research on famous photographer (timothy allen)

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Timothy Allen Research on Famous Photographer

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Timothy AllenResearch on Famous Photographer

Introduction

• An English photographer and filmmaker.• After graduating from Leeds University, he was travelling in

Indonesia for 3 years and found his passion in photography.• Allen used to work in Sunday Telegraph, The Independent,

and Axiom Photographic Agency• In the beginning of 2009, he spent almost 2 years shadowing

BBC film crews during the production of the landmark television series Human Planet

Reportage and Ethnographic Photography• Timothy Allen is best known for his reportage and

ethnographic photography. He takes a lot of photos of indigeneous people and isolated communities around the world.

• His popular documentary project is Human Planet that was produced by BBC.

He travelled with 4 teams for over a year and a half inover forty countries around the world to cover the storyabout human’s endeavour

• The result of their documentary project was published in a best-selling BBC book.

• It was shown in an exhibition and used in the program’s worldwide branding and publicity.

Style of Photography

• Allen’s photographs are largely ethno-photographic in style. He takes a lot of pictures of humans who are related to social culture. Most of them are indigeneous people who live in a village or lead their life in traditional way.

• Almost all of his photographs show very strong custom

Influence of Style

• Because of his strong point in ethnography photography, he has works in cinematography and multimedia production. That requires him to travel to every corner of the globe to discover more story about culture and custom of a society.

• For example, he has been to 19.000 ft up in Himalayas and 40 meters beneath the South China. He has been to a communities in the Arctic, tropical rainforest, and remote desert location as well.

Contribution

• In the field of photography, Timothy shows that photographers can tell information or story through their photographs. An image can show the viewers about what was happening in the picture.

• His photographs are quite good to become guide to another beginner travel/documentary photographer because he is able to reveal many culture heritage in this world and present it in interesting photographs.

Work Influence

• Through his work, he gives the viewers informations about a lifestyle from another society that have not been known in publicity.

• Since he can take those interesting photos, from the colour, compotition to concept, a lot of people are attracted to know more about informations or stories behind the photographs

Living

• In recent years, Timothy Allen work in BBC to shadow the BBC’s production of Human Planet.

• The focus of his work has turned to world’s remaining indigenous societies and he currently devotes his time to documenting the diversity of humanity’s cultural heritage

• Allen also writes a weekly blog for the BBC and documenting his work by photographing the world's indigenous societies for the documentary Human Planet

Special Technique

• When shooting people, Allen does not use long lens so much

• He uses fast, prime lenses • Allen does not use auto exposure. He

arranged the lighting that he wants himself.

What Does Distinguish Allen’s Work?

• His genre of photography is travel photography to reveals more about places around the world and attract the viewers to know more about the informations behind the photographs

• Allen’s photographs have very strong colour he captures bright and colorful colour and rarely uses black and white.

• The photographs is not only showing the human’s activities but most of his photograph has a concept in it

• The photographs is very sharp and usually there is one focus point in his photographs.

• If we compare him to other travel photographer, for example Mitchell Kanashkevich , Allen’s work is more specific. Allen He has the very strong feeling about cultureheritage and custom in photograph Kanashkevich takes every photograph that has humanelement. It could be interaction between people, peopleworking, or custom and culture as well.

Timothy Allen’s photographMitchell Kanashkevich’s photograph

Some examples that show Timothy Allen’s style

Respond to Photographer’s Work

• Timothy Allen knows how to make his photograph interesting by using the correct angle, rule of thirds, point of interest, strong focus, and warm colour like red, yellow, etc to make his photographs become eye-catching.

• He put a concept in most of his photograph to make those photos like have a story

• The photographs are very sharp and in some photographs he show an obvious depth of field.

• He captures the images in correct perspective so we can get the feeling of the photographs

Timothy Allen’s Photographs

Bajau sea gypsy breath diver, Tun Sakaran, Sabah, Malaysia

• Depth of field : DeepWe can see the background (the shape of the fish) clearly even thoughthe details is not that obvious

• Composition point of interest and rule of thirdsThe diver is the point of interest since the fish are around him and the way Allen capture the diver is not exactly in the middle, but a little bit

on the right of the photograph.

• Perspective Low angleThe photo has an illusion as if we are looking under the fish and the diver. So we can see there is light that goes through the water on the top of the fish and the diver.

