David Bailey - Michael Caine Write Up

David Bailey - Michael Caine

David Bailey – Michael  Caine

This image of Michael Caine taken by David Bailey in 1965 inspired me to take photography seriously and showed me that photography is more than just a photograph. I first came across this image when I was studying my ND in photography course at Exeter College. I fell in love straight away with the tone and shadow use which accentuate his face details and how Bailey had used certain props and facial expressions to create a character within the image. The purpose of the image was used to promote Michael Caines new film ‘Alfie’ where he plays an English stud. The plot behind the story is that Alfie (Michael Caine) takes advantage of pretty much every woman he encounters, but as a result of that is eventually left alone. The unrepentant ladies man gradually understands the actions he takes in life are leaving him a lonely soul. There was a remake of the film in 2004 with Jude Law playing the famous character of Alfie. In parody, David Bailey was commissioned to remake the image of Michael Caine for the release of the film. If you had seen David Baileys work initially then you can most certainly relate the two images together and understand the link, but for someone who hasn’t seen Bailey’s earlier work then the image alone might have just been a promotion to the film. The magazine subsequently won ‘best cover of the year’ award and I can understand why. I love black and white photography and I know that’s a biased why to say I love the image but it’s not just that it’s black and white, I love the shadows and tones used which you can’t achieve in colour. With all these tones and harsh shadows it creates this powerful, prompt figure that looks hierarchy. All this was inspired by the original 1965 image, which looking at them together you can clearly see the simulates between them both.

David Bailey - Jude Law

My personal opinion on the original is highly rated, and I myself try and incorporate some hint of evidence that I am influenced by Bailey’s work in my own work. The portrait itself at the time was a revolution, because Bailey used to cut the tops of heads off in his work. For me and for many others I’m sure you don’t even initially notice it but it leads your eye straight into the face of the model. Certainly in this image the black suit contrasting with the white background and the white shirt with the black tie all lead inwards towards his face. The subtle gradient across his face make it the only part in the picture that has tone and shadow which gives the face a 3D structure and detail. This was achieved by harsh side lighting from the left, maybe flashing slightly upwards towards the model. The loud dark shadows on the right side of his face show a masculine and dominate portrait which describes the role of the character accordingly. The props and clothes used also represent the ‘Alfie’ character to a tee and the target audience can understand the link between the film and this portrait. I feel that the cigarette balanced on his lower lip gives him a sense of control and masculinity to be able to look down upon people. This relates well to his role in ‘Alfie’, even though the composition looks like its slightly looking down on the model, you still get a sense of strength and power in the image because of the lighting and props used. Normally to make someone look hierarchy in an image you shoot them from below, but interestingly enough Bailey has done the opposite but was still able to achieve a masculine approach to the final print. I think overall this is a very iconic image in photography and it’s been put down in my personal collection of all time greatest photos ever taken. 

Photographer Interview

Gus McEwan

I arranged an interview with Gus McEwan who is a close friend of my step brother back in Exeter. We agreed to meet in a local cafe place in Exeter city centre called Bostons.

Gus is a 35year old professional photographer living in Exeter Devon, but works in Vauxhall, London for a company called Storm. Storm is a big fashion company dealing with top models such as Kate Moss, Cindy Crawford and Eva Herzigova. Whilst being one of Storm’s photographers, Gus said he only uses that as a part time job. His full time job is actually a MoD scientist in Exeter. Gus told me that even though being a scientist is his main full time job he finds that half of his income is still from doing part time jobs in photography. I asked Gus why he doesn’t just do photography as a full time job, ‘surely you’d earn more’. Gus replied ‘I worry about the environment to much to put my full devotion into photography’. He began to tell me that the environment is in a bad state and couldn’t focus on photography or committing himself fully to the creative industry whilst knowing that he could be helping with the environment.
I asked Gus how he got into photography and where it all started for him. He told me that his granddad was his main driver for photography. He began to tell me the story of how his brother got an air rifle for Christmas and Gus got a camera at the age of 14. He also told me that his granddad used to invite him to race days when he used to drive formula1 cars and when his granddad used to win races, he'd tell the press he didn’t want any photos apart from his grandson, Gus. This is where it all kicked off for him.
After he completed his mandatory education, he went onto study photography in Glasgow doing a 2year Canon degree course at the age of 23. He told me this is where he picked up all his contacts and knowledge into the photography world and eventually got a job through these contacts at Storm.
Even though Gus does portrait work for storm, he loves to photograph architecture work, buildings, stone work etc. All his work he does for Storm is copyrighted to them, so as soon as he takes the image it’s owned by Storm. I personally would find that very frustrating but I guess that’s the way it has to be if you’re commissioned by a client.
Overall I found Gus a very smart, interesting guy with a lot of experience and knowledge about the photography industry. His work and career path is a huge inspiration to me and will influence me in my photography to come. 

