Arnold Newman Biography:

• Newman was noted for the portrait photography of politicians and Artists. He was also known for his carefully composed abstract still life images.
• Born in New York City on 3 March 1918, he grew up in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
• In 1936, he studied painting and drawing at the University of Miami. Unable to afford continuing after two years, he moved to Philadelphia to work for a studio, making 49-cent portraits in 1938.
• In 1945, Newman opened his own portrait studio in Miami after three years earlier looking after this other studio.
• in 1946 Newman relocated to New York and opened up his own studio called ” Arnold Newman Studios” and from then on he worked as a freelanced photographer for magazines such as  Fortune, Life, and Newsweek.
• he focused on photographing personalities of different people. He managed to maintain this even though some were lost or unknown, the photographs had to still be exciting and interest the viewer.
• he was often credited for being the first environmental portrait photographer. Newman captured his photos in familiar using visuals and representations to show their profession and personalty.
• Arnold Newman told a magazine in an interview  “The surroundings had to add to the composition and the understanding of the person. No matter who the subject was, it had to be an interesting photograph. Just to simply do a portrait of a famous person doesn’t mean a thing.”
• Newman’s most famous photographs were in black and white even though he photographed in colour. His 1946 black and white portrait of Igor Stravinsky seated at a grand piano became his signature image.
• After this Newman taught  photography at Cooper Union for many years.
• Newman died on the 6th June 2006 in New York City, New York after recovering from a stroke.

Images:

 

This is my favourite image by Arnold Newman as it is very simple and i like how the light has been reflected in the back so that it hits the seats , also he has got the person to do a emotionless face so that it makes us feel nothing, also as it is in black and white this then makes the image more sinister than before as usually the dark makes us feel that bad is going to happen whereas a the picture was in colour then you would think that it was happy mood. I think that he didn’t use flash and that instead he used a alternative light source.

Here is some of my examples of environmental portraits:

I found when I took these photos that they didn’t come out the way I wanted, for example It looks like i have done a double exposure, I didn’t want this, the problem with this is because the shutter speed was too slow meaning that it din’t capture the picture in detail.

For these picture I found that They came out more clearly than my other attempts. However I found after that one image was slightly over exposure while the other one was under exposed, to solve this problem I increased the exposure on the under exposed image to get a little more light and I have increased the colour intensity. This is my outcome: