Nick Fancher, born in Columbus, Ohio, is a photographer who experiments with bold contrasts and dramatic lighting. His ‘This is water’ photo series, posted on February 25th, 2021, specifically stood out to me. The photographs in this series show the reflection of people’s faces and the ripples of water on their faces. Personally, I feel that these photographs evoke a sense of self-reflection, making the viewers reflect on their identity. Fancher was significantly influenced by hyperrealism. The main elements of hyperrealism that Fancher was influenced by was the key focus on capturing every small detail of the subject’s facial features, making the photos look realistic.

For the first photograph displayed above, my center of attention is drawn to the details of the person’s face. The photo has a clear focus on even small details of the facial features, such as the subject’s freckles. Additionally, the water ripples on top of the face also add texture to the appearance of the photo. The bold contrast of the black and white shade evidently highlights the photo’s texture. Moreover, the photograph is cropped so that the subject fills in the entire frame, which allows the viewer’s attention to be focused directly on the face. Nick Fancher used a 45-degree angled light for the photographs in this series. This allows the water ripples to be captured clearly, which is one of the main elements that makes his pictures visually appealing. He also used a faster shutter speed to make the exposure time shorter, which avoids the motion blur of flowing water and allows the camera to capture the water ripples clearly.  I am deeply inspired by Fancher’s “This is water” series and I will focus on the composition between the facial features and the water ripples. I will first photo portraits of people with different age and gender, where I aim to illustrate the theme of different identities. Then, I would print out the photos and place them in a transparent tray filled with water. With a light angled at-45 degrees and the camera on a tripod directly above the tray of water, I would shake the tray to produce water ripples. This process is inspired by Fancher’s idea. Similar with his targets, I would aim to portray the texture of the water ripples and facial features, which evokes self-reflection of the identity of the viewers. I would also focus on a evident compare and contrast between black and white tones.

Citations:

https://www.nickfancher.com/bio

https://www.nickfancher.com/blog/2021/2/11/this-is-water

https://www.ikepaisley.com/nickfancher

https://gallerease.com/en/magazine/articles/the-stunning-reality-of-photo-or-hyperrealism-in-art__b3615b18d85f