Amanda Schaeffer

  Sophia Loren , New York, 1959 Gelatin silver print (wouldn't let me copy the photo)          A portrait photographer that I was drawn towards during our class lecture is Irving Penn. From Penn's portraits to his fashion photos, I feel inspired to do a lot of different commercial work such as Penn does. I also see he incorporates specific poses or gestures in this work. In the above photograph, this image was presented during one of our photography lectures. I find this portrait fascinating and in awe on the amount of detail and what this photo makes you think about. I love the way Penn captures the woman's significant facial features. The makeup look that was done to her eyes, makes them pop more in the photo. Also, the mole on her cheek stands out due to the lighting that was placed on her face. Her lips and jawline also give this photograph detail about the woman's face. The woman's face is the focal point of this portrait, which leads mostly everything...

 Richard Avedon's Quote By: Amanda Schaeffer          Richard Avedon's quote is quite confusing to say the least. I comprehend the first statement of his quote but don't particularly understand the second. I read the first sentence and assume that Avedon means that photography is more opinion based. Anyone can look at a photograph and think what they want about it. I believe that's why he used the word "opinion" in his sentence. Everyone can perceive an image differently. For instance, the above image is one of Avedon's work and it shows a lady jumping/skipping on the road with an umbrella. Many people can take this in as a woman going to work in a city. On the other hand, someone could believe that this woman is going on a date and is skipping happily to the location. I think Avedon's first statement in his quote was stating that everyone has their own opinion or interpretation of a photograph. We all can choose what the story is behind a picture....

  Richard Avedon By: Amanda Schaeffer          The first scene that I was drawn to the most was when Richard Avedon took a picture of Nastassja Kinski with a snake. The picture is beautiful with the snake wrapped around the woman. However, the video gave us insights behind the scenes of this extraordinary picture. If someone would just view this image without knowing the back story, they could easily think this shot was easy to take. Nonetheless, Richard Avedon expressed that it took two hours to get this gorgeous shot of the snake and Nastassja. Avedon explained that it wasn't a simple photo shoot where everything went smoothly. He expressed that Nastassja had to lay on a cement floor for two hours while the snake kept leaving the shot or the snake trainer would sometimes get in the shots accidentally. Finally, the snake crept up her body and kissed her ear when Avedon captured that exact moment.            I fi...

Christian Vogt     Christian Vogt seems to photograph a couple different styles in photography. In Vogt's gallery, he published landscape, portraits, and still life photographs. With his portraits, he is more focused on nudity and being simple. Vogt mostly captures females for his portraits when it's focused on nudity. Although, his male clients he has taken of them were more simple. He also takes full body portraits of men and women with their clothing on and their eyes closed. They all dress in different clothing with their expression. However, his landscape photos are incredible and breathtaking of the views he captures.      For this blog, I thought I pick the portrait that was the strangest to me. Vogt had a section named "closed eyes serious" on his website where I found this photograph. This particular one spoke out to me since there are characteristics presented in this image that we have talked about in class. Primarily, I noticed that hi...

     Former president, George W. Bush was in the White House during 9/11. Even if people weren't alive during that time, we have all grown up to remember and to grief that horrific day for America. President George Bush had to be there for the American people over the loss of lives during September 11th. This photograph seems to look like George Bush was at the spot of the twin towers with his arm over a firefighter. This excellent photograph captures that George Bush will lead this country to a better and safer place. This image captures horror on people's faces during this time. They also show them looking up to their former leader on what to do next for their country. Also, the visuals in this picture speak patriotism. There are American flags hanging up, people's arms raised, and smoke in the background. The power that this photograph brings to this specific event is breathtaking. The photograph brings light to Americans to see their president where the twin towe...

 Susan Sontag "Images which idealize (like most fashion and animal photography) are no less aggressive than work which makes a virtue of plainness (like class pictures, still lifes of the bleaker sort, and mug shots)"    (page 4). All types of images are beautiful in their own way. Some images are plain while some are full of excitement and creativity. Although, images vary in all sorts of types when it comes to still life, portraits, or action shots. The statement above is making me reverence two different styles of photography. They are comparing fashion and animal photography to class pictures and still life. I don't think there's any competition with the two styles but more so what people are drawn to more. Some people might be animal lovers and love seeing photos of animals. They might get a warm feeling in their stomach and want to smile on how cute that animal is pictured in the image. On the other hand, someone might like seeing a beautiful still life of fruit...

  Studio Portrait Blog Marco Grob           By viewing Marco Grob's photos, you can see his style on how he takes portraits of celebrities. Grob's work is about detail and key characteristics of people. When I view his gallery, I can see the finest detail of people's wrinkles on their face, their facial hair, and the fabric of their clothes. The amount of detail and focus Grob gets by taking photos is astonishing. He can also get the details of a person's emotions. In some of his work, celebrities are crying, yelling, or remaining serious. Those key details of a person's face really gave me an awe factor from his work. Besides the tremendous focus of detail that Grob captures about a person's face, he also seizes to take pictures of characteristics or sentimental things of what that person is wearing or holding. In some photos, people are holding birds, umbrellas, instruments, or a piece of jewelry that they were wearing. Grob really foc...