Emulating a Professional Photographer
Project by Raquelle Powell
About the Project
For the Photographic Voice assignment, I chose to examine Patrick Zachmann's work. Zachmann's work is very versatile and involves lots of variation. Most of his work has a focus on cultural and social issues, and he has traveled the world to capture various examples of those issues. Zachmann is a member of Magnum Photos and has many projects posted there for exploration. His photos are all examples of descriptive photos and many of his photos are examples of interpretive, explanatory, and ethically evaluative photographs. I tried to emulate different kinds of his photos to show his photographic variation. He uses black and white and colored photos depending on the collection of photos, creating an appropriate feel of whatever is going on in the photo. His work has captured all kinds of major events such as the destruction of Notre Dame. However, he also captured more social issues like homelessness or events occurring in the night, or daily things like highways or walking at night. Zachmann's work helped me see the beauty and realize the life in things that I never considered before. For example, taking a photo of the back of a car on a highway would have meant nothing to me before. However, now, it represents life, daily days on the highway, and the simple fact that the car is in motion. His work inspired me to find meaning in all things, even when you don't initially feel any way toward it.
Course Goals and Achievements
I decided to take this class because I did not have much experience taking photos outside of my phone. Even while taking photos using my phone, I realized that they are not always the greatest photos. Therefore, I did want to further my knowledge and technique in taking photos on my phone. However, with this course, I also was looking to learn how to work my digital camera and find meaning and beauty in things that I never did before. I did achieve my goals through each assignment in the course. Every assignment built on the last, which meant that every time I completed an assignment, I was getting closer and closer to my goals and I finally was able to. I learned how to use different lighting, composition, and color techniques in the Dozen Photo Challenge, which was definitely the start of taking photos successfully, both on my phone and digital camera. I alternated between my digital camera and phone camera so that I could experience everything I learned and expand the technique of successfully taking photos using both devices. I learned about the different categories of photos with the Criticizing Photographs assignment, which allowed me to search for meaning and beauty in photos that I did not before. I plan to continue taking photos using both devices and use the techniques that I learned to further improve my photos. I also plan to gain the confidence to take photos of people and have different people act as my muse.