Creative Lighting Essay

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Nick Knight, who was born in 1958, is a British photographer who is known for his fashion shoots. He studied photography at Bournemouth & Poole College of Art & Design and published his first book of photographs 'Skinhead' in 1982 when he was still a student at the school. He was then commissioned by Terry Jones to create a series of portraits for magazine's fifth-anniversary issue. His work caught the attention of art director Marc Ascoli, who commissioned Knight to shoot the 1986 catalogue of Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto in collaboration with Peter Saville. In 2016, he was commissioned to shoot official portraits of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles to celebrate Queen's 90th birthday. I thought that these images looked very interesting as he over exposing the model and her surrounding which makes a dramatic contrast between the light and the black background. You can also see some of the model’s facial features as her black eyes, and her eyebrows standout from the pure white of the model’s face and hair. [pic 4]

As well as Nick Knight, Maggie West is also a modern photographer, but she uses coloured lighting on the model’s face, she uses warm colours, such as yellows, reds and pinks, on the model’s face and then cool colours, such as blue, on the background. This is effective lighting as the warm colours stand out more on the cool coloured backgrounds, which would give the image more depth as the model’s face is brought forward. Also these photographs are closely cropped to the models face which makes the main focal point of the image the model and what they are feeling so to their expressions, but the models don’t look to have an expression of happiness or sadness which is unusual as the focal point of the images is the model. [pic 5]

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