studio photography - Ashraf Ali

For my exam I am trying to capture emotion in portraits here are a few of my first pictures i have taken. 

Robert Maschke

Robert Maschke, a German photographer was born in 1979 in Vienna, Maschke worked at various jobs in the media business, but soon felt his true passion and calling as a photographer. He is widely regarded for his expressiveness in artistic people photography. His compositions not only spotlight the magic formula of human emotion, but deepen the distinctive melody of individuality as a very strong core force.

 Robert Maschke – Close

 

The picture close by Robert Maschke shows a black and white portrait picture of an old man. The man takes up 60 percent of the picture with the rest of the picture being background. This picture was taken inside a studio with a man aged around 50-75 years old.  The light source in the picture goes from right to left hitting the man’s check and right eye. The man is looking to the left of the picture with his eyes looking down. This gives me the impression of weakness and failure. The way his eyes are half shut adds to the impression of weakness. The man’s skin shows the visual element of texture, it appears rough and gritty. The overall emotion I get from the man is sadness. The man in the picture isn’t smiling and his overall body language and facial language makes you think that he’s sad and depressed. This is backed up with the dark colours in the picture. Overall I really like this picture. I feel that the man in the picture shows the emotion of sadness well but if I was taking this picture I would position the man to the right of the picture so that there is some space on the left hand side for him to look into.

Lewis W.Hines - The Empire State Building

 

The book The Empire State buildings by Lewis W.Hines show a collections of black and white images of the Empire State building. Lewis W. Hine documented the progress of the empire state buildings between 1930-1931. During this period Hines took more than 1000 images of the construction of the building. Hines produced a number of shots from portraits of the workers to landscape shots of the building.

 

The book shows some of Lewis W.hines best pictures of the Empier State bilding. The book shows 64 images of the building being created. pages 7-23 explains how Hines took some of the pictures in the book and explains his insperations for the project.

 

 

 

One of the first pictures in the book shows a landscape image of the Empire State building after it was competed. The Empire State building towers over the rest of the buildings in the picture and is clearly the largest building in the sky line.

Overall this book is an excilent example of documentery photography. Lewis W.Hines managed to get s ranges of shots. I also like the way he focused on the workers more then the building its self.