Joe MCNally

Joe McNally
McNally is photographer who has been doing what he loves for the past 30 years and is known internationally for his ability to create complex photographs with his expert use of color and light. Over the years, his images have been on the covers of New York Entertainment Weekly, TIME, Fortune, Newsweek, Men's Journal, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine. They have also been featured in National Geographic too many times to count. McNally is very well known of due to his "Faces of Ground Zero" project. He took the only life sized polaroid camera in the world and took pictures of over 200 people involved in Ground Zero. The life sized portraits then traveled the world and to this day are considered one of the most important artist efforts involving the 9/11 tragedy. In the past two years of his career, McNally has had two books published, The Hot Shoes Diary, and The Moment it Clicks, which is the one I came across of. I absolutely love everything about his images!! While looking through his pictures you can tell he's an expert at color, lighting and flash. (I happen to come across him while we had the flash assignment and he truly inspired me to work 10x harder than I already was) His composition of his images are outstanding. With his portraits, a lot of the time he puts the subject in their environment, but then in an unusual place after that. For example, a ballerina dancing on a roof, or a gymnast on a balancing beam in a wheat field. I think that is so creative! No one thinks of doing stuff like that but it makes amazing pictures. The ballerina has an elegant background to go with her elegant posture and the color of the wheat field makes the balancing beam with the gymnast so it's a very settle touch. With the gymnast it also can symbolize how wheat blowing in the wind can almost look graceful and when a gymnast is performing, they look graceful too and make what they're doing look easy. McNally also manages to capture stories in almost all his photographs. He even gets up high with those people who change the lights in radio towers to capture their stories. Which brings me to my next point, his point of view! McNally's point os view is so creative, artistic and original. He crawls down into spaces that I would image to be uncomfortable, just to get the shot. He truly is thinking outside the box whenever trying taking pictures. Another thing that I really like about him is that he seems like a down-to-earth guy. In his books he tells you how to get the shot he is showing! He also doesn't sugarcoat anything, he tells it exactly like it is. Besides all that, he has workshops all the time teaching people how to take landscape pictures and how to use a flash. (It is now my goal to one day go to one of his workshops :] ) Out of all his pictures, my favorite is this one of the firefighter. The colors are a complete chaos, but it works because that's how a fireman's life is, or so I'd imagine, everything is moving so fast around them but they still have to remain calm and focus. McNally has captured that feeling with the dark spot of the firefighters face and all the colors moving fast all around him. You get the sense that he's in a hurry. You almost get the feeling that he's ready for a fire or something since he's face is red too. I have no idea how McNally managed to get this shot but I feel that's part of the beauty of it, it's perfect.

I think I've finally found my favorite photographer.

Robert Glenn Ketchum & Richard Misrach

Robert Glenn Ketchum
Robert Ketchum received his Masters of Fine Arts from the California Institute of Fine Arts in 1974 and then began working on his landscape photography. Today, he is a very well known photographer-environmentalist who has been shaping the way people view our natural landscape for more than 30 years. In his career, he has received the Master Series distinction from American Photo. Besides Ketchum, only four other photographs have received that award since the magazine began publishing. I personally found Robert's photographs to be absolutely breath taking and there isn't a single picture that I've seen that I haven't loved. Unlike other photographs, he goes around taking photographs of the type of nature we don't typically see everyday. For example, it's not everyday we see a giant snow cap mountain top up close with all it's natural beauty. He has a remarkable way of making every bit of land look beautiful as if he's trying to preserve the land and all it's natural beauty. When trying to pick out my favorite image of his, I almost had to stop looking at pictures all together because the more I looked, the more I loved!! Even though it was very tough to decide, I feel the best image of his is this image of the trailer and the dog. It's so simple, yet who would image taking a picture of that? Plus, the monochromatic tone of it sets an extra calming mood for it which is really nice.

Richard Misrach
Misrach is an American photographer who is best known for his on going series, Desert Cantos, along with some of his other work including, Cancer Alley. He was also one of the very few photographers who was very influential during the renaissance of color photography and larger displays of images. Richard has such an interesting way of photographing the desert that I enjoyed a lot. With his photographs he isn't just showing the scenery of a place, but he is showing what man is doing to that place. With his images he is showing all the different types of ways man leaves marks on the desert and other parts of the earth. He also manages to capture the beauty of how mother nature leaves her own mark on the earth after a disaster has struck. The image that stuck out to me the most was this one below. I feel like this was something Misrach probably just walked up to in the desert, but the way he positioned it in the camera really captures it's beauty. The tire marks in the sand make a very appealing pattern which then leads your eye to the sand mound in the background. Only a true professional could have seen tire marks in the sand and turned it into a photograph.

Annie Leibovitz & Chris Verene

Annie Leibovitz
When Leibovitz came to the United States she got a job at the Rolling Stone magazine just as a regular cast photographer. However, in 1973 she was bumped up by the publisher and became the chief photographer for the magazine, where her work helped shape the magazine into what it has become today. She is very well known for her photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono from 1980. After spending some time looking at her work, she really inspires me. I feel like one of my biggest challenges when taking pictures of people is putting them in an environment of their own. In her photographs it seems like she doesn't have any problem putting people in their own environment. And even if she doesn't place the subject in a environment of their own, she has the ability to tell a story in all her images. I really admire her work because she is doing something I wish I could do with all of my portraits. Out of all of her photographs, the one I saw that I liked the most was her famous photograph of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. After reading about this image I learned that at first both Lennon and Ono planned on being naked, however Leibovitz asked Ono to keep all her dark clothes on. The way she photographed them is amazing. She made it look as is Ono is just a giant cold, black, void and Lennon is gripping onto her for dear life. The only part of Ono's body you can see is her face and I don't think that just happened on accident, something that powerful had to have been planned. Plus, she took this photograph only 5 hours before he was shot and killed. It's absolutely amazing and will forever be a famous image.

Chris Verene

Verene is a very well-known American photographer that has been taking pictures since the mid 1990's. Chris is known for his Camera Club performance that started his Self-Esteem Salon and also his monograph about the Galesburg family. To this day, Verene's collections are still displayed in many New York studios and he continues to add more photographs to them as the years go by. What I enjoy about his work, is his ability to control the flash. At first it looks like his photos are a bit too bright, but all his images are the exact same, showing that he knows what he's doing and he's controlling that extra brightness. I also admire his ability to document a family's or community's spirits just through his images.  He doesn't sugar coat the American life in his photographs; he shows the nitty gritty of things not exactly everyone wants to see, but I think that is what makes his photographs so powerful. One of my favorite photographs of his is this image of the basement. I love how he took such a trashy and unpleasant place to photograph, and he turned it into a beautiful photograph. That's something I want to be able to do, so seeing images like this really inspire me. Another thing I really like about his photographs is how he puts little captions with them and writes about them. I always like to read what he has to say about them. It makes me a bit more interested.