Paul Smith one of our lecturers is a accredited photographer and has done work for people such as Charles Saatchi. His photos have been displayed in Charles Saatchi gallery in London. I wanted to look at some of his photography to see if there was anything I could learn from it. And see what it is that makes his work so desirable.
abseil by Paul Smith
This is one of my favourite photos that he took, he uses photoshop to make most of his photos. He hired a crane into take this picture and hung off it. This picture is one from a series called Heroes. These pictures were taken so that you could look up to them. In exhibition he would hang them from the ceiling so that people could look up to them. This meant that alot of exhibition took his work because he didn’t need to have a lot of exhibition space. I really like that colours of this photo and that is what immediately drew me to it.
All his photos usually contain him as the subject apart from his series he did when he took pictures of Robbie Williams for the front of his album cover ‘ Sing when you winning.’
He always used photoshop to change his photos around. This is unusual for us because we are normally taught not to use photoshop to change the pictures around. I think that I like his collection of heroes the most. I also like the first series he did which he used his own past experience for inspiration.
Celebrate by Paul Smith
I think that has inspired me to think about my own past when taking Photos. This series Artists Rifles drew on his own experience that he had when we was in the army. I think that there are some personal experience in my life that I could draw on and take pictures or make a documentary about.
The one thing that I don’t really like about his work is that alot of it is the same and although he does really play about with the formula he will always stick to it. So he will always be the subject in the photo because that is what people have now come to expect from his work. Another of my lecturers suggest that all artist do this. Maybe this would be something to look into. I will try and find my own formula in the last year of uni.