• Contrast : DarkThe contrast here can be considered dark because we can not see the details that obvious. Moreover, the fish on the background are only the silhouette.

• Colour : CoolBlue is the dominant colour here

• Portrait : CandidAllen took this photo without arranging the position of the objects first. Perhaps the diver did not even realize it when Allen took this photograph.

Timothy Allen’s Photographs

Drinking mares milk. Blue River valley. Mongolia

• Composition : Point of interestThis photograph has only one point of interest. It is a girlwho was drinking the milk.

• Perspective : Close upAs we can see, Allen captured only the girl’s face part to the neck part.This way, we can see what the girl was drinking and her facial expression.

• Contrast : Low-keyWe can see only the front part of the girl and the rest that is around heris only dark shadow.

• Colour : tone

Allen made the bright colour (red, yellow, and blue) become very bright

and clear while the black colour in the background is very dark.

• Light : Ambient The light is only focusing on the girl face and the milk while the background has no light at all. Hence, we can feel that there is only a little light in that room.

• Portrait : PoseIn the photograph, the girl was looking at the camera and the lighting looked like it had been arranged before Allen took the photograph.

Timothy Allen’s Photographs

Elder Kong Di at Ta Phrom, Angkor Wat. Cambodia

• Depth of field : DeepWe can see everything in this photograph looks sharp. Allenwanted to show that not only the monk is the focus but alsothe details of the building.

• Composition : Point of interestWhen we see this photograph, we will see directly into the monk in the

middle since he wore a clothes that had different colour from his surroundings.

• Contrast : High-keyThe contrast in this photo makes the definition of the lines sharper so we can see that the detail is very clear.

• Light : Diffuse

The light looks like it comes from any direction. So it brighten up the wholephotograph. We can see that there is no dark part in the photo. Even thedetails are bright and clear.

• Colour : Mood and coolThe colour of this photograph has created an illusion that there is silence

in that place. It is greenish as well.

• Portrait : PoseWe can see that the monk is standing in front of the door while looking at the camera. It seemed that he realized that Allen was taking his picture.

Timothy Allen’s Photographs

Inquisitive children in River Gee, Liberia

• Depth of field : DeepIn this photograph, the background (children’s faces) is as sharp as thelegs that are in front of the background. This might happen because thebackground is not far from the leg. So there is no blur on the background.

• Composition : BackgroundAlthough the faces is only a background, we can find that it makes the whole photograph become interesting. It looked like there is a story behind the photograph.

• Contrast : LightThe photograph is bright enough and the definition of the line is not that strong. There is not much dark shadow in thisphotograph.

• Light : Diffuse

The light brighten the whole photograph as if it came not only from one direction. We can see that there is only a little bit shadow there.

• Colour : WarmThis photograph shows that it was taken in the very bright afternoon as the colour is a bit yellowish and bright.

• Portrait : CandidIt looks like there is an activity and movement when Allen took this Photograph. Because some of the children is doing another thing while the other was looking to the camera. It could be some of them were not ready when the photograph was taken.

Timothy Allen’s Photographs

Tennis fans at Wimbledon. UK

• Depth of field : BokehThe focus part in this photograph is the face with green eyes. That area looks sharp and clear. On the other hand, the background is quite blur so we can not see anything behind the face. The other face in front of it looks blur as well.

• Composition : Rule of thirds and Point of interestAllen put the focus (face with green eyes) a little bit on the left. Another interesting part in this composition is the red cross in the middle. The line looks like it connects to each other although actually it does not. Once we take a look at this photo, our eyes will look at the red cross first.

• Perspective :This photograph uses close up perspective because the camera captured the image in very close distance so we can see the details of the face very clearly.

• Contrast : lightThe line between each object is not very strong and the shadow is not that much

so it looks like the line does not separate each object obviously.

• Light : Natural lightThe light in this photo is from the left side. The shadow is shown on the right side. It looks like this photograph does not use any additional light.

• Colour : WarmThe colour that catch our attention in this photograph is red. Besides that, this photoraph is full of bright colour like white, blue, and yellowish green.

• Portrait : It is a pose portrait since one of them was smiling while looking to the camera. The other reason is it would have been difficult to get the red cross perfectly if Allen had not arranged the pose first