Alex Koloskov

I was thinking about ideas for my independent studio project for craft and decided to look at some more commercial photography. I came across Alex Koloskov who is a commercial photographer, originally from Ukraine, but now living and working in Atlanta. Here's his website and blog. I am thinking of doing something along the lines of food or product photography for my project so that I can work more with lighting setups and making things look good and I think it would be easier to work with inanimate objects. Here's some of the work that I like:

I like his use of color and how he makes dynamic images out of something just sitting on a table. The objects seem to come more "alive". He also makes some interesting shapes in how he organizes the positive and negative parts of the composition.

Joel Meyerowitz

A photo I took of Joel Meyerowitz while he was talking to our class.

Since we ran into Joel Meyerowitz at the "Pioneers of Color" show yesterday in NYC, I figured it was only fitting to blog about him. Plus, that was the gallery I enjoyed the most. And looking at his website now, I realize that I've seen it before, but I don't think I put together who it was exactly. It's nice to know there are people out there still using film, and Joel seems like a genuinely nice person. It was wonderful that he stayed after his talk to talk with our class about his work. That was probably a once in a lifetime chance we all had yesterday; we got lucky running into him. I think it's great that he still has that passion and is still working. He really has an eye for color and catching the moment. On his website, I especially like his World Trade Center Archive. Meyerowitz should be appreciated for documenting such an event, and he got some pretty iconic images from it. He was one to stand up for American history and he did a wonderful job of it.

We saw this one at the show!

Steve Mulligan

Steve Mulligan is a landscape photographer based in Utah. He has been working on a few different projects, in different parts of the United States and Canada, and has a few books published. I like that he gets to travel to different parts of the country to make his images. He has a great eye for color. His photos are ones that I would hang in my house, they have peaceful imagery and are nice to look at. He also gets some really cool reflections in the water in a few of these, which I might have to think about for my project.

Alec Soth, Craft blog

I was looking on wikipedia for photographers who use large format cameras, and Alec Soth is one of them. I've heard his name before, and seen a little of his work, but I never really looked at his images. I picked a few that I really liked from his series, "Last Days of W". The imagery is pretty simplistic but still enjoyable to look at. I also found some of his portraits interesting because they are more of the unconventional portraits rather than a head-shot style. Here's a link to his blog where he talks about all kinds of things.

The diagonals formed by the staircase really make this image work. I also really like the pattern and repetion of the steps themselves. Another element is added by the broken glass, it makes you question why the window is broken.

This is beautiful to me. It appears to go on forever and the muted colors make the image calming. I also wonder what that building is way off in the distance.

This one is just funny to me. I love the juxtoposition of the ice-cream cone and the cigar; it's like the man is still a child at heart. I also see this as a sort of portrait of this person, just a glimpse of who they are because I'm not sure one photograph can capture who a person really is.


Lastly, I like the division of space in this one. Dark on the bottom, light up top, but also by the curtains and window panes. It's a simple subject, just a window with some sort of star flag or something in the middle, but the light in this image makes it something else. It comes through the curtains beautifully and really highlights the shapes of the curtains.

Andreas Gursky

I picked Gursky off a list of photographers names said in photo class and it was a good pick. I find his work very interesting and it's something I could look at for a while. There are a lot of little details in his images so you can really explore the photograph. I like his use of pattern and repetition; everything just seems to keep going on forever. It offers a lot of unity to his work. His pieces become something different when you get up close. From afar, they just look like patches of color, until you get close and you see they are people or windows. Here's a link to an exhibition he had at MOMA.

Annie Leibovitz

So pretty much everyone knows Annie Leibovitz's work, and maybe it's stereotypical for me to search her work, but I still like what she does with her portraits. I think some of her fame comes from the people she photographs; everyone recognizes who is in the pictures so they associate the Hollywood star with Leibovitz. Many of her portraits that were magazine covers have become somewhat iconic, but I like the feeling her work has. A lot of her portraits have a different feeling and they do something unusual. I like that they aren't straight ahead portraits; they are more playful and now what we typically see from Hollywood stars. So I like to get to see a different side of these people.

Jodie Otte

Since I took some portraits of my neighbor's children this weekend, I decided to look at photographers who do that sort of thing and I came across Jodie Otte. I was just looking up child photographers and clicked on a link for Maryland since that's where I'm from. I think it's nice that some people can specialize in maternity and baby photography. Otte does do some older children and teens as well. I just know that I had a hard time getting the kids to focus on me and look at the camera while I was taking pictures, so she must really love this and have a lot of patience. I think I got some cute pictures of my neighbors, and I had fun doing it, but I think there was a bit of ease since those kids are used to me taking pictures of them and they just ham it up for the camera. I imagine it would be a little harder if the kids didn't know the adult sticking a camera in their face, it could be a bit scary. But of course everyone wants tons of pictures of their kids so someone has to do it. There were some pictures on her site that paired a color photo with a black and white one of the same child and I thought those were particularly nice.