Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Weekly Artist Post

David Williams 
David Williams is great at framing his subjects with light and color. In all three portraits I believe he employs a smaller aperture or higher F-stop in order to achieve a deeper depth of field. This brings out the detail in the colorful items that help frame the subjects. In all three of the images he places the subjects near the middle of the frame so the viewer knows what the main focus is and this also leaves more room around the subjects to frame them with light and color. You can see this done beautifully in the first image. Here we can see how the blue and red objects in the kitchen have formed an almost perfect rectangular frame around the subjects.  This can be seen again in the second image where the tan objects have created a perfect triangular frame of the subjects. Lastly, you can tell from the first and third image uses the corners of objects to point to his subjects

            Conceptually, I think he did chose to do something that breaks stereotypes. He is going against the crazy cat lady stereotype by showing men in what seems to be their natural settings or as I like to call them, “man caves” with their cat or rather, their companion. I think it’s interesting because popular culture tends to associate cats primarily with feminine friendship. David Williams set out to challenge that idea, potentially even changing the perception of culture. This is something that I find very intriguing and even professor Rocheleau has said it is something we should all strive to do.  I can see how doing something like this can become very relevant as many people can relate to the fact that they’ve never heard about crazy cat men.

            As a male who owns and really cares for his cat, I appreciate what David Williams has done by making these pictures. Sure I don’t see myself as a crazy cat dude but I must admit I am crazy in love with my cat. I really admire how in the second image you can see how the man’s life is a mess of with his own hygiene products, clothes etc. mixed with the cat’s litter and litter box (feline hygiene products). The way each image is made helps me see the companionship and sense the connectivity between the man, his cat, and their shared environment.

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