Unit 57: Photography and Photographic

Practice Research of other

photographers work

Photographer:

Yousuf Karsh, (December 23, 1908 – July 13, 2002) was an Armenian-Canadian photographer, and one of the most famous and accomplished portrait photographers of all time.

Photographer:

Sir Cecil Beaton (January 14, 1904 – January 18, 1980) was and English portrait photographer, known for his photographs of very famous people.

Photographer:

Nick Brandt is an English photographer who photographs exclusively in Africa, one of his goals being to record a visually poetic last testament to the wild animals and places there before they are gone at the hands of man.

Examples of photographs

Examples of photographs

Examples of photographs

Cecil Beaton is known for his photographs of very famous people, such as Pablo Picasso, Winston Churchill, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, Barbra Streisand, the Queen and many more.

His photo’s convey the famous person at their most intimate, getting the photo’s that not many other photographers could. This is because he built a reputation as a trustworthy person who was very good at his job.

The Marilyn Monroe photo proves this point to a tee. It looks as though she is naked, only using a towel to cover up. She is happy, biting on a flower, even if she doesn’t look as glamorous as everyone was used to seeing her. The main thing is that she is happy, and Beaton was able to capture the pure emotion of Monroe, rather than a perhaps feigned smile on the red carpet in her best dress.

The photo was taken in 1956, just as Monroe was finding international success as an actress, model and singer. This, I believe, was the perfect time to take her picture as it was taken in between her stages as a young struggling actress to a ill woman ravaged with personal problems and drug use before her early death just 6 years after this picture was taken.

CompositionCecil Beaton chose to include a medium shot of Monroe,

with the most focus being on her face even though it is not a close up. The medium shot is a good technique for doing that because it shows off the face really well without making it the only thing you see. You still have half of her top half of her body, as well as a prominent background and of course the flower she is holding with her teeth and hand. He has chosen to exclude the rest of her body because I feel her

wanted to capture the pure emotion on her face, rather than only seeing it from a larger distance if we had her whole body in shot. If he had zoomed out, we would have seen her body, and what she was or perhaps wasn’t wearing in

this instance, as it looks like she could be possibly only wearing a towel. I could be wrong but the background looks like a cupboard, so that is another reason why it might have been better to not zoom out any further as a cupboard isn't exactly a great background choice unless it is zoomed in

like it is. Maybe though, the photo didn’t crop out the cupboard as, like mentioned earlier with her genuine smile,

it makes her seem more normal and happy with a conventional object. This would be better than, for example, Monroe stood in front of a Rolls Royce as that would show

off her fake emotions by trying to corporate herself with materialistic possessions.

Techniques used

• Think shutter speeds, rule of thirds & depth of field, show oher examples of the photographers images and describe their style

Strengths & Weaknesses

• What you do and don't like and how it can influence your work