Eureka

No Benny Hill style remarks please !

When I was taking the product shots of the wine glass, during product shoot 2, I based my idea on an article in Digital Photo magazine, which I then lost.

I have now found the issue, number 128 Spring 2009, and I have compared their photograph to mine:

 

Their photograph	My photograph

 

Because we had limited time during the shoot, and that Jim had chose a white backdrop, we went for a contrast to what the magazine had done.

I took photographs as Steve slowly poured the ‘wine’ into the wine glass held by Pippa, waiting to get the shot that I wanted.

Some of these photographs are shown below:

Looking at the two I prefer my version, which although there was no splashing in the glass, much in the same way as Chris Collins or Martin Wonnacott, the bubbles in the ‘wine’ in the glass add to my shot.  Looking at their photograph the red wine is much thicker than the ‘wine’ I used and may have been poured from a greater height  to get the splashes in the glass.  In their article the wine glass was fixed to a table using tape and /or blue tack, whereas in mine Pippa held the wine glass, adding the human element to the shot.

So out of the two shots, I prefer mine !

Steve Bronstein

Steve is a New York based photographer who covers a wide range of different subjects in the photography field, including advertising, products, motion, still life, animals, special effects, digital and conceptual.  But he is most famous for his Absolute Vodka photography work, The Absolut ad campaign is the longest running ad campaign ever to date. It began running back in 1980 with Steven Bronstein.

Though reliant on the traditional techniques of prop making and large format photography, like Chris Collins, Steve has equally embraced the digital age, and has combined his photographic skills with CGI (Computer Generated Imaging), but Steve has taken this further by combines the best of both worlds, whether it involves a miniature set, cgi, or both for his projects.

Throughout his career, Steve Bronstein has provided visual solutions to his clients in a manner both credible and practical. Whether it be a snow clogged road for Volkswagen, a pristine tropical beach for Coke, or an aerial view of the Kentucky Derby for Absolut, Steve has been able to produce these images effectively in the studio without the need, risk and expense of going on location. He is often thought of as a special-effect photographer, although he prefers problem-solver.

Steve's work has been honoured with many awards throughout this career, but is particularly well known for his work for Absolut Vodka. He was the original photographer for the Clio and two-time Kelly award winning campaign and has produced well over 200 product photographs. 

Today Steve works for b-hive,which is a cooperative of professional photographers Steve Bronstein, Howard Berman, Jeff Baker, Sally Gall and Brian Klutch.

Steve’s clients include; Absolut, AT & T, Bacardi, Black & Decker, British Airways, Budweiser, Camel, Coke, Disney, Ford, Fuji, Heineken, Hewlett Packard, Intel and Johnson and Johnsons.

Below are some examples of Steve’s work:

Sources of information include:

wwwbhive.com, photoserve, workbook,

 

Analysis of Images

Steve uses vibrant colour with the focus on the product being promoted, which is usually the most prominent feature of the photograph.  With the Absolut Nantucket promotion, Steve focused on decking in the shape of the vodka bottle, implying that it is at home, on the beach.

In the Absolut fantasy promotion, Steve used a backlit wine glass over which was a picture of a bottle of Absolut Vodka as if it could be poured out of the image and into the glass, with a bottle top near to the glass.

Jose Manuel Vidaurre

Like Martin Wonnacott, another product photographer, Jose likes to concentrate on splashes and movement of liquids and use these to promote his clients products.

Jose Manual Vidaurre was born in Segovia, Spain but soon moved to Venezuela.

Jose’s interest in art began early when, as a child, he painted and eventually started taking pictures as visual references for his paintings. Gradually, he moved into photography full time, but had no formal training and never worked as a photographer’s assistant, unlike a number of product photographers. Everything Jose has learned he has taught himself, leading him to develop his own techniques over the years.

Back in the early 1980’s Jose started looking at movement of liquids, who’s characteristics make them visually engaging, but very difficult to control, whilst studying electronic engineering in Caracas. He ditched his engineering training to work on special effects using 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 large format film, occasionally working with medium format film.

In an interview for Digital Photo Pro Magazine Jose said “High-speed, stop-motion photography allows you to see a world that, even though it’s real, is hidden to the human eye,” Jose explains. “The beauty of most of these moments lasts milliseconds, sometimes nanoseconds. To capture that moment that’s hidden to the human eye, and reveal its freshness and beauty—it’s a work I love. The challenge is to get the right moment. It’s never an easy task; you have to really like it, otherwise it becomes frustrating.” Capturing that moment again and again and again so that, to his clients, one shot is indistinguishable from the next, also has helped catapult Jose to the top of his field. While the physical attributes of liquid make duplicating a shot almost impossible, he has refined his technique to such a degree that he’s able to capture near-identical variations of the original image concept because he’s so intimately familiar with the subject matter.

Today, Jose’s highly stylized splash images have appeared in global advertising campaigns for big-name companies like Procter & Gamble, Citibank, Texaco, Seagrams, Nestle, Bacardi, Anheuser-Busch, American Express, Mattel, Kellogs, Telcel-Bellsouth, Duracell, Del Monte, Equal, Honda, Ford, Heinz, SC Johnson, Gatorade, Absolut, Warner Lambert, Schering Plough, Aga, Nabisco, Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Kraft, Knorr, Max Factor, Pantene, Secret, Hilton, CocaCola, Tropiburger, Unisys, General Electric, Miller, St. Pauli Girl, Sony, Show Business, Shick, Rolex, Tecate, Quaker, Siemens, Fanta, Unilever, Oreo, Lux, Oster, Old Parr, NCR, Bavaria Group, Constacia Group, Parmalat, United Destillers, Pirelli, Brahma, Something Special, Polar Group, Head, and Artibel.

