Emulating a Professional Photographer
- Daniel Tapel
- May 3, 2024
- 2 min read
The best image I think I have from this assignment is this candid I took of my friends working on their engine, which I thought held similarities to this untitled photograph from William Eggleston:
I believe this is my most successful image as there are several aspects within my photo that mirrors Eggleston's. One similarity would be the clothing of each person in my image: one is wearing a black shirt and one is wearing a white shirt, like how one man in Eggleston's photograph is wearing a black suit and the other is wearing a white shirt. The positions of each person in this photograph are also different, to a more extreme degree than the men in Eggleston's photograph. Each image also contains a car with a part of it open, as seen with the hood and the door. While the background of my image does not contain a body of water, both photographs contain trees and a house in the background. The most challenging aspect of this assignment was finding photographs that I had that mirrored Eggleston's work the best. I take a lot of candid photographs, and don't like to fabricate what I'm taking an image of, so my style of photography doesn't really match up with his work 1-to-1. Finding three photographs of mine that I could match up with Eggleston's was a bit tough. In the future, I might create stronger images by pushing myself more to capture at different angles or asking someone if they could stand a certain way in a certain spot.
The rest of my assignment can be found here.
Commenting on Another Student's Blog
The comment I left on Isabella's post is as follows:
Hi Isabella, I think you captured the feel of Friedlander's work in the images you took. The image you chose as your best particularly caught my eye since I walk down this sidewalk to get to campus everyday. I've watched construction on the building to the right progress throughout the semester, so I know this is pretty recent, but your decision to use a disposable camera adds a timely aspect to the photo that makes it feel like it was taken in the same era as Friedlander's image. Well done!
This photo is so similar to Eggleston's image. I like how they are taken from the same angle and you tried to put your own kind of spin on it which is cool.
I feel like your photo emulates Eggleston's image very well. They both appear to have a similar background and environment and depicts an event happening. The two photos also have a similar feel to the viewer. I like how your photograph depicts a different story than Eggleston's and slightly differs in composition as well to put your own style in the photograph while still emulating key aspects of Eggleston's style. One thing I would do differently is seeing how different lighting and angles changes the perspective of the image.