Edward Steichen

     Edward Steichen or Eduard Jean Steichen was an American painter and photographer as well as a museum curater. He was born in Luxemborg on March 27, 1879 and died March 25 1973 in Redding, CT. Steichen met Alfred Stieglitz in 1900 in New York and in their meeting Stieglitz complimented Steichen and bought three of his prints. His first wife Clara Smith he married in 1903. They had two daughter Katherine and Mary, then got a divorcein 1922. In 1923 Steichen married Dana Desboro Glover but she died of leukemia in 1957. He married his last wife in 1960 named Joanna Taub. Edward was the first person in the United States to use the Autochrome Lumiere process with color photography in 1904. In 1963 on December 6 he was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedomby Lyndon Johnson.

Gertrude Kasebier

       Gertrude Kasebier is know as one of the most influential American photographer of the 20th century. Her images were often depictions of motherhood and strong native Americans. She was born May 18 1852 in Fort Des Moines. After her father died in 1864 her family moved to Brooklyn, New York.She married Eduard Kaebier in 1874 who was a wealthy New York businessman and they moved to a farm in New Jersey to raise their children. In 1889 she made her family move back to New York so that she could attend Pratt Institute of Art and Design. By 1894 she became obsessed with photography and spent weeks studying the physics behind it in Germany. When her husband died in she focused on nothing but photography and helped establish the Women's Professorial Photographers Association of America. Though many people put her down and insulted her work such as Stiegliz she never gave up. On October 12 1934 Gertrude died at her daughters home and a major collection of her work is at the University of Delaware.

Michael Carroll

          I learned about Michael Carroll the photographer while watching the movie Hand Held in photography class. Mike graduated Notre Dame University in 1968. He is the founder and current president of the Romania Children's Relief and their partner charity, Fundatia Inocenti. The first time he went to Romania he got a phone call and was told he had hours to get prepared so he did and traveled there to be the photographer of the trip. When he saw what bad conditions the hospitals were in and especially the orphanages that houses thousands of babies he wanted to try to help. When he came back to the U.S he had major newspapers publish his picture to try to get people to donate money to help save the children in Romania which started the Romania Children's Relief. Since his first trip to Romania he and his foundation have saved the lives of hundreds and maybe thousands of helpless orphans in Romania. Though the conditions there are still pretty bad Mike Carroll made a big difference and helped make the world a better place.

Edward S. Curtis

   Edward S. Curtis was a photographer and an ethnologist of the western Native American peoples. He was born in Whitwater, WI on February 16, 1868 and died October 19, 1952. The Curtis family moved to Washington in 1887 and that is when Edward started his photography career with Native Americans. He took a portrait of Chief Seattle's daughter, Princess Angeline and won first place in a photography contest with it. In 1899 Curtis participated in the Harriman expedition to Alaska as on of the only two photographer going on that trip. After that he accompanied George Grinell on a trip to Norther Montana  where they witnesses the sacred Sundance of two tribes. After that trip it became clear to Edward that he was to record with cameras and pens the life of the North American Indian.He spent the next 30 year documenting over 80 tribes west of the Mississippi and his project won praise from powerful people such as President Roosevelt. He completed his project in 1930 with 20 volumes each having 75 hand pressed photogravures and 300 pages of text.

Jacob Riis

   Jacob August Riis was a Danish American journalist and photographer born May 3,1849 in Ribe, Denmark and died May 26, 1914 in Barre, MA. Not only was he a great photographer nut he wrote books as well like The Children of the Poor and How the other half lives. Riis used his photographic and journalistic talents to help the less fortunate in NYC and the poor homeless New Yorkers were the subject of most of his photographs and journals. While he was living in New York Riis experienced poverty for himself as well while he was working as a police reporter writing about life in the slums. He though if he exposed their living conditions to the upper classes it could help to get them out of poverty. Jacob Riis used his photography talents to help make the world a better place and this proves that there really is no limits to photography.

 

Eadweard Muybridge

     Eadweard Muybridge was a famous photographer born in Kingston upon Thames, England on April 9th.1830 and died May 8th, 1904. He is famous for photographing animal and human movements that were imperceptible to the human eye. Through his photography he actually proved that there was movement in a horses gallop when all four hooves were not touching the ground as in the first photo below. Although he considered himself as an artist, while he was working at the university of Pennsylvania he encouraged scientific advance and some may even call him a scientist. In 1887 Muybridge published 781 finished prints he called Animal Locomotive which many viewers see as reliable studies about human and animal movement. Two examples from his Animal Locomotive gallery are shown below.




    

Shutter Speed Priority

  For the shutter speed priority project I took pictures of skateboarding and biking at the O'Maley skate park. Though I wish that I had more time to get better pictures I think that I captured a few good photos of people in action. Rather than take pictures of boring things like walking or running I tried to take pictures of people doing extreme sports at high speeds to really put the shutter speed to work and try to get the best action photo. Though I may come back to this assignment with better pictures because I don't think mine were my best, I am satisfied with the way they came out.

Artist Julia Margaret Cameron

     Julia Margaret Cameron was born in 1815 and wasn't given a camera until it was 1863. Her daughter gave it to her as a present saying it might amuse her. Julia had many friend's that were some of Victorian England's greatest minds such as painter G.F.Watts or scientist Charles Darwin, and she wanted to be an artist at something like many of her friends were.Within 18 months of her taking pictures 80 prints were sent to the Victoria and Albert museum. She mostly just took pictures of family and friends but dressed them up to show things like innocence and wisdom. Many did not like her photographs and the Photographic journal even wrote an article insulting her work. Her photographs are just mainly about close ups of peoples faces but she is known to have a high spiritual content in her photos.

Close up Photos

   In this assignment we were suppose to take pictures like Imogen Cunningham and get really close on your subject and have the rest of the picture blurry. I had my camera set for aperture priority and had it on the smallest number possible so it created a shallow depth of field. For my first picture I captured pancakes being made and had on of them in focus while the others are blurry. The second photo I took was outside of the school of a single flower rising above all of the other flowers as you can see the school, the flag posts, and some of the other flowers in the background. The last picture I have was taken during class of the bouquet of flowers. I got as close to the white flower as I could and focused on it so the rest of the flowers were slightly blurry and it came out okay. It was very interesting trying to take pictures like Imogen Cunningham's and I enjoyed the project.

Alfred Stieglitz

      Alfred Stieglitz was born in 1864 in Hoboken, New Jersey. He originally went to school for engineering in Germany then returned to New York to try to prove photography was an art form as much as painting or sculpting. Stieglitz had a different process of taking photos and he acheived his goals by taking pictures of natural elements as seen on the bottom such a snow, steam, rain, etc. By 1917 he changed his opinions about how he should take photos and thought it was more of an art form to take photos that represent modern day life like the picture shown below.

     Near the end of his life he devoted his time to keeping his galleries open and took photographs less frequently. One of his final photographs was taken from the window of one of his galleries as seen below on the left and is titles "Looking Northwest from the Shelton." Stieglitz died in 1946 being remembered as a great and inspirational photographer.

Artist

   Henry Cartier-Bresson was born August 22, 1908 and died August 3, 2004 in Montjustin, France. He was a French photographer and considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. He had a very surrealist approach to photography and saw that ordinary photos contain a lot of unintended unpredictable meaning. In 1937 he married a Javanese dancer, Ratna Mohini. They lived in Paris together on a servant flat with a large studio with a small bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom. Cartier almost only used the Leica 35 mm rangefinder camera with a normal 50mm lenses or occasional wide angle for landscapes. Below are some of my favorite images by Henry Cartier-Bresson. I really like the angles he gets and his pictures of stairs look good.