History of Photographers 15 & 16

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy was a well known Hungarian painter and an outstanding photographer. He created the Light Prop or Electric Stage which advances the art of photography dramatically. This allowed more light to create shadows in photographs that added depth to photos. Moholy-Nagy moved to the U.S. later in his life and lived in Chicago where he ran the New Bauhaus. 

I like Moholy-Nagy's photos because of all the light that is shown in them but I dislike the lack of activity going on in the photos. The only thing going on in this photo is the one ma hanging out of the window and he isn't even the main focus of the photo. The photo just seems odd to me and in a blank sort of way. I just don't like or understand it. 

This photo I like because of the angle. It's taken as if he was laying and hanging over these people whose photo he captured. I like that you can see the shadows and that it doesn't give you that same dry feeling the picture before does.  I also like the contrast of the three people wearing the bright white hats while the rest of this picture is very grey and dark. 

Once again this photo gives me that dry odd feeling that I don't like. The entire scene is too weird, the man's leg over the edge almost as if he is dancing to his death. The photo just gives me a feeling I don't like and the light is too bright and perfect making the viewer think that there is something bad happening with something pretty trying to distract you from the bad thing. It's like it's tricking you, it's an illusion. 

Andre Kertesz

Like Moholy-Nagy Kertesz is also a well know Hungarian photographer. He contributed greatly to photo composition and photo essay. Kertesz never felt that he got all the appreciation he should have for his photographs. He spent time in both Hungary and France where his most well known images were taken. In his free time he liked to photograph street people including gypsies and local beggars. Today Kertesz is receiving the recognition he so much deserved when he was alive. 

Kertesz took this photo "Circus," in Budapest and it's one of my favorites. I like that the light is soft and doesn't strain your eyes anywhere you look. I also like that you can't see their faces, giving the illusion are they looking at the circus or are they the circus? As you've probably guessed I adore photos with double meanings or long background stories so you can see why this is one of my favorites. It has great symbolism ad is an over all great image.

This is one of Kertesz's most famous photographs but I am not sure how to feel about it. It's very simple, it's just a fork which in a way makes it abstract which is interesting, and the shadows are very good as well. Overall this is a great image but I can't sense any meaning behind it which makes me feel like the photo is lacking substance. 

 

I like the shadows in this photo and how small the people look in this photo. This photo shows how much smaller human beings are and how we can make things so much bigger and stronger than we are. I like this picture because it's from a high up angle that you wouldn't see normally. I also like this photo because each one of those people probably don't know they are in a famous photograph, they have lives of their own they are worrying about all of those small dots have a different life and different thoughts. It's amazing that this can all be captured in a photo. 

History of Photographers 13 & 14

Edward Weston

Edward Weston is considered to be one of the most influential photographers of all time. The 40 years he spent on photography paid off, he had a very modern approach to photography, mainly photographing items he found intriguing, still lifes and nudes. His most famous photos are the ones he took of the trees that surrounded the town he resided in California. He only stopped doing photography when he developed Parkinson's disease and could no longer work. He worked in many different photo studios before finally opening his own in 1911. In 2010 two of Weston's photos were ranked as some of the most expensive photographs sold. 

This photo called "Nautilus" is famous by Edward Weston. I like this photo quite a bit because of the plain quality it has. It's just a shell and yet it is still an interesting photo. It takes talent to be able to make such a plain object look like a piece of art. I also like how the shell is darker around the front and not as light as the rest of the shell. Its something about the way the shell looks that makes this photo interesting.

I also like this image taken by Edward Weston. It's odd and unique and gives a weird feeling to whoever observes it. Weston takes extremely unique and weird objects and photographs them in such a way that it makes them look intricate and unique. I like that he is able to create art out of such strange objects.

 

This photo is entitled "Inspiration" and is my least favorite photo by Weston. I feel the name has no deep hidden meaning, what could a crushed vegetable have to do with inspiration? Weston has taken his weirdness to the very next level and I think it is a bit too much for this photograph. 

Lewis H. Hine

 Lewis Hine is mostly known for his use of photography when trying to help change child labor laws and social reform in the United States. Hine studied sociology and photography and learned to combine both to help people in need. He photographed many different working places with many different working conditions all to make sure that working people were treated correctly and to expose companies that were not treating their employees as such. In the Library of Congress there are over 5000 photographs of social reform taken by Hine alone. He is kind of like the original Mike Carroll, using his photography to help people in need.

I have mixed feelings about Hine's photography. His photos are all brilliant in certain ways but they are more documentary photographs than ones taken for artistic purposes. The photo here doesn't hit a nerve when looking at the blank faces of the people traveling to Ellis Island, it doesn't make your heart skip a beat. The photo is merely a moment in history showing little significance.

I like this photo because it can be interpreted many different ways considering the angle of the man when he is turning the lever. To me this man looks curled as if he is in an almost upright fetal position. This gives the impression that this man has been a mechanic all his life and this is where he is most comfortable. The photo is taken carefully and everything is crystal clear in this image, yet another reason why I liked it. 

This photo could have been so much more spectacular if the lighting was only a few shades lighter. The man's shadow also obscures the view, though maybe this was meant to be artistic. The picture just looks funny to me and at an odd angle which I don't like. This is perhaps my least favorite Hine photo because of the potential it had. 

History of Photographers 11 & 12

Edward Curtis

Edward Curtis is most known for his photographs of Native Americans and the American old West. He built his own camera when he first became interested in photography and used it for quite some time before purchasing a professional camera. He started  his own studio with a few of his close friends/colleagues.President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to photograph his children after he saw that Curtis won a photo contest. He had many studios in his lifetime, he left his first one and started a new partnership with someone else and soon left that one for his own self appointed studio in California. The photographs he is most known for taking are portrait style photographs of Native Americans.

This photo called "A Smokey Day at the Sugar Bowl" is my favorite photo by Edward Curtis. It's different from the photos he usually takes, its not a straightforward portrait, it's a beautiful scenic photo. It still sticks to his style of the old west and Native Americans because of the Native standing by the river. I think this gives the photo and even better effect because of the man standing and looking off into the distance, it gives the photo an eerie effect, but not in a creepy way, more like a cold feeling like you are actually there in the early morning fog on the river.

This is defiantly one of my favorite photos by Curtis.The view in the photo is astonishing and the men on horseback add to the effect of the vast empty space that the old west was. Whenever you watch movies where the setting is the Old West you almost always have a shot like this. When you think Old West in your head the image of horseback riders and a tall canyon immediately comes to mind.

  

This is an original portrait called "White Man Runs Him" by Edward Curtis. This is a typical straightforward portrait that Curtis was known for taking. I like portraits because they show the true person in the photo, no interpretation. It's just a person, facing the camera and being this close to the camera they can't hide anything. The camera reveals them and that's what I like. There is no smoke and mirrors, everything is legitimate.

Gertrude Kasebier

Gertrude Kasebier was an American photographer who shocked the world with her amazing pictures of motherhood, Native Americans and her fierce belief that woman could take beautiful photographs. Her unhappy marriage inspired some of her most famous masterpieces. She believed that photography was made for women with artistic taste and made it one of her most important goals, to make sure that every women would be able to be a photographer if they wanted to. 

 

This is a photo taken by Gertrude Kasebier titled "Miss N" and it is one of my favorites. There is a mysterious quality to this photograph that one simply cannot put their finger on. It's because of the look on Miss N's face that Kasebier captured; it can be interpreted many different ways. One could say that she was told a joke and smiled slightly, or maybe she's thinking a bittersweet memory, the reason behind the sadness in her eyes. That's what makes a photo great, the story it creates. 

 

This photo called "Blessed Thou Art" has a chilling quality about it. The way the child looks, dressed all in black when everything around is white and bright. Perhaps the reason the child is seen as a darker figure is because Kasebier did not like her husband, and felt the children were a piece of him. She constantly stresses the bond between mother and child so maybe the picture shows that even though the child has a bit of evil in it, it is still her child and she still loves her. 

Once again in this picture "The Clarence White Family in Maine" the mother and children are seen to have a noticeable connection. In the white light the mother looks almost like a holy figure and the boys are entranced by her. Kasebier was very influenced by the connection that a mother has with her children and this shows in many of her photographs including this one. 

Mike Carroll - Hand Held

Mike Carol was a fantastic photographer and this is shown in his movie "Hand Held" about his time in Romania and the experiences he had there. He has taken many photographs of the orphans there and many of these photos showed Americans for the first time what the conditions were like in Romania for an orphan child. Back when Carroll visited the orphanages the conditions were horrific. Baby's were lined up in metal cribs, nameless and forgotten. No human interaction went on between the workers and the babies because of the get of them growing to attatched. The orphanages were a nightmare, the children were lucky to survive them at all.


Today in Romania the orphanages have come a long way since then. The children live in much better conditions and adoptions have increased dramatically since the revolution. Children now are dressed in clothes and have much more human interaction than before. Still the human interaction isn't the best but it is a big improvement from before. The children in the orphanages are also getting to experience foster homes which they didn't have a chance to before. There are also a lot less orphans because women are not forced to have five children anymore. Many Romanian families adopt children and give them loving homes.

 

History of Photographers 9 & 10

Eduard J. Steichen

Eduard J. Steichen was an American photographer who immigrated to the United States from Luxembourg with his parents when he was a small child. He was a well known photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair Magazines. He was first interested in drawing and painting and gradually opened up to the idea of photography and bought his first camera. Some of his photography friends and him eventually formed a group called  Milwaukee Art Students League and hosted lectures about art. His most famous photograph is "The Pond- Moonlight" which is shown below.

This may be Steichen's most famous photographs but it is not one of my favorites. The composition is too dark for my liking and though the reflection is clear in the pond the edges are blurry and dark. This photo doesn't appeal to me, it's too dark and dreary. 

This photo called "Isadora Duncan in the Parthenon, Athens" is my favorite by Steichen. I like that you can see the detail of the posts beside her, the grittiness of them. I also like how she blends into her background, the only light in this picture. I like that he caught the shadows of the pillars on the ground in front of her and that you can see the light between them. 

This photo is titled "Experiment" and I have mixed feelings about this photo. I like the different colors that have been exposed in the photo but I don't like the gritty quality of the photo. It makes the photo look more like a painting than a photo and I don't like that, I think he should differentiate between his painting masterpieces and his photography masterpieces. His shouldn't incorporate that much of his other skill into his photography. I enjoy the color but the clarity could have been clearer. 

Walker Evans

Walker Evans is most famous for his photos that document the Great Depression. He is known for using wide format for all his photos. He took photos for the Farm Security Administration for quite a while after he campaigned for the Resettlement Administration. Evans stayed with three different families and took photos of them during the Great Depression and it was published in the famous book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

I like this photo by Evans because of the bright quality it gives especially on the house. Everything else is shadowed beside the main house, making it the subject of this photo, and it makes the house look even better. The contrast between the dark and light is especially important in black and white photos (at least to me it is) and this photo tells me that he took the time to find where the light was and how it would affect his photograph as a whole. 

I like this image by Walker Evans as well. This is from his well known collection, Subway. I like this because although there are two adults in this photo the child is the main focus of the photo. The woman's face is shielded by a newspaper and the man's face is only somewhat in the frame. It's interesting how he noticed this and took the picture. The child's face is also the brightest and we can see the whole face. It's almost as if Evans is saying that children have nothing to hide, but some adults do.

I like this photo because the image is distorted, yet it still remains to be a beautiful photo. You can see reflections on the glass and this blocks our view of the men eating lunch but it doesn't ruin the photo. The reflective surface merely adds to the illusion of the photograph. I like it also because its a simple photograph. It's just two men eating lunch and one of the looks like he is in the middle of a conversation. Yet the simplicity of the scene merely adds to the somehow glamorous effect the photo gives. 

Near and Far Pre Assignment

I'm looking forward to starting this assignment because after researching Ansel Adams I fell in love with his work. I like his landscape photos and I look forward to taking some of my own. Gloucester has so beautiful geography and this is a great opportunity to find a landscape and photograph it. I'm sure I'll have a lot of photos of the ocean for this assignment!It's also interesting to learn what parts of the camera help you take a successful landscape photo and I look forward to referring to the videos posted on the main blog in case I need help.

Shutter Speed Self Assessment

4. I like that my images came out pretty well (though I am not impressed by my third image of the coin) while the subjects were in the air. I like that my photos show that I understood the assignment and tried my best to succeed. I liked that this assignment was a challenge and that I was able to succeed and take some good photos.

5. On the first two photos of this assignment I had no problem because I used the professional camera available to us in class. When I was taking photo's of spinning coins I had my own Cannon camera which is not as professional as the ones used before (it's a small digital camera). Taking the photos was harder using my camera and I wasn't able to focus as well. Next time I'll be sure to use the cameras in class or try harder in learning about my camera and how I can use it to do assignments involving shutter speed.

6. To improve my images I could has focused the camera more (especially the coin one) and had it not so blurry. Once again it was difficult using my own camera to do this assignment. Next time I will defiantly be more careful with focusing on the subject of the photo.