Report on historical photographer Yousuf Karsh

My last historical photographer is Yousuf Karsh. He was an Armenian-Canadian Portrait photographer which lived to a grand age of 93 but sadly passed away in 2002. His portraits were mostly in black and white and spoke more words than the average book. People say that his portraits tell the story of whoever is present in the photographs from the slight details in their posture, a gesture which completely stemmed from habit or even just the look in the eye. It is obvious he has total control in how he wants the portrait to appear from the biggest to the smallest detail. Like Ansel Adams he played with contrast to get the desired effect and mostly used blank background which in my opinion makes the portrait even more focused and developed but also used a normal background but still achieved a great effect. I think using a blank background makes what the photographer is trying to achieve a lot clearer in its own way. Hopefully the next time I take portraits I can look back at his work and just look at the small details of his photos and see what makes them so great to try and direct it into my own work.

Report on historical photographer Ansel Adams

My first historical figure I'm going to write about is Ansel Easton Adams. Anybody that's ever done photography knows of his existence. His brilliant photographs of landscapes mixed with his amazing skill of working with contrast using creative darkroom work made his photos absolutely spectacular. In my opinion I loved his landscape work the most. The way he manages to create a scene in a photo in which having just black and white showing more raw emotion that colour ever could is incredible. Even though a lot of his photographs are shot very long distance, the detail in it manages to stay crisp and clear and not lose focus. As he ages their was no loss in quality either. Every photograph he took was very well done and never declined in quality. Using contrast in a black and white photo is a brilliant idea and I certainly hope to try this in my own work at some point

Report on contemporary photographer Karen Knorr

The second contemporary artist I've chosen is Karen Knorr. An artist based in London and her photography jumped out at me because it mostly consists of exotic animals in man-made, posh settlements. Just the idea of having a tiger in your bedroom is brilliant! She does it with many different animals in different places and what looks like focusing on how they react to their environment. The animals and background are sort of both the main feature since they both pop out which I imagine is very difficult to achieve in such a fashion. It's almost like she is trying to show the viewer that even though the animal looks like it's in a strange place. That place could of once been the same species of animals habitat hundreds of years ago. So in a matter of fact they are returning home. The colours are all very potent and strong and jump out but all work very well together which would take a lot of thought and preparation. Something I will have to learn to do in order to achieve this desired effect in my own work.

Report on contemporary photographer Matthew Brant

The first contemporary photographer I've found interesting is Matthew Brant. He has a rather large set of works called 'lakes and reservoirs' which I took great interest in for many reasons. One of the reasons being the way he soaks a lot of the photographs after taking them to give them an explosion of colour and almost a slight surreal look which really intrigues me. It is definitely something I'd like to try in some of my own work to give it the same or effect. He take the photographs at long distances while keeping the main attraction in the middle, in this case the lake or reservoir. On the other hand some of his other works called 'Dust' Are the opposite in the way that instead of a natural surrounding he chose to photograph derelict buildings and edits them to give them a black, white and hazed feeling to it. This technique could be used in photos of buildings for my own portfolio since it has such a great effect.