph. The style is dramatic and allows the viewer to almost imagine themselves the situation underwater, but the bizarreness of the objects with her do not. From viewing the photograph I can internally see there is a person I assume to be underwater drowning or escaping from something. Through my research of Courtney Love I gained that she had a rough experience growing up. She has been in juvenile prison and tossed around her two parents in different states. What stood out to me in this photograph is that it was one of the only ones the subject’s face was not visible, it was underwater, and the use of color was the tamest. I was interested how the artist was still able to evoke the same emotion from me in the tame photo the same if not better than the large and vibrant photographs.

I thought the show as a whole was quite interesting and thought provoking. I really enjoyed how the photographs presented the recognizable concept of fame but altered the experience into something I have never seen before. All of the photographs had a full emotional reaction to me which was complete in each experience. It varied from a comical instant reaction which sometimes changed to a negative reaction when I looked further into the work. I think the author was trying to express the absurdity and obsession society has with the idea of fame. I definitely agree that he fully achieved this objective through his work. The photographs put celebrities in unusual and sometimes impossible situations which clearly translated a vast majority of internal feelings. Something which surprised me about the work was the trust LaChapelle had with his subjects. At the exhibit they had two of his published books on display which I also skimmed through and I am interested on doing more research about this artist. Overall, this was an eye opening experience that there is so much art on display in the city and I look forward to taking advantage of more opportunities like this.