Group Task - Studio Lighting and Analysis - Tom, Riley, James

Studio Lighting and Analysis

1. The class will form 7 groups of 3. Each group will be assigned a photographer from the following list - David Moore, Roger Fenton, Adolphe Meyer, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston, and Paul Strand.

2. These photographers all represent objects and still life compositions in their photographs, using light and shadow to describe the form of an object. In groups investigate examples of how your assigned photographer has used light and shadow in their still life works.

3. In your group have a collaborative discussion, analysing how your photographer's use of lighting and composition has achieved certain effects. Consider how different lighting and composition communicates mood and atmosphere. Does it create a sense of mystery or disorientation? Does it use silhouette? Does it describe form? Where is the light coming from? Is the light hard or soft?

4. Individually select a still life work by your group's assigned photographer. Choose a work that uses light in an interesting way - a way that you could use in your own work - and write a paragraph discussing the work, it's lighting, mood, and how you think it was achieved (minimum of 50 words).
Post this on your blog along with the photograph you are discussing. Remember to include a citation for the photograph.

1. The artist that was chosen was Paul Strand.  

2.  The artist Paul Strand uses shadow and light to contrast the outlines of shapes. The photographs that Strand takes boasts the shadows as they are elongated and the dark sections of the composition stand out the most, imposing the powers of uniformity and anonymity. Strand deliberately destroyed perspective to build a powerful composition from tonal planes and rhythmic patterns. He combined realism and abstraction is his photographs of landscapes and close up of rocks and plants. In doing this, he achieved a synthesis in a style he described as organic realism.

3.  The american artist paul strand had a long and productive career with the camera. His pictorialist studies of the 1910s, followed by the coolly seductive machine photograps of the 1920s, like the contemporary work of Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped define the canon of early American modernism and its premium on elegant print. Experimenting with Charles Sheeler, Strand then pushed further in describing the movement of the city in the short film Manhatta (1920). In the 1930s he became seriously involved with documentary film and, from the 1940s until the end of his life he was committed to making photographic books of the highest quality. After 1950, when he relocated to France, landscape, architecture, and portraiture (the traditional humanist genres) continued to inspire Strand to embody the spirit of his subjects in the very materials of the photographic print. The high regard for his mature work suggests that he succeeded in his goals, and that his standards of excellence and his constancy of subject answered very human needs in a century of radical change.

4. Write a paragraph discussing the work, it's lighting, mood, and how you think it was achieved (minimum of 50 words).

The natural light source was facing the composition from the front right, has a hard light and this made the white in the subject brighter, gave the darks more contrast and also gave a shadow to one of the bowls that can be seen in the middle of the composition. The composition contrasts the dark colours with the bright white bowls, This gives the composition a very gloomy, yet bright feel. I think that this photo was achieved with a small aperture, high shutter speed and low iso. The photo was taken inside, close up at the bowls and pears. The studio lighting was facing straight on the subject matter, this gave the bowls contrast and made the apple and other dark objects, darker. This subject has a white bowls which contrasts brightly with the darker objects. and applies to the 30-60-10 rule as the bowl.

Citation:

Collections.vam.ac.uk. (2016). Still Life, Pear and Bowls, Twin Lakes, Connecticut; Paul Strand the Formative Years, 1914-1917 | Strand, Paul | V&A Search the Collections. [online] Available at: http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O190914/still-life-pear-and-bowls-photograph-strand-paul/ [Accessed 19 Sep. 2016].