Emma Cotter - Style Paragraphs

Style Paragraphs

Joel Meyerowitsz

Joel Meyerowitsz is an American street, portrait and landscape photographer, born in the Bronx. Joel attended Ohio State University where he studied art, art history and medical illustration. He began work as an art director for an advertising company, but quit in 1962 after being inspired by Robert Frank's work. That same year Joel became an advocate for using color film, and after switching between black and white and color, in 1972 he permanently converted to color film. Around the same time, Joel began to teach photography at Cooper Union in NYC. In the early days of his photography career Joel used a 35 mm camera and color film, where he would capture street life in NYC. Being born in the Bronx, Joel says that he learned to understand the comedies and tragedies of human behavior, and he became very interested in human observation, which he said is the heart of his work. After developing his photography style Joel switched over to large format photography and began to use an 8 x 10 deardoff field view camera with a wide-field Ekar lens of 250mm. He enjoyed this lens and camera because it makes the image feel how we see. Meyerowitsz typically photographed horizontally and he used the horizon line to find the “local vertical”. He also used a small aperture to keep everything in the image in focus. He liked to use natural light and he used different times of day to make the images feel different. He was described as a magician using color and was known for capturing a decisive moment in his images.

Steve McCurry

Steve McCurry is an American photographer, freelancer, and photojournalist who was born in Philadelphia. Steve studied at The Pennsylvania State University, where he planned on majoring in film and cinematography, but graduated with a degree in theater arts. His interest in photography sparked when he began photographing for the Daily Collegian. McCurry’s photography career took off when he traveled to the Pakistan border where he photographed the bombed homes and towns.To get the images back he had to sew the film into his clothing and work in a disguise. After his photographic success, he began to focus his work on armed conflicts, like war. It was not the war he wanted to focus on, but the toll that the war had on those who inhabited the land. He wanted to show unguarded, raw moments. He wanted to create images for his viewers so they could feel what it felt like to be in the situation of his photographs. To make his work easier, he switched from using color slide film to digital capture in 2005. Although he preferred the transparency film, digital made it easier to work in the field. The majority of his work are horizontal images, but not entirely. He also mainly uses a small aperture to keep everything in focus, but there are exceptions. He also likes to photograph very personal and up close portraits, when he works in this style he uses a large aperture so only the subject is in focus. His images are not planned and natural light, or light from the scene is used, no extra light is used. Although Steve has been awarded many titles, etc. he was criticized for the manipulation of his images. Steve says that his images are a work of art and he would sometimes remove people and other elements to better tell his story, but now he was focusing on editing them lwss and keeping them more natural.

Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams was an American photographer and environmentalist born in San Francisco. Ansel was a very hyperactive child and continuously had to change schools, at one point he was withdrawn and studied at home for two years. After a long process he finally graduated high school and was able to pursue his passion for photography. His love for art began when he was 12  and was given his first camera before taking a trip to Yosemite National Park. He cared deeply about the environment and he became the president of the Sierra club and he worked as a technician for Kodak. He became a very large advocates for environmental conservation and his photographs became centered around that. Most of his images were taken in the American West. Ansel was a deeply religious person and felt through nature and the natural world, he could connect to God. He said that God gave us the world and he wanted to take photographs that he thought showed that. The images he made were made using a viewfinder camera, he said this made his images feel larger than life and feel almost theatrical. The pictures he took were of things that he felt were special. He also built a platform on the top of his car to give his images a different perspective and make the viewer feel like they were floating. He liked to use different shapes and scales in nature in his work, like art. His style was high contrast and all of his images were balck and white. Ansel also used a small aperture in his work to keep everything in focus.