Wk 6: Artist Study & Self Directed // William Eggleston

I watched this documentary on William Eggleston over the weekend. It had some great information on his practice as a photographer and how he approached his subject matter.

Eggleston focused on 'the everyday' or 'the ugly', photographing his home town. Even though he has mainly stuck to photographing in the same location he tries to only photograph a subject once or twice so he wouldn't get confused about which image to choose. This idea of photographing democratically meant that he photographed what would normally be considered mundane or uninteresting. This resulted in images that had a feeling of emptiness and isolation.  His images were rarely posed as he attempted to capture people in their environment as they are/were. But in this process he clearly looks for color and uses some classical composition techniques including: Rule of Thirds, Contrasting Colors, Fore/mid/background, Vantage Point and Leading Lines.

Afterwards watching the documentary I tried taking some images around my house in a semi similar fashion - so I guess they inspired. These images could use a bit of work and I feel that I probably should have played more with color.

Aperture: 4
Shutter Speed: 1/60
ISO: 1000

Aperture: 5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/50
ISO:1000

Obviously looking at one's messy and grubby home is somewhat unsatisfying but I actually kinda like the quality of both these images.