Ralph Eugene Meatyard was a qualified optician, the company he worked for sold photography equipment. For his son’s birthday he bought him a camera, which sparked his career into photography. He later became a member of the Lexington Camera Club where he pursued his passion for photography outside the main stream, he experimented with multiple exposures, motion blur and depth of field to create non focal pictures.

This photo by Meatyard is from his ‘no focus’ collection in which he has many photos with a blur effect, creating an all round negative space. From my interpretations this photo is of busy people walking, its good that I don’t know what the photo is of as this is what Meatyard wanted us to feel, a sense of the unknown. In order for this blur affect to be achieved the aperture must be wide (smallest f-value) so that the blurred area is harsher. A long focal length and a reasonably far distance from the subject would have also been techniques that Meatyard would have used. In all this photos of this particular collection he used a colour balance of black and white, which creates cold tone. The black and white goes well with the motion blur as it creates a mirroring effect for instance the people are walking, everything is fast pace and blurry, you can see no expression from anyone, this is similar to how there is no colour expressing the atmosphere, everything is gloomy and dull. As well as that there appears to be a pattern within this photo, the people are evenly spread apart, there is a clear rule of thirds. This also creates a sense of repetition and how everyday is the same nothing changes, there is nothing new to look forward to, everything is black and white.

My Photos:

In response to Meatyard’s work I experimented with focal length, depth of field and aperture. I took most of my inspiration from his ‘zen twigs’ collection, focusing in on plants and branches and blurring out the background to create large negative space. In order to achieve this set my camera to a large aperture and I had a shallow depth of field. Overall I am pleased with my final images, I decreased the brightness of all images and made them black and white, to resemble the work of Meatyard. I have tried to mirror his work as my photos are either completely blurred or there is one focal point and the rest is out of focus negative space.