Photography Art FA 382: Magazine Final Project Example
For a person who has no background in photography, taking pictures might look simple: you point at the subject of interest and then you press the button. In reality, however, photography overall and the tools photographers use in their work are a lot like fine art. These tools include the proper use of lines, shapes, color balance, contrast, subject placement, lightning, foreground and background balance, focus and image processing, just to name a few. Selecting a proper camera lens and supporting hardware is equally important as there are often different setups needed for different situations. All these elements of photography, when used properly, allow photographers to fully communicate their message and leave a lasting and powerful impression on the viewer.
In this photography project, I would like to put an emphasis on three elements, namely High Dynamic Range (HDR), view point, and color usage. HDR is an amazing photography technique which has recently become easy to utilize thanks to the advances in digital photography and image processing. With HDR, a several images of different exposure levels are taken in a short period of time, which are then combined to produce a single image with a high dynamic range of luminance, similar to what a human eye is seeing. In contrast, some details are always lost in shadows and highlights when HDR is not used. The view point is the position and angle from which a photo is taken. Because cameras shoot in two dimensions, the correct choice of the view point is very important. One scene may look completely different depending on that choice. The last, but not least, is color usage. Colors have drastic effects on the way humans perceive things, and they are also able to evoke different emotions. For example, blue is a calm color, and our eyes relax when looking at blue objects, thus making them appear less sharp. Red color, however, stands out a lot and draws attention. There is also the color wheel, in which the colors opposite from each other help create contrast while the ones close to each other give a more calm and mellow feel to the image. A proper use of colors can make a photograph memorable and immersive.
After my research, I have selected two photographers who, in my opinion, use these three tools masterfully. One is William Eggleston. In his photography, he chooses to capture the mundane and the ordinary. His pictures show how the proper use of viewpoint can help to transform an ordinary scene into something interesting. Combined with his use of colors and HDR, it results in beautiful and captivating images made from scenes that are hardly interesting at the first glance. The other photographer is Richard Misrach, who captures different combinations of natural and industrial landscapes. His use of colors is remarkable, though most of the times they are subtle and mild. His view points are also on spot. He is able to …
