Personal Study

Max Carter

U3

Tim Barber

Introduction

I have been studying Tim Barber's photos, one shoot in particular which is my favourite and what I am going to focus on, this shoot is 'Destroyers' a fashion shoot for Nike for one of their Varsity Jackets. The shoot focuses on a group of skaters, riders and just mates hanging around New York. I have chosen Tim Barber because I like how he presents the Urban feel in his photo's, it's laid back and natural, it doesn't look set up like a lot of fashion shoots do. I really like the way he composites some photos, he sometimes put's two together and separates them with a white line, and usually these photo's go really well with each other, it's fairly unique, and interesting when done correctly, I will be using this technique in my photos. He also shoots in Black & White, with fairly high contrast to make it stand out more. I think he has made a slight impact into the fashion/sport genre, for example he doesn't always concentrate on the Jacket that Nike are trying to sell, it seems he concentrates more on the people wearing it, it makes you want to learn more about them. From his work I will use the split techniques he uses and the way he composites his photo's and the black and white photos.

Biography 

Tim Barber was born in 1979 In Vancouver,British Columbia and grew up in Amherst,Massachusetts, but he now lives in New York City. He used to be the photo editor at Vice Magazine and co-curator of the 2008 New York Photo Festival. He also runs the online gallery and image archive tinyvices.com, where visitors can submit their photographs. Tim has also curated and edited a series of five artists monographs that were published by Aperature Foundation in 2008. He has launched an independent publishing house, TV Books in 2008 and directed a three part music video for the New York band A.R.E Weapons in 2010. But for his photography work he has shot for brands such as Nike, Urban Outfitters, Stella McCartney, Woolrich and Opening Ceramony, and has shot editorial content for the magazines Muse, Twin, The Journal, Elle, Vogue Homme Japan, Marie Claire, and Dased & Confused. He is represented in the UK by Webber Represents and the US by 1+2 Management.

Photo's In The Style Of.

Image Analyse

Shoot: Nike Destroyers

Year: 2010

Untitled

This is the first photo I am going to analyse from Tim Barbers 'Destroyers' shoot for Nike. I'm first drawn to the right frame of the whole photo, The guy on the left has a strong face, the slightly angry look he is giving is effective and stands out, It's shot in Black and White and is high contrast, and I also think it was shot in digital as it is very sharp and detailed, especially the ripple in his jacket. The left photo has a stalker look to it, as it's been shot through a chain fence and the guys aren't paying any attention to the camera, or haven't noticed it, it's slightly voyeristic, it's like we shouldn't really be watching them and makes you feel uncomfortable. The way he has framed these two photos together, they are both vertical but I'm not sure if they compliment each other (a bit random) Even though they are random and I feel like they don't compliment each other it still works, and it's difficult to explain why it does.The genre is fashion, but not in a typical fashion such as a photo studio with models posing etc, It feels natural, and the Urban feel is what I would like to recreate in my photos, from the way they are dressed and what they are doing. They can be separated  with foreground and background, left half the fence would be the foreground and the guys would be the background, I'm not to sure about the depth of field though. For the right half the guys are the foreground and the background is clear, it's also a shallow depth of field as they(the foreground) are in focus. As said before I am first drawn to the right side scan there and then I am drawn to the voyeristic feel to the picture on the left. I don't he has used any other lighting equipment it seems like the lighting is just natural, however the lighting on the photo on the left is very soft on their faces, the lighting looks to be coming from the left. I think for the last photo it would of been a large f stop and a quick shutter speed to make the chain link fence blur out.

Untitled 

This is the second photo I've chosen from the Destroyers shoot to analyse. The rider is the subject and my eyes are drawn to him straight away, this shot is also In black and white and I think it's digital. The rider is high contrast yet the background is low contrast, not sure if that has anything to do with depth of field or it's because he did something throughout photoshop or something similar to make the rider have higher contrast. The foreground and background are pretty obvious. As said before my eyes are drawn to the rider and then each individual building. I really like the New York backdrop/skyline. It's a fairly large depth of field because the skyline is in focus,If it was a small depth of field the skyline would be even more blurred.The horizontal composition helps with the skyline, seeing it has a skyline in the genre is both landscape and fashion.

Urban Festival Shoot

This shoot was at the Urban Festival in the grafton car park,  It was an afternoon which had opportunities to try various sports, such as flatland BMX,Breakdancing and street football. I went to focus taking pictures of the breakdancing and the breakdancing.

*Possible Finals

Breakdance Shoot

I did shoot using influences from two of my photographers, Tim Barber and Carlo Cruz, the breakdancing element is inspired from Carlo Cruz and the Black & White and the split are inspired by Tim Barber. I would like to focus on portraits/fashion and the sporty/dancy side of things, to include both, which is why I incorporated to split.

