Artist Reference- Jasper James

Jasper James is a China based photographer who works  in Shanghai and Beijing, shooting editorial, advertising and corporate work. His photography ranges from portrait, travel and interiors to concept driven projects.

Over the past ten years he has lived and worked in New York, London and Beijing, covering assignments around the globe for some of the worlds biggest magazines, design and advertising clients.  His overviews of the city life reflect interesting layers of construction and open narratives through silhouetted onlookers.

Analysis-

I think that everything in this photo has a purpose for being there and that Jasper James has really thought about were he was place everything in the image on purpose. I think that the man is slightly to the side of the image so that you can see the city background and he is holding a phone to maybe illustrate the busy city life. This photo breaks the rule of thirds as the man is nearly completely in the middle section of the photo. The river in the background of the photo creates really good leading lines and the fact that it is wavy makes your eyes lead up the river almost zig zagging across the bottom section of the photo. This photo does not really have any symmetry to the image and the only patterns that may be in the photo is the buildings and they are not close up  they create a patterned background to the image. The view point of Jasper James’ work is normally quite similar. A lot of the photos including this one is a landscape photo of the city as the background creating a wide view. He then takes close up photos of peoples faces but has them slightly turned to the side or looking at the view. The person he is capturing in the photo has been placed there for a certain reason but has got them to be natural so that the photo is not to staged. The photo conveys a lot of depth and has a big impact on the images and all of jasper James images. The layer of the photo creates a lot of depth to the photo almost making it have another dimension. Depth is one of the main aspects in this image to make it exciting and interesting to look at. The framing in this photo is slightly different to other images with framing yet I think that photo does show framing. The darker section of the photo is the person and this is a focal point to the image as the darker outline makes its bolder and therefore I think this creates a frame to the city you can see behind the person. In addition to this I think contrast is also created by the dark shadow  of the person the almost over exposed city background caused by the way the photo has been taken. I think that this photo may have been taken in the morning as the light is bright but quite soft and the city has a sort of morning hue to it. The photo of the man which was taken separately has a harsh lighting which was coming from behind him which is creating the shadow on his face and because he as shoot into the light it has created an interesting silhouette. I think that Jasper James used a DSLR camera to take the photos and used the landscape setting to take the city background and an auto setting or portrait setting to take the close up photo of the mans face.

My Interpretation-