Tyler Zheng - Week 8 Artists Post

Alec Soth

In the photographs above, he decided not to narrow the depth of field, so that the environment around these people can be well presented.

To me, his intention is finding the connection between the subject and it's environment around. 

In the first photograph, the barrels & rural environment gives me the impression of the man being a coal miner. 

 Bryan Schutmaat

Bryan Schutmaat would close down the aperture for a deeper depth of field in his landscape photography, and open up the aperture for a narrower depth of field for his portraits. Based on the photographs above, I noticed that he'd often photograph under special weather conditions. Such as the foggy condition in the first photograph, cloudy sunset in second photograph, and then maybe partly sun in the third photograph.

I think that he uses special lighting to create photographs that look unreal. Finding the right lighting + location requires a great amount of patience and thinking.  

His work is probably my favorite among the listed artists. Many of his work give out a sense of sadness - empty landscape, gray sky etc... 

Colin Gray

Colin Gray seems to be using artificial light on the portrait subjects above, which is quite unique. It creates a higher contrast when the natural lights in the background is darker.
I noticed that he'd place portrait subject in an environment that they don't fit in, which sort of creates a different form of contrast.
Most of his work seemed rather odd to me, I can't be certain about what he is trying to express.



Richard Rothman

Rothman shoots in black and white, mostly about trees in the woods. He uses a deeper depth of field to focus and many subjects as he can. 

He'd use lights to differentiate the trees/leaves in different distance.

Most of us see scenes like this fairly often, but we don't usually find them interesting just because of how common they are, but Rothman knows how to appreciate and find the beauty in them.