Michael-Oliver Harding

His work often explores themes of nature, mythology, and the human experience, rendered in a distinctive style that blends realism with surreal elements.

These images inspire me by their peaceful moods and the beauty of the characters. Michael-Oliver Harding created these photographs to represent people being alone and their different moods, which is related to my chosen topic”individual feelings”. I will try out the technique contrast between the main subject and its background to provide a better point of view for the audience in my experiments.

The similarities between these images is that they are all representing the loneliness of the individuals in dark environments.

“Individual feelings”

The message of my identity project will be to represent the emotions and the beauty of people being independent. I want my audience to feel both the happiness and the loneliness of people being alone base on their moods and movements, this will let my audience feel their emotions directly. I will get inspiration and develop my ideas by looking for portrait photographers that take photographs of people being alone. I will explore and express the individual feelings by taking photographs of people around me at school being alone.

Inspirations

I want to focus on people being alone and capture their different emotions, it could be happiness or loneliness. The shots should represent the beauty of people’s identities and movements.

Annie Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz is renowned for her dramatic, quirky, and iconic photographic portraits of celebrities. Her style is characterized by carefully staged settings, superb lighting, and use of vivid color.

Her photographs are mainly close-up shots and provides interesting moods or feelings for the audience, which gives me inspiration.

I want to explore people’s own identities and emotions related to their backgrounds or cultures. I want to grab the audience’s attention by capturing more close-up shots to express the mood clearer and make them more interesting.

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGnVCg8YLc/MYjHPCY55ACvSOmeihaJiQ/edit

Definition: A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body, the subject in full body represents better personality and mood. Selfie is one of the most popular forms of self-portraiture in modern life. A good portrait photo has an interesting composition that makes the subject stand out. It’s well-balanced and offers enough negative space to flatter the subject and capture the viewer’s attention. A good portrait focuses on the person’s best features and appealingly presents them.

Example of a portrait photographer: Annie Leibovitz

This triptych creates a great view for the audience to feel the beauty of nature, specifically lines. The photographs provide a soft and plain mood, a comfortable feeling or emotion. It is well related to the topic and the photographs are cooperated with each other. The shadow in the photographs makes it more unique and interesting. However, the first two shots are both straight lines which is repeated, this affects the visual effects. It could be improved by changing one of the photos into different lines or shapes. This will grab the audience’s attention more by making it more unique and engaging. The artist that I linked with is Andrés Gallardo Albajar, he mainly takes photographs of lines on buildings. In comparison, my photographs are lines everywhere in nature. Because it was difficult to find interesting shots of lines in 798 on buildings, so I changed my first thought which makes it less relevant to the artist’s. I think my photographs are straight photography because they have sharp focuses unlike paintings and are unaltered images taken naturally without being changed.

All Images (74)

Yellow light (26)

I chose these 26 images as yellow light because they contain the six elements and composition principles of abstract photography. They are more related to the topic with more details, the vision is more clear.

Green light (11)

I chose these 11 images as green light because they are more interesting and unique ones that are not easily noticeable to us but provide good atmosphere and warm and peaceful feelings for us.

Red light (6)

I chose these 6 images as red light because they have a better focus of the main object and the theme of lines in nature. They all contain shadows which provides a contrast with good visual expressions for us. The unusual shots and shapes create a better picture to grab the audience’s attention.

Final (3)

I chose these 3 images as the final triptych because they are well coordinated and highlight the theme. They provide an emotion or feeling of the beauty of the natural environment, telling us to cherish and protect our nature and culture. The interesting color, angle and structure of the photographs formed a good perspective of abstract. The main message of these photographs is to present a soft or light mood for the audience to feel the movement of nature.

Andrés Gallardo Albajar——Abstract photographerAnalysis

It is a peaceful style of abstract, blue sky and good weather. The photographer uses line as his major element on buildings to direct the viewer’s point of interest or grab their attention. I like the style because it provides a peaceful and comfortable mood. His photographs speak an abstract language of symmetry, line, curve, color, a geometric language. Partial views and unusual perspectives give Urban Geometry an immersive feel that echoes the embodied, dynamic experience of moving around a city. I will adapt his style to my own photography by exploring the details of nature and capture them with lines.

Evaluate one image

This photo has a contrast of light and dark provided by the shadows. The color of this photo is very comfortable, which I am inspired of. The black and white patterns on the building also shows a contrast, which is very unusual. The tone is important in this photo because it provides a beautiful scene, mood and atmosphere.

Citations

Black, Holly. “These Architectural Photographs Will Make You Swoon.” ELEPHANT, 10 Oct. 2023, elephant.art/these-architectural-photographs-will-make-you-swoon-12102020.

Admin. “Light and Its Form of Absence: Architecture Photography by Andres Gallardo Albajar.” 121clicks.com, 7 May 2021, 121clicks.com/inspirations/light-shadows-architecture-photography-andres-gallardo-albajar.