Linda Wisdom

  

Linda Wisdom is best known as a street photographer who also specializes in areas of fine art and urban lifestyle photography. Her work, which I have come across, is always in black and white and is photographed on the streets. Specifically, she utilizes natural sunlight and street light to create interesting shadows and contrast in her images. This use of light makes her image more visually appealing and sometimes gives off a sense of loneliness or hope. Likewise, she employs the use of black and white color to better draw emphasis to the intended target, stressing the dark with white or the other way around. This enables Wisdom to direct attention to the focus of the image, therefore creating a powerful photograph. Moreover, I really like how Linda Wisdom uses natural light to convey emotion and how she adopts dark and white colors to establish layers to her work and highlight the focus of the image. In my own street photograph project, I want to experiment with surrounding light, but I will not make my image entirely black and white. Instead, I want to use light and darker colors to try out Wisdom’s way of emphasizing the model (a focus).

In this photograph, the focus subject is the man in lighter color cloth. He is gazing towards the camera but upward as if he is searching for something or observing an intriguing event. In the background, people walk by, blurred, in dark-colored clothing. They glanced in various directions, minding their own business and looking preoccupied. Further back in the background, there are tall buildings, suggesting this picture may have been taken in a busy city where everyone is in a hurry. In this case, the characters in the image are crossing a relatively jammed road. The photographer took this photo in a side view. At first glimpse, my eyes are drawn to the man in light clothing. He stands out amongst the crowd because of his brighter color clothes, un-uniformed glance, and the direction in which he is walking. The buildings on either side of the image create two lines, which also act as a vanishing point in the photo. Most noticeably, there is a ray of light casting down on the ground beneath the man. This light further draws the emphasis on the man and lightens up the picture by contrasting it with the darkness of the crowd. Furthermore, by using these techniques (lighting, color, and the subjects), the picture makes me feel a sense of being out of place, low pace in the middle of a busy street, like when a person just moved into a new environment feeling the fear of unknown but also exited for a new life. It matches perfectly with my statement of intent for the street photography project. Therefore, in my own work, I wish to try out Wisdom’s use of color and lighting to create the “not-belong” feeling.