Contact Sheets

Test Edits

These shots are similar to Tim Barbers style, he loves to use black and white and the way he composites his photos is something i tried to recreate

Formal Elements

The Formal Elements Are:
Form
Line
Shape
Space
Texture

Form
Form is how you define the object you are taking  a picture. For instance, with human form i might be how the person is postured on how well the outlines of the body is impressed upon the picture. Another example would be standing next to a tall building & taking a photo looking straight up.

Line
Line is a regular pattern that joins together a number of elements of the image, that line doesn't have to be straight, the strongest images often include lines that are curved. The power of the line comes in its ability to capture the eye and direct how it scans through an image. The nature of the curve is important - a line curving into the image is always stronger than a line that curves out of the image.

Shape
The way subjects connect to each other in a photo forms shapes that draw the eye from the subject to the subject. If the photo composition lacks shape,then the photo becomes too busy and awkward to appreciate. Some shapes are more effective than others in providing an interesting frame for your photo. For instance,squares and circles tend to be too symmetrical and leave too much empty space around the subjects. The shapes that work best for composition are triangles and diamonds. Triangles can be from in different ways such, if your subject is already triangular or diamond-shape (like a pyramid), the viewers eyes will automatically focus on that shape.

If your subject is already triangular or diamond-shaped (like a pyramid), the viewer’s eye will automatically focus on that shape.

Carlo Cruz- Breakdance Photography

Carlo Cruz

Image's To Analyse

Tim Barber

Shoot: Nike Destroyers

Year: 2010

Untitled

This is the first photo I am going to analyse from Tim Barbers Destroyers shoot for Nike. I'm first drawn to the right frame of the whole photo, The guy on the left has a strong face, the slightly angry look he is giving is effective and stands out, It's shot in Black and White and is high contrast, and I also think it was shot in digital as it is very sharp and detailed, especially the ripple in his jacket. The left photo has a stalker look to it, as it's been shot through a chain fence and the guys aren't paying any attention to the camera, or haven't noticed it, it's slightly voyeurism, it's like we shouldn't really be watching them and makes you feel uncomfortable. The way he has framed these two photos together, they are both vertical but I'm not sure if they compliment each other, a bit random. Even though they are random and I feel like they don't compliment each other it still works, and it's difficult to explain why it does.The genre is fashion, but not in a typical fashion such as a photo studio with models posing etc, It feels natural, and the Urban/Street feel is what i would like to recreate in my photos, from the way they are dressed and what they are doing. They can be separated  with foreground and background, left half the fence would be the foreground and the guys would be the background, I'm not to sure about the depth of field though. For the right half the guys are the foreground and the background is clear, it's also a shallow depth of field as they(the foreground) are in focus. As said before I am first drawn to the right side scan there and then i am drawn to the 'stalker' feel to the picture on the left. I don't he has used any other lighting equipment it seems like the lighting is just natural, however the lighting on the photo on the left is very soft on their faces, the lighting looks to be coming from the left. I think for the last photo it would of been a large f stop and a quick shutter speed to make the chain link fence blur out.

Untitled 

This is the second photo I've chosen from the Destroyers shoot to analyse. The rider is the subject and my eyes are drawn to him straight away, this shot is also In black and white and I think it's digital. The rider is high contrast yet the background is low contrast, not sure if that has anything to do with depth of field or it's because he did something throughout photoshop or something similar to make the rider have higher contrast. The foreground and background are pretty obvious. As said before my eyes are drawn to the rider and then each individual building. I really like the New York backdrop/skyline. Im guessing it's a fairly large depth of field because the skyline in in focus, not completely, If it was a small depth of field to skyline would be blurred.The horizontal composition helps with the skyline, seeing it has a skyline in the genre is both landscape and fashion.

Tim Barber Interviews

YouTube Interview

This is about his online gallery Tiny Vices, he created a physical gallery for Levi's using photographers from his online gallery, he asked them to send in photos which have something to do with New York. He thinks its satisfying to take it out of the computer and put it on a wall.

Tim Barber Interview-Urban Outfitters

How did you get interested in photography?
I've been into it since I was pretty young. There were a lot of photo books in my house growing up and I was always obsessing over them. I started taking photo classes in 9th grade and have been basically studying it ever since.


What's the weirdest thing you've ever photographed?
That's really hard to say because there are so many degrees of weirdness. I photographed Woodstock '99, where all the riots and violence happened...that was pretty weird in a kind of ugly way. I photographed a Luna Moth with a macro lens once, right up in its weird furry face. I have a photo I took at my friend's farm of a goat riding on the back of horse! I worked for Vice Magazine for a while, and shot some pretty bizarre things for them over the years, like a guy partying wearing only an chicken carcass. Stuff like that.


What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen?

