Two Portraits: Fine Art v.s. Editorial

Alfred Stieglitz:

I like the simplicity of this portrait. It is in black and white, and there is a simple black background. There is a lot of emotion and it is an expressive photograph with the model's facial expression and hand gestures. There is high contrast between the model and the background, which emphasizes the model. The model was Georgia O'Keeffe, his wife.

Annie Leibovitz:

I like how this portrait incorporates Adele's profession, music, into the photograph. Adele is framed in the center of the photo. The colors are muted and dark, and Adele's facial expression is sad, which gives the portrait a pensive mood.

Katja Rahlwes for Flair Magazine

I like the cool tones of this photo. The portrait is for a makeup editorial. Through the contrast of light and dark tones, her eyes and fingernails are emphasized. The photo also leaves room in the corner for text. Her eyes add a pop of color.

Nylon Magazine Mexico, Fall/Winter 2015:

I like how there is no text on the magazine cover other than the name of the magazine and the name of the cover model. There is also a limited color palette of white, slate grey, dark brown and black, which gives the portrait a more edgy, less bright and cheerful tone. The magazine cover was for Lana Del Rey's Honeymoon album, which fits the edgy portrait.

The fine art portraits are made to showcase emotions and the model as a work of art. The editorial portraits are made to showcase a product or a celebrity that will make someone buy the magazine and/or the product. The editorial portraits often are more simple, as there needs to be text added in later.

Depth of Field and Abstraction

A. Abstraction is a lack of representational qualities (aka subjects from life). Abstraction in photography is when there is no clear identifiable object, or an image that "does not have an immediate association with the object world" (Wikipedia).

Bruce Barnbaum

Barbara Kasten

Wolfgang Tillmans

Depth of field is used mostly in the photo by Kasten, as she focuses on the mirror in front, leaving its reflections blurred. It enhances the photo by making it more mysterious and breaking up some of the harsh lines. Barnbaum does not use much depth of field because there is no real background for his photo. It works in his case because he fills the frame with his subject, and his subject has dimension through different light values, and appears to be 3D because of this. In Tillman's photo, the upper left side is blurred, which softens the image and adds contrast to the darker lines, as well as abstracting the photo, leading us to be unsure of what the subject really is.

B. Shallow Depth of Field:

Still Life: Sascha Grosser

Portrait: Pal-Nils Nilsson

Natural Landscape: Christopher O'Donnell

Framing

Leading Lines - Michael Reyes

Rule of Thirds - Arjun Purkayastha

Strong diagonals - Pierre Metivier

Bird’s Eye - Jeffrey Milstein

Bug’s Eye - Sarah Dyptich


Close up - Mike Moats


Frame in a frame - Barry O'Carroll


Filling the Frame - Haje Jan Kamps

Motion

Part One:

1. Panning

Rajaraman Sanjeevi

2. Slow motion

See-ming Lee

3. Freeze action

Tom Smith

4. Total motion

Hipsto Toresk

5. Effective use of camera shake

Rick Gustafson

Part Two:

Aleszja Popova

Used the total motion technique. 

Rodrigo Buas

Used the freeze-action technique.

I think the total-motion technique is more expressive of the emotions of the ballet dancer, but it also hides the dancer's elegance of posture and movements, as it is all muddled. I think the freeze-action technique is a better way to capture the beauty of ballet.