Comission: The Portrai Issue

The first of the three images I'm analysing is 'Changing Pace, David Weir' by Finlay Mackay. It comes from a set of images commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery and BT, called The Road to 2012, which contains various images of athletes training for the Olympics.

Throughout the set of images, including this one, the use of artificial light is prominent in lighting the subjects of the photo. It makes the subject jump out of the image, even though in this particular picture, he is a very small part of the overal scene. The photographer has taken the model away from the usual training ground of this sport, the track, and instead placed him on a country road surrounded by trees and grass. This could be an attempt to try and show off Englands natural beauty to people from other countries who would be coming to the event. A large depth of field has been used in the image to keep everything in focus. The model becomes the main focus of the image witht he use of a flash coming from the right of the image.

The second image is by Toby Glanville, part of a series of images called 'Actual Life'. The book is a collection of photographs taken around kent over the last 3 years. His style is completly different to Finlay Mackay.

The technical differences are fairly obvious. Glanville uses natural lighting and locations that relate to the models to represent this idea of everyday life. The colours in this image look fairly desaturated, and give the image th appearance of being shot on film (i couldnt find anywhere that stated wether it had or not). The style is more of a documentary style than the others. The other images in this book, and other work by Glanville all share this style, all using natural lighting and carefully chosen locations to show the models jobs. The depth of field is very small in these images, keeping the focus on the subject, whilst throwing the background into a blur.

 The third image is by german photographer Ulrich Gebert. This comes from a series of work showing a man, cutting back some garden hedges. The idea behind the series is to show mans confrontation with nature, and our need to be in control. The use of strong, highly saturated colours used in this image help to show what the model is doing. The bright red helmet tells us that there is an element of danger to the job.

This image is technically between both of the previous 2 images. There is use of flash to light the subject, yet it is much more intimate than the work of Mackay. A shallow depth of field is used, although the background is barely visible anyway due to the proximity of the model. I would say that a atandard or telephoto lens has been used to capture this image, as this would be a dangerous photo to take this close up if the model was actuall cutting the hedge.