Timothy Allen Case Study

Timothey Allen is a well known and renound photographer who is known mostly for his amazing time lapse videos that he created when touring the world with the BBC’s Human Plant Crew.

T. Allen was born in Tonbridge in the South East of England in 1971.  At age 22, after graduating from Leeds University with a BSc Zoology he left the UK and spent 3 years traveling around Indonesia which was the catalyst that sparked his passion for photography.

In the early 1990’s, after beginning a part-time diploma in photography, Timothy joined an aid convoy to Bosnia in order to shoot his first year reportage project.  Six months later he had dropped out of college and moved to London to begin work for the Sunday Telegraph. This new founeded career that he under took later inspired commissions from all the British broadsheet publications, more commonly known as the BBC. His final stage of his career upto date is a 6 year position at The Independent working predominantly on features and portraits.  Timothy joined Axiom Photographic Agency in 2002 leading him to cover a dynamic and broad spectrum of global stories with subjects ranging from the civil war in the remote Spice Islands of far eastern Indonesia, to the intriguing subculture of The World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield , Illinois.

In recent years, the focus of his work has turned to our planet’s remaining indigenous societies and he currently devotes his time to documenting the diversity of humanity’s cultural heritage. His multi award winning documentaries have taken him to every corner of the globe, from 19 000 ft up in the Himalayas to 40 metres beneath the South China Sea as well as projects within communities in the Arctic, tropical rainforest and remote desert locations.

The image in the below is an images that Allen has captured in Indonesia. 

 

One of his most famous pieces of work can be view from the URL link

http://www.wimp.com/natureminute/

The link plays a video that shows the 4 year time lapse that he created using both a locational landscape and a studio. To create this timescape he created a specially designed rig and studio area for this. For the studio part of the project he had to paint everything blue and place flowers in areas of the locational site that were plain, he did this by blowing a picture up and projecting it onto a wall.

The studio that required the most viewing was the camera itself as if the set or the camera moved more than 2mm the hole lot of the project up to any point would be ruined and him and his team would have to start all over again.

My personal opinion on this video is that it is the most inspirational time lapse video that I have ever watch. This is due to the way him and his team had had o spend a year researching and developing idea’s just in able to make sure that the project that want and are under taking can be a success. I also find the time lapse inspirational due to the way the team had to make there own rigs and devices in able for there project to be a success. Further more looking into this video I am now going to take inspiration and develop my own rig for my Final major projects theme of Time Lapses and Time Scapes.

William Eggleston Case Study

William Eggleston is an America photographer who is widely known and credited for taking pictures of urban or decaying scenes that most people would find uninteresting and horrible to look at. However through out the years he has had them printed and placed in a gallery for an exhibition.

Most of the work he produces is things that are either left to decay or have a strange urban sense to them, For example the image below is of a kids trike that has been dumped and left on the street. The image overall from my point of view has a sense of decay as there is no one around the bike and the bike looks to be in poor condition giving a sense that it has not been very well looked after.

The purpose of his work is to show ordinary life but in an unusual way. His work has been seen in many galleries and portfolios through the world. A list of his publications can be seen below.

·      The earliest commercial use of Eggleston’s artwork was in the album covers for Memphis group Big Star, who was an American rock band. 

·      In 1974, 14 dye transfer pictures that he printed were published by Julian Hohnenburg and distributed by Harry H Lunn Jnr in Washington DC.

·      Seven Chromogenic coupler prints were published by Caldecot Chubb in New York, during 1979.

·      Troubled waters, Fifteen of these images were published by Caldecot Chubb

Eggleston has quote many things about his work like what he finds makes the image and what he found inspiration for taking images. However the quote that stands out for me the most is the following

The Observer News paper developed a piece of work on Eggleston showing the pieces of work that he has done. A quote from the piece that stood out for me is the following :-

“It would be difficult to imagine the world according to David Lynch, Gus Van Scant, Juergen Teller or sofia coppala without the world”.

My opinion on his work is that it is interesting to look at and develop ideas from. This is due to the way he has captured his images, his images are to show life but in an unusual way, and as you can see from looking at his push bike image he does this well as, he shows a normal scene around what can be seen in the background as an everyday human life.