Me, Myself and I

This post is a short overview of my background of photography and my inspirations that lead me to become a photographer and why I have picked this course to expand onto my career choice.

Why Photography?

Me with my first Camera

My passion for photography all started when I found photographs in the loft of Tutankhamun. After questioning my mum about them I find out that Harry Burton (my mum’s great uncle) was the lead photographer for Howard Carter’s team to discover Tutankhamun, this all started my passion for art.
My mum used to sit and draw when I was a little kid, and my grandad wrote and published a book on air brushing and photo editing. Having an artistic family I soon fell in love with art and couldn’t stop drawing. Art class in school became my forte, I used to love drawing my little toy cars.
 After realising how important the Tutankhamun pictures meant and how impressed I was I soon asked for my first camera. This all kick started my love for photography. After finishing my GCSE’s I went and studied art and design at Exeter College. Whilst enjoying my time there I fully grasped the idea of composition and understood how to frame my image.
Completing that course I moved onto a Nation Diploma in photography at Exeter College. This course gave me the ability to fully understand a camera, experiment with film and was able to use the studios where I feel in love with flash. My time at Exeter College was my initial understanding of photography. I experimented with lighting techniques and composition and this is where I started to be creative with my work. I started to think outside the box and play with different types of lenses and composition. I grew a love for 50mm prime lenses and the way I could get a good quality image and the use of depth of field. Also while studying here I learnt how to develop and process 35mm film. Whilst doing this, i soon realised that having the correct exposure on film is a lot more important than it is on digital, where it’s just a matter of turning up/down the exposure on photoshop. 

Me at Exeter College

After completing my National Diploma at Exeter I applied for an Honours degree at Plymouth College of Art and Design. I felt that this was a big but needed step from Exeter College to be able to carry on my quest to use photography as my profession.  It is obvious that the equipment able to me here will help me to broaden my knowledge and understanding of photography further. I also feel that whilst studying here my list of contacts will grow and will hopefully be able to find work and career prospects in my medium through advisors, lectures and other students. I’m here to for fill my lifelong dream to be an artist and bring my hobby of automotive cars into my career aspects. I feel that by being here and learning all the different types of medium in the photography field, I will be able to prove my abilities in photography and show that off to my clients.

Where I See Myself in Five Years

In the next five years to come I'd hopefully finish my Honours Degree and be heading towards my life long goal to become a professional Photographer. The items in the image above show my goals and inspirations to help me get there. The advertising shot of the Volkswagen car is an area of photography I would love to specialize in. I feel that if you can photograph your hobbies, you will never get bored. Having two things in your life that matter the most (a passion for automotive and photography) mixed together is my perfect career choice. I've put in my business card as well because even though I'm aiming towards advertising I would still like to do small personal jobs that matter to me or my family and friends. The image above my business card is a picture of my girlfriend, I consider her to be a huge part of my life as she has helped me through a lot in past times. The image in the middle is showing my love for portrait. I love portrait photography and would love to try and use it as much as I can into my work, professionally and personally. The image next to this is a picture of Michael Caine taken by David Bailey. I consider this image to be the beginning for me to think profesional about photography by realising that I can turn my hobby for photography into a career. The two cameras represent my photography style. I started off using my Canon DSLR but love the Hasselblad cameras for the pure fact of quality I can achieve from them. I would also say I was mainly a digital photographer, I don't mind touching on film from time to time but my main style is definitely digital. The final image is a map of London, I could never consider London to be home but I feel that in able to succeed in my quest then I will need to move to the capital to get good work. 

