Task 1 photography formats secondary research

This post will help you to understand different applications of photography, In this blog post I will explain four of the most popular photographic formats; fashion, landscape, 

Fashion:

A popular fashion photographer I have chosen to do my secondary research on is Ben Hassett, He trained as an art and landscape photographer but transitioned early in his career to fashion and beauty. Hassett experiments with shadow, light, colour and form and takes almost all of his photos in a studio where he has full control of his lighting. whilst he recently moved from his London home to France to then New York, Hassett works often for Vogue magazines across the world and some of his advertising clients include Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent (YSL), Burberry, L’Oreal, and Christian Dior.

From Hassetts work i have realised that when taking photographs its best to have full control over the image for example the lighting, background and angle of the image. I also discovered that a lot of fashion photographs use basic black or white backgrounds such as the 2 images above. There are many components in fashion photography that make it obvious what type of format the photo is,  for example the models used in the images above are the first clear indicator we see as to what format of photo it is, the poses and confidence the model help draw the viewer to the fashion and shown. The image at the top shows a strong contrast of light with a lot of light coming from the right hand side of the picture, this draws a lot of attention to the red lips of a woman in her early 20's, the classic red lip is a very common symbol to show girls being seductive. Photographs such as this would be very commonly seen in glossy magazines that are aimed towards women in their 20's or just under that aspire to look like the model in the picture.

Documentary:

photojournalism is the art of using photographs to tell a story, this is often seen in news papers or on line articles. Depending on the image used the target audience can be aimed towards nearly everyone, the image on the left shows a small baby from a third world country and was taken by a photojournalist called Senol Zorlu, this particular images would reach out to people who have children, The image shows a baby in a very murky earth toned photograph, the baby has almost a sad expression on his face and would instantly pull in a parents attention.
When looking through photographs i realised that a lot of photos used in photo journalism are for upsetting news story's, the image is used to help capture the emotions and feeling of the story. Particularly in Senol Zorlus work I realised that he uses very neutral and earth toned filters and colours over his photographs which instantly bring an element of sadness to the photograph, he also often has one main subject in the image that is key to the photograph and what its trying to say, for example in the picture above the key part of the image would be the little baby that is wrapped in a blanket.


Landscape 


For my landscape photography research I used a photographer called Michael Molloy who uses different tones and colours to change the atmosphere of the photograph, the photo at the top on the right shows a photo of a purple sunset fading from black to a light pink. The image has multiple trees that look like black silhouettes that stand out against the colourful background. The image is taken from a wide angel and captures the full scenery. The image underneath the photo of a sunset shows a landscape image of a large city, the photograph again is taken so that you can see the whole scene and everything in it. The main part of this picture is the 3 large buildings at the back in the centre of the photo, the two buildings on each side of the large central building are of similar heights and colours which give the image a sense of symmetry. The photo also draws attention to the large river running through centre of the city. The photo has purposely been taken slightly out of focus as you get toward the bottom, this helps draw al lot of attention to the top half and the centre of the image making viewers look at the certain part of the photograph.


Advertising 

photography is used very often in the advertising industry, in the image to the left we can see a photo taken by Jason Mitchell for a company called Nanotherm, the image is in focus and pulls a lot of its attention to the company name written on the staff members lab coat, there is also a lot of focus on the piece of scientific equipment in the top pocket. When researching i realised that a lot of advertising pictures like to keep the colours bold and clear, the photos are usually in full focus of only have the unnecessary background out of focus so that the viewers attention isn't drawn anywhere else.