Shown to the Stars

 1. I immediately fell in love with Kenna's work when I first saw it, because it is simple and yet stark. I love the mysterious and sometimes a little spooky energy it has due to the shots being in black and white. His work has a peaceful, almost nostalgic energy due to the long exposure that makes it feel like the viewer has been suspended alone in time and space. 2. Michael Kenna is a monochromatic landscape photographer. He often finds simple objects, natural and manmade, and captures them in a way that makes them stand out, despite (and perhaps because of) being in shades of gray, black, and white. 3. Michael Kenna and Ansel Adams both captured the beauty of black and white landscapes, utilizing the contrast between light and dark to emphasize certain elements of their photos. Adams gravitates towards impressive, sprawling landscapes in places like Yellowstone National Park, or Yosemite, while each of Kenna's photos tends to focus on one complete subject, like a tree, rathe...

1. The only way I can describe my initial reaction to LaChapelle's work is "weirded out". His work is of good quality and it's compositionally interesting, but it's incredibly bizarre, and just not the type of art I typically enjoy. 2. David LaChapelle is a commercial photographer because he photographs mainly celebrities for magazines to promote their image and allow the magazine to profit. 3. Marino Testino's portraits of celebrities are very tame compared to LaChapelle's. He has also worked for popular magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, but his images follow the mainstream: they capture celebrities in all their glory and glamour, perhaps adding a bold feauture or two. LaChapelle, on the other hand, magnifies the bold features and makes them the theme of his work. I'm not a huge fan of either of their works, but I don't hate them, either. There is clear craftsmanship involved for each, and I respect that, even if LaChapelle's is a litt...

1. I was very impressed with Beano's work at first glance because of the way she replicated her subjects multiple times within t he photos, keeping the original picture of the subject as well as a blurrier or darker version/s of the same subject in the same moment. 2. I would categorize her work as natural travel photography, as most of the images she captures are focused on whimsical landscapes from the many places she has visited. 3.  Nick Brandt, like Maya Beano, is a nature photographer. However, Brandt aims to depict the destruction human influence has wrought upon nature; he uses both humans and nature (including animals) as his main focus. On the other hand, Beano sets out to simply capture the beauty of nature, and while she does include humans and animals in some of her photos, it is clear that her main focus is on aesthetics rather than bringing awareness to global issues like climate change. While I like both of their works, I prefer Brandt's, because he has a noble ...