Photographer Research One : Uta Barth

Photographer Research


Uta Barth:
Uta Barth is German/American photographer that lives in Los Angeles. She manipulates focus to create soft light effects in her work. I have chosen her as my first photographer as she creates a soft grunge-style of nostalgia which is a form of juxtaposition in itself as most viewers have never been to the places she has photographed and she's made it extremely difficult to find them. This is because she doesn't want the place itself to be the object of focus, but the feeling the light and colours create. I adore this and hope to use this in my work. 

1999: Light

Uta Barth has used the lens flare in this image to create a welcoming and bright atmosphere. The first thing I think of when I see this image is waking up late in the afternoon with the sunlight streaming in through an open window, warming the whole room.

Frieze

The angle of this image and the reflection of the glasses on the table imply that she is crouched taking this shot, or at a child's height. The reason I believe she has done this is to inspire people's memories of when they were children and would run around their homes in the summer amongst the furniture, after being warned not to run around the house. 

Field 23

This is obviously a wall down one side of a street, all other details are obscured. As with most of her work this image reminds me of playing in the streets a child, or walking to and from school. I believe she purposely creates vague images so that the viewer has to create their own memory to place the image somewhere rational,rather than it be an obscure image. 

This is a photograph of traffic, taken at a red light (top right corner) somewhere in America, as their junctions are infamous for having overhead traffic lights. The way this image is shot suggests impatience and agitation at being delayed, this is conveyed through the poor framing of the image: we can only make out the large black car,everything else is blurred.

Influence and Summary:

Here's a comparison of Barth's and my own work: 
Left:My own work, Right: Uta Barth's.

 

Uta Barth influenced my work by making me consider how I'm framing the image rather than simply looking at the subject. I've utilised her work and experimented with her style of photography and found that I enjoy spontaneity but also the emotional and nostalgic side of photography that she captures so well. 

I used manual focus to blur the images but keeping the outlines of the buildings and the cars was important to me as it stops the shot from becoming completely abstract, but rather keeps the scene behind a thin veil that only the photographer can see behind. I changed the F-stop to the lowest it would go (around 4.5) which create more light circles, which was the effect I was hoping for. The ISO was around 200 and the exposure was around 1/500.

Another photographer that uses Bokeh is Jordan Parks. He mainly focuses on objects in the foreground and the light effects Bokeh creates. I would be interested in looking at his work in further detail to see what I can learn from his techniques. 

My Work: