I just found out about a really neat site: Thumbtack. It allows you to post information about your business, and it helps you post to craigslist and other sites to help generate business… always a plus when working for yourself. So, if you have a business, you might want to check it out.
To take a look at my Thumbtack listing for my photography services, go here…
It seems I haven’t had time lately to do any inspiration posts so here goes…. One of my favorite photographers – one who I draw inspiration from – is Clarence Sinclair Bull (1896-1979). He was fascinated by photography at a young age so he moved to Hollywood to pursue his interest. He was lucky enough to be hired as an assistant photographer at Metro Pictures where he was able to shoot stills of the stars during production breaks. He later became head of the MGM stills department and was the sole photographer of Greta Garbo for around 12 years. His images of her are soft, romantic, and beautiful. He and George Hurrell pretty much invented celebrity photography as we know it today. Let me share some of his images with you…
To see more images by Clarence Sinclair Bull, click here: Art of Illustration
Aren’t they gorgeous? Ah, that old Hollywood glamour feel.
It’s time for a look at another of my favorite photographers… Robert Doisneau. As you might be able to tell from the name, he is French. His photos are light-hearted, romantic, and beautiful. His favorite subject seems to be children playing. He was born in Gentilly, Val-de-Marne in 1912. His first photo story was published in Excelsior–a French magazine– in 1932. He was drafted into the French army, and he continued his photography there. He also worked as a photographer for the French Vogue from 1949-1952.
This is his most famous photograph. It was originally thought by most to be a candid shot of a random couple, but it was actually two actors that he convinced to pose for him. Regardless, it is hard to deny the beauty of the image.
On a website dedicated to him, I found this… “Robert Doisneau, one of France’s most popular and prolific reportage photographers, is known for his modest, playful, and ironic images of amusing juxtapositions, mingling social classes, and eccentrics in contemporary Paris streets and cafes. Influenced by the work of Kertesz, Atget, and Cartier-Bresson, in over 20 books Doisneau has presented a charming vision of human frailty and life as a series of quiet, incongruous moments. He has written: ‘The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.’”
So… I thought it would be nice to let you know a bit about some of the photographers who have influenced me. I decided to start with Ed Westcott, the only photographer of Oak Ridge and the Manhattan Project from 1942-1946.
I should probably start by saying that I was originally introduced to his work while I was working at the B. Carroll Reece Museum on the ETSU campus as a student worker. We were lucky enough to be approached about having an exhibit of his work, and I was the student who was chosen to put together the flyer for the exhibit. Because of this, I spent some personal time with his images. My favorite thing about them is the fact that he used very careful posing to make the photographs look as natural as possible. Take a look at this photo as an example.
You can see how natural this looks, but he was careful to position everyone so that he could get the full story in one image. Also, he has everyone in the image involved or active in some way. Obviously, not every image he photographed was able to be set up in this way, but many were. Here is probably the most famous of his photographs.
As D. Ray Smith, a writer for The Oak Ridger, has said, “Ed’s photographs are more than a documentary of our history. They are an artistic statement by a rare artist who has created a body of work that can be increasingly meaningful to future generations. Without Ed’s photographs we would be hard pressed to comprehend the magnitude of the Manhattan Project, much less tell the stories of the workers who lived here.”
Although my images are very different from his, I find inspiration in the beautiful imagery he has captured and preserved for us.