Car Photography

Ambient Life

As I have a high passion to be a commercial/advertising photographer and wanting to specialize in car photography I thought this would be a key bit of research for myself. I came across this website whilst browsing my local car forum in a photography section that I moderate. It really opens your eye that you can specialize in your own hobbies and be sponsored by Hasselblad to produce high quality work for clients such as Aston Martin, Jaguar, Land Rover etc. Tim Wallace's work has got me inspired to fully proceed in my quest to become a car photographer and it only takes a quick read through his website to realise that all you need is passion. A good quote from his website was "Be passionate about your product, be inspired by your customers" which I thought was a very interesting quote. Basically meaning

Ambient Life

that if you have a passion about what you're photographing then when you come to photograph the product you will understand what the client actually wants. Having a passion for what you photograph I think here is a key part of getting the correct image for the client.

I plan to investigate into this further and I will emailing Tim Wallace about some kind of work experience or at least get some feedback from him about how he got into his career path.

Website

www.chrizquick.co.uk

My website is up and running now in full swing! Finally got round to sorting it all out and uploading recent pictures. I built my website through a website called Wix which I have to pay an annually sum to be able to use my own domain name and to lose the Wix adverts. Whilst doing all of that, I decided it was about time I finally  got my own domain name. I got the domain name from Network Solutions and cost me $14 a year, which is about £8 for the year. I decided to go for a .co.uk over a .com mainly for the cost of renewal next year and thought that .co.uk easily shows I'm an English photographer.

Business Card

Today I decided to start designing my business card. I wanted something simple but memorisable, something that you will remember once you look at it. I felt that by putting my name a number of times across the card will subconsciously stay in your head and hopefully will be remembered when whoever looks at reminds themselves of my name when they come to think of photography. Although I'm not 100% sure on if want to become a freelance photographer but having my own business card should hopefully start getting my name out.

Art Limited

Today whilst browsing for research I stumbled across this website. Not only was it a fabulous resource for looking at other peoples work and understanding what camera and lens they used but its also an amazing website to use to sign up and get my images on the internet and to get other professional photographers to comment and criticise my work. You can also link your images that you have uploaded on social networking websites such as facebook and twitter.

http://www.artlimited.net/

Marco Bohr

Today Marco Bohr gave a brief hour speech into his photographic work from 2002 to recent. His speech was a vague talk on some of his work for the past 8years. He dipped into parts of his documentary work whilst clearly describing why,where and how he took his images. His work is mainly focusing on documenting the culture and the surrounding people in that culture and how we all do things a different way.

For example his series of work called 'No Ball Games' was a documentary series in Scotland focusing on the surrounding rural areas. He initially went their to shoot the landscape environment but soon realise that its not only just about the landscape, but the people within that landscape, and started to shoot the people in the streets on Scotland. He realised that he saw more kids than adults in this rural area of Scotland so decided to shoot the kids in the street, which gave me a reminisce sense of what I used to do as a child. His composition and camera skills are clearly seen here in these shots. His use of focusing and use of deep of field to focus on the actually subject matter rather than the surrounding areas is seen without his range of photos. Not only his he focusing on the actually subject but he is still able to keep the surrounding background in context. This body of work is my favourite pieces he showed throughout his talk. I loved how he conveyed his documentary idea in his work and the expression on the kids faces just show a deep meaningful sense of pure rural culture. Not only the faces but the clothes and character could be seen within the photographs.

The only other piece of work I found interesting from his speech was the 'Observatories' project he did in Japan. I loved how he purposely over exposed his images by a stop or two to blur out the actual landscape that all the 'observers' where looking at whilst actually focusing on the 'observers' observing. To me it looked comical as it looked as though all these people where just looking at white walls, when instead they where actually looking at a landscape from a tall building. He explained that the culture in Japan like to observe stuff and like to over look places from tall sky-scrapers. He discovered that 80% of all the sky-scrapers and tall buildings in Japan  had observatories in them, which is just a whole top floor dedicated to overlooking the surrounding area. Like previously said, I found this series slightly comical in the fact that they all looked as though they where all looking at white walls when in fact they are all observing the surrounding landscape. He did a series of these from different locations including tops of mountains and edges of the cliffs looking out to sea.

To sum up his work, I enjoyed the documentary in Scotland dearly and being a portraiture person myself I loved looking at his photographs. The way he photographed the kids from a low angle making them iconic structures and almost making them the rulers of rural Scotland in my mind made me laugh a little as he said he only saw kids and hardly any adults therefore the kids ruled the streets which they played on.