Looking and seeing

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Ralph Meatyard was an American photographer who had an eye for out of focus and aperture photography. He liked to work in black and white to emphases the images he was taking. Meatyard was inspired by Zen Buddhism and jazz, this inspired him to take photos of otherworldly faces on human bodies, to the ambiguous and unknowable in human nature. He liked experimenting with framing, multiple exposures, and blurring to produce haunting, abstracted images of natural and manmade environments.

Mood board of Ralph’s work that has inspired me for my photoshoot:

Ralphs images above focus mainly on the aperture of the image. The blurred images define the shapes of nature and human bodies. The high quality focus in the foreground of the twigs and the out of focus background creates a cool method of aperture in his photography.

Here is my photoshoot based of Ralph’s work.

Contact Sheet 1

How to use Photoshop:

These are the main features of photoshop I used for my final photos for each contact sheet I have done. Changing the photo first into black and white then playing around with:

Exposure

Brightness/Contrast

Highlights/Shadows