I've seen UFOs a few times, and a ghost once, but those are like normal weird things. I watched the Twin Towers get hit by airplanes and then collapse from a few blocks away. That was pretty weird.


Ok, the UFOs—discuss.
The first one I saw was over a field in the middle of Amherst, Mass. the town where I grew up. I was probably around 11-years-old. They had outdoor movie nights in the summer, and I was laying on my back not watching the movie and a bright white, wide blur of light flew right over us. No one else saw it though, so maybe I was having kid hallucinations.

The second UFO I saw was actually just the smoke trail from a UFO. It was the summer of 2005 and I was in the dessert outside of 29 Palms in California (where we shot part of this UO catalog!). I was traveling with Ryan McGinley and a bunch of friends on a road trip, and the sun had just set behind us as we were driving down the road. I was driving, and in my rearview mirror I saw this huge bright smoke spiral high in the atmosphere. The sun had set, but this spiral was so high up that the sunlight was still hitting it, and it was all the brilliant colors of a California sunset in a past-dusk darkening sky. We pulled over and everyone sat on the roof of the van and we watched as the smoke spiral dispersed and the light faded on it. We were pretty much convinced that it was an alien thing, and that any minute the earth was going to be destroyed or something. It was insane and scary and exciting. When we got back to where we staying we watched the news on this tiny portable TV we had. There were reports of sightings of the spiral from all over Southern California, but no one knew what it was.


What was the ghost you saw?

The ghost I saw was in an old Victorian house in Vancouver, in an area called Strathcona. I had been visiting my friends that lived there, and decided to crash on the couch for the night. There were French glass doors separating the room I was in from the front room. I woke up with a start in the middle of the night and saw the figure of a man standing behind the glass doors, just kind of swaying and staring at me. I was really scared, too scared to even move, so I just sat there, not knowing what to do. Eventually I started to realize that this figure was not scary somehow, that he was just sad. I think in my weird half asleep brain I just kind of came to terms with the fact that he was not a threat, that he was kinda half there, and I eventually fell back asleep. In the morning I told my friends about what I saw and they got really freaked out. They had a small child, who was maybe four, who had seen this man in the house multiple times. They had been so freaked out by this that they had asked the landlord about the history of the place, and he told them the previous tenant had shot himself in the head with a shotgun in the room that I saw the ghost in. There had even been a blood stain on the ceiling when they had moved in!


So the ghost was scarier?!?

For sure!


What's the weirdest thing you've ever done?

I drove across the country once by myself. It wasn't that weird, but what happens in your mind when you sleep sitting up and only talk to gas station attendants for four days is pretty weird.


What makes one photo good and another photo bad?

There's no real answer to that question, there are too many variables. A good photo can go bad if the context changes, and vice-versa. I think generally speaking, my favorite photos are ones that intrigue me, that make me wonder and ponder and conjure.


How does your commercial work differ from the work that you do for yourself?

The commercial work has a very specific subject and audience in mind. My personal work I make for myself, and what I'm looking for and looking at is always changing.


What advice would you give to photographers who are just starting out?

Shoot a ton, look at every photo book you can get your hands on, don't be easily satisfied, and take full advantage of the things that you have unique access to, whatever they may be.


Who is the most interesting person you've ever photographed?

Oh, I don't know... everyone is interesting for different reasons. I recently photographed the artist Robert Irwin, who's 83, and he was really interesting to talk to and to meet. I didn't know too much about him before the shoot, so I watched some lectures he had given on his work and process and I was really blown away by his perspective on things.


What was the most fun thing about the recent Urban Outfitters catalog shoot you did in Los Angeles.

We rented a beautiful red 1965 Plymouth Valiant convertible to use for the shoot, and I got to drive it all over L.A., and then out to the desert. It was like driving a boat, very soft and floaty.


What's an average day like on a UO shoot?
Wake up early to try and catch the morning magic hour. Run around to different locations, always shooting all the time, on the way to and from different places. We always have a very specific plan, but we also like to be spontaneous, so it's always a balance. I always forget to eat until late in the afternoon and there's always a mad dash at the end of the day to make it to somewhere specific for the sunset. Lots of coffees and coconut waters and good music!


How do you develop a concept of what the catalog will look like?

It always starts with ideas from Joanna [the UO art director], and then we just brainstorm and look at reference images and come up with ridiculous ideas. So much of it depends on the casting and locations, so a lot of thought goes into that stuff.


Where's your next trip?

I'm going back to L.A. actually, to shoot a fashion story for the magazine Muse.


What do you usually order from room service?

Cheeseburger, salad, Stella.


What makes you want to photograph a particular person?

It's hard to describe, but more that anything it's a certain kind of energy. Sometimes you have to work with the person for a while before you find it, but if they got it, they got it!


What kind of spaces/environments are you interested in?

I like them all! That's the fun part of being a photographer, the challenges of new and different surroundings. And often times the best stuff happens in the worst situations, like crazy weather or bad light. You are forced to get creative!

Similar

I tried to take a photo similar to one of Tim Barber's (Below) I am going to recreate it as it isn't the same, at all. But the idea is there. So I just made the similar photo's Black & White. Shame I don't have a great skyline to work with near me.

Action Sequence's

Two examples of my Action Sequences from the flip pictures. These are created on Photoshop using a collection of the burst photography. It's a bit fiddly but I thinks it's worth it for the end product.

 This was the first attempt and I think it worked well, it was tricky as I didn't have a tripod so photoshop aligned them so that resulted in there be gaps in the full picture, which is why it is cropped. But I like how it shows the motion and run up to landing the flip, it's nice to show the whole thing instead of selecting just one of the photo's.

The second one I had more photo's to work with as it was a longer burst, which is a problem as it is a bit 'full' to much happening, it would probably be first to delete some of the layers so there isn't so much going on. once again no tripod, so had to crop the whole photo.

I will certainly use this technique again as it reminds of a flip-book and it looks good.

A few Freerunning Photo's

I took a few photo's of me and my friend training, I took a lot of burst photo's so I could create some action sequences, and also trying to take nice sharp photo's of them in the air. I still need to practice and get the right settings but the few photo's I got I think aren't bad.

Contact Sheets

Round 2

Carrying on with the B&W theme. I added some noise to the photo below, a little less than before, this was another with the speedlite.

 I decided to try a three way split and I like how it's turned out, I also decided not to include the faces of the subject and to focus on different areas of the photo's, I think the split helps you to focus on the separated areas, more to look at.

Another split but I decided to show the faces of the subjects, these two photo's together creates some emotion between the two.

Photo Edit Examples

Here are a few test edits on three of the photo's to show what I may do with them, Following the style of Tim Barber.

 The first edit I made the photo Black and White and added some noise into the photo through photoshop to give it the effect of an traditional camera, some of Tim's photo's has some slight noise into the photos so I decided to recreate it. I'm not to keen on this style as the photo's don't look as sharp.

 The second edit was simply Black & White, I did this as I wanted to see what the photos would look like without the noise added. I prefer to have the photo in just B&W with the contrast cranked up than adding the noise. This was one of the photo's with the speedlite, I like how it lights up the subjects face and will probably experiment with this alot more in the future as it creates some interesting photo's depending on the angle and direction of the speedlite.

The third edit was two photo's together, I cropped each individual photo and separated them with a black line, I really like this style and will continue to use it and experiment with it, Tim also uses this in his photo's and it certainly has an impact.

Photoshoot.

My first photoshoot was shot in a forest down my road, I'm still taking influences from Tim Barber so a bmx was included. While there I experimented with the speedlite to lighten up my model and darken the background in some shots, some shot's are off myself, in which I used a intervalometer, as my model had to leave. I will re-shoot with a friend, instead of having me in the shot.

Contact Sheets.

The Photographer's Gallery- Burtynsky

While in The Photographer's Gallery I mainly look at the work of Edward Burtynsky, Who travelled the world and discovered the effect of oil has on all our lives, and the reveal the mechanics of its production and distribution. The Majority of Burtynsky photos are of an aerial view so the viewer can clearly see the surroundings, I feel it is done so the viewer has lots to look at and discover within his photos. And I presume it is done when there is allot in the frame

The like the above photo of the aircraft graveyard at AMARC in Arizona, as he has managed to fit allot into frame, from the foreground to the background there is lots to look at, this photo is a part of the 'The End of Oil' section. It shows that aircraft's have such a short life and once it's over they are left to sit and possibly used for scrap so the cycle can begin once more.

The image below seems like he's tried the Tilt Shift effect, to make it seem like a toy model. This is of an oil spill in the gulf of mexico, He's managed to capture the panic and make it seem tranquil and calm, the rainbow which appears in the mist helps with that. This photo also brings up the problem oil can cause, and Burtynsky has been able to capture it and show it to us.

The photo is apart of the 'Extraction' section, the photo shows the oilfields in California, the landscape is filled with thousands of pump jacks extracting from the oil wells, the image shows how much the landscape can be affected, it's dominated by man and machinery, and this is just one of many oil fields in not only america but the world. He had two photos side by side which created a great panoramic, it was dull, yet interesting at the same time, the browny yellow colours of the terrain and machinery made it sort of blend together, but the vast amount of pump jacks and cables is what made it interesting.

Overall I enjoyed The Photographer's Gallery and Burtynsky's work, he managed to bring oil's life cycle to you, and present the problems it can create and the affect it has on us, and the extents we go to to retrieve it.