Ralph Meatyard

Ralph Meatyard was an american photographer from Illinois.  Meat yard worked as an optician who also practised photography.  One project of Meatyard’s work is looking at photographs out of focus,  and spent months just looking through an out of focus camera to learn how to ‘see no focus’.  Meat yard began the project because of his initial attraction to the out-of-focus backgrounds in some of his images.  Meatyard eliminated the “thing” and looked only for the background, which he would then throw out of focus. Eventually, feeling that the background was still too recognizable, he stopped this practice and began to see his surroundings through an unfocused lens.

My Own Experiments

 

Chosen Four Together

 

Other Experiments: Into Black and White

A lot of Ralph Meatyard’s work is seen in a black and white tone so for my photographs I decided to also experiment with them in black and white as something different to add on to just experimenting with the camera itself with the focus and shutter speeds.

While experimenting with the black and white I also adjusted and experimented with the exposure and contrasts of the photographs as to add more tone and different highlights and darks into the photograph.

For one of my photographs I also experimented with cropping to get rid of unwanted dark space and the side of the photograph to just leave the objects shapes against the light.

Chosen Four: Experimented

Final Chosen Photograph

I have chosen this as my most successful photograph as I feel it shows the most connections to Ralph Meatyard’s own work, which was where my inspiration was coming from.  I have chosen my edited version as my favourite as I feel it works the best and has the best contrast as the photograph unedited is as well very dark and doesn’t show much colour so to put it in black and white eventuates this and I feel works next to Meatyard’s work best.