Jose’s work has earned him a slew of accolades, including IPA Photographer of the Year in Special Effects 2004, with a long list of 56 award certificates and trophies from three continents including The London International Advertising Award (3 consecutive years), The New York Festivals, FIAP, IPA, The Color Awards, Prix de la Photographie Paris and Creativity Annual among others and solidified his reputation as a master of this specialized technique.

Below are some examples of Jose’s work:

Sources include:

Production Paradise, Digital Photo Pro, www.jmv-studio.com and www.photographers.com.

Analysis of Images

Jose has used vibrant colours and water splashes and water spurting, which is something that always captures people's attention. Often his images have coloured backgrounds, sometimes computer generated.

Jose's images are eye catching, which is very important in advertising because it has to grab the viewer's attention within a second so the viewer continues to look at the image, and even remember the image, rather than turn the page or ignore the image completely.

The product is the main subject on the image, concentrating the attention on the product.

Herb Ritts

Herbert Ritts, was born on August 13, 1952 to parents who owned a profitable furniture business in California, Herb was part of a family who lived in a mansion in Beverly Hills and also had a summer home on fashionable Santa Catalina Island. The young Herb Ritts grew up in glamorous surroundings, with movie stars for neighbours.

Herb Ritts, had not decided what profession to pursue, but like David Bailey, he certainly was not considering a career in photography, which he had only recently taken up as a hobby. It happened, however, that in 1978 he had his camera with him when he and a friend the then little-known actor Richard Gere had to stop at a gas station to repair a flat tire. Among the pictures that Herb snapped was one of a sweaty Gere clad in jeans and a tank top, his arms languidly stretched over his head, and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Soon thereafter, when Gere received widespread attention for his role in Paul Schrader's American Gigolo (1980), Herb sent his photos to Gere's publicist. "A few months later she sent me Vogue, Esquire, and Elle. They all used my pictures. I got cheques too," Herb recalled. Newsweek also ran a photo of Jon Voight that Herb had managed to take when he made his way onto the set of Franco Zeffirelli's The Champ (1979).

Herb had found his calling as a photographer, and his pictures were in demand. Within a few years his photos were gracing the covers of Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, and Interview. He also did fashion spreads for important designers such as Gianni Versace and Ralph Lauren. Herb's photographs were the basis of a number of provocative and extremely successful advertising campaigns, including ones for Revlon, Donna Karan, the Gap, and Calvin Klein.

Herb became well known for dramatic black-and-white photographs that focused on a single part of the subject's body. His portrait of Olympic heptathlon champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee captures her lower torso and powerful thighs in mid-leap; her head appears only in shadow on the ground. Many of Herb's photographs celebrate the well-developed body. Some of his images have been compared to classical statuary because of the exquisiteness of the subjects' form. Other photos, however, show human vulnerability: Christopher Reeve posing in his wheelchair, Elizabeth Taylor revealing her scar after brain surgery, the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking struggling against his frailty.

Museum director Malcolm Rogers described Herb’s as having "an ability to create unforgettable images of great force and beauty" and also "a sense of the bizarre, of style and drama, [and] of erotic energy." He added that Herb's images show "a world without barriers of race or barriers of sexuality." Two of Herb's books, however, speak to issues of race and sexuality. The photos in Africa depict the daily lives of indigenous peoples of eastern Africa. Herb was pleased when Nelson Mandela praised the book, commenting that "it reminded him of his childhood." Herb was always candid about his own sexuality. He realized that he was gay while he was in college. He soon came out to his parents, who were accepting and supportive.

Herb will also be remembered for his vigorous fund-raising efforts in the quest for a cure for AIDS, in particular for his efforts on behalf of amFAR, the American Foundation for AIDS Research. Herb kept working until just a few days before his death. Among his last projects were the cover shot for the March 2003 issue of Vanity Fair and a photo session with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Herb died in Los Angeles on December 26, 2002, of complications of pneumonia. He had been diagnosed as HIV-positive years before, and although his death was not specifically HIV-related, the virus had compromised his immune system.

Some of Herb Ritts’s portraits are shown below:

Sources of information

Professional Photographer, National Portrait Gallery, Professional Photographers, Digital Photo Pro, Herbritts.com, PDN Gallery, Area of Design

 

Evaluation of Images

Herb has taken a wide selection of types of portrait including full length (Richard Gere in column 1 row 1 of the images above), head and shoulders (Madonna in column 1 row 3) and head only portraits (Jack Nicholson columns 1 and 2 row 2).

Not all of Herb's photographs feature the subject actually looking at the photographer with some, for example a portrait named octopus (column 1 row 8) looking away from the camera, showing off his hair.  Herb has experimented with two photographs (columns 1 and 2 row 7) with the subjects face actually covered and cannot be seen, with one portrait (column 1 row 10) the subject is looking directly at Herb through a veil, showing the subjects face.

Most of the head only portraits are cropped tightly to draw attention to the subjects faces.

Most of Herb's portraits are evenly lit, with an exception (of this selection of his portfolio) of Sean Connery, who's portrait is very low key with part of the left side of his face hidden in the shadows.

Like David Bailey, Herb's portraits of men and women differ in the way the texture of the subject's skin is handled.  With men the sometimes rough texture is obvious, where as with women the skin has a very smooth appearance.

Herb's portraits have a very good tonal range.