Emulating A Professional Photographer
Project by Ariana Woodson
For this assignment, I studied Canadian-born photographer Douglas Kirkland and a few pictures from his photo collections. Kirkland started out working for Look Magazine in his early photographing years, and then joined Life Magazine during his 60s and 70s. Many of his assignments had him photographing celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. He also worked on a number of iconic notion pictures as a photographer, including Titanic, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio. Given his penchant for photographing famous figures, classic looks, sensual characters, and sophisticated styles, Kirkland’s work has been regarded as fine arts photography. Indeed, Kirkland’s portraits are mostly aesthetically evaluative, but set himself apart through his intricate combinations of lighting and colors to bring out the subjects of his images. Many of the people he takes pictures of will not be in modern technicolor, but instead have a more vintage look or even be in black and white. In these cases, Kirkland will use soft light with warm colors, hard side light, or black and white with top/side light along with other combinations. Even the few landscape photographs he has taken are wide-angle shots with mostly monochromatic colors all throughout the image. I felt a kind of affinity to Kirkland because I enjoy taking aesthetically pleasing photos, although I have more of an affinity for landscapes rather than portraits. Nevertheless, Kirkland showed me how head-on shots can be varied using different camera styles to make the subject look more natural. He inspired me to look beyond the image the camera gives me and consider how I can alter the image later to best suit the subject.
For this assignment, I studied Canadian-born photographer Douglas Kirkland and a few pictures from his photo collections. Kirkland started out working for Look Magazine in his early photographing years, and then joined Life Magazine during his 60s and 70s. Many of his assignments had him photographing celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. He also worked on a number of iconic notion pictures as a photographer, including Titanic, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and The Great Gatsby with Leonardo DiCaprio. Given his penchant for photographing famous figures, classic looks, sensual characters, and sophisticated styles, Kirkland’s work has been regarded as fine arts photography. Indeed, Kirkland’s portraits are mostly aesthetically evaluative, but set himself apart through his intricate combinations of lighting and colors to bring out the subjects of his images. Many of the people he takes pictures of will not be in modern technicolor, but instead have a more vintage look or even be in black and white. In these cases, Kirkland will use soft light with warm colors, hard side light, or black and white with top/side light along with other combinations. Even the few landscape photographs he has taken are wide-angle shots with mostly monochromatic colors all throughout the image. I felt a kind of affinity to Kirkland because I enjoy taking aesthetically pleasing photos, although I have more of an affinity for landscapes rather than portraits. Nevertheless, Kirkland showed me how head-on shots can be varied using different camera styles to make the subject look more natural. He inspired me to look beyond the image the camera gives me and consider how I can alter the image later to best suit the subject.
Your Photographic Voice
About The Final Project
The goal of my project is to provide a new perspective for looking at everyday life. I purposefully chose seemingly mundane and ordinary things around the area I live and used lighting and different camera angles and viewpoints to present the subject in a new way. For example, the photo of the rocks and grass looks as if it’s a wide open area when in actuality it’s a small pit near my residence hall. The picture of the lone student in the classroom surrounded by desks makes the audience contemplate the purpose of the setting, why he is there alone, and if his expression can help explain his general mood at that moment. The ambiguity of each photo is meant to make the viewer inset their own perceptions onto the image and consider a new angle of something they may have previously accepted as just what it is in their everyday life. Instead of looking at something or someone and seeing what’s only on the surface, look at it from a different perspective. You may see something else of equal or greater importance and beauty.
Course Goals and Achievement
I feel as if I have come closer to one of these goals and achieved the other two. I have discovered new angles from which to take pictures that I feel I can utilize to better convey the overall message I am trying to communicate. I also feel I have come to understand the different ways I can utilize my shots. Everything from lighting to background colors are skills I have come to really appreciate thanks to this course. As for my last goal, which was to learn about different ways I can use my camera to express myself, I don’t feel I have fully achieved this but have instead come closer to achieving it. This is because in learning all of these new camera techniques, I realize that I can’t fully express myself until I determine what it is I’m trying to express. I find myself wanting to experiment and try new things, so I feel anything I tried to express would come out messy and without a coherent theme. I feel as if I need to spend more time getting to know both my camera and myself before I can definitively say that I have achieved this goal.
The goal of my project is to provide a new perspective for looking at everyday life. I purposefully chose seemingly mundane and ordinary things around the area I live and used lighting and different camera angles and viewpoints to present the subject in a new way. For example, the photo of the rocks and grass looks as if it’s a wide open area when in actuality it’s a small pit near my residence hall. The picture of the lone student in the classroom surrounded by desks makes the audience contemplate the purpose of the setting, why he is there alone, and if his expression can help explain his general mood at that moment. The ambiguity of each photo is meant to make the viewer inset their own perceptions onto the image and consider a new angle of something they may have previously accepted as just what it is in their everyday life. Instead of looking at something or someone and seeing what’s only on the surface, look at it from a different perspective. You may see something else of equal or greater importance and beauty.
Course Goals and Achievement
I feel as if I have come closer to one of these goals and achieved the other two. I have discovered new angles from which to take pictures that I feel I can utilize to better convey the overall message I am trying to communicate. I also feel I have come to understand the different ways I can utilize my shots. Everything from lighting to background colors are skills I have come to really appreciate thanks to this course. As for my last goal, which was to learn about different ways I can use my camera to express myself, I don’t feel I have fully achieved this but have instead come closer to achieving it. This is because in learning all of these new camera techniques, I realize that I can’t fully express myself until I determine what it is I’m trying to express. I find myself wanting to experiment and try new things, so I feel anything I tried to express would come out messy and without a coherent theme. I feel as if I need to spend more time getting to know both my camera and myself before I can definitively say that I have achieved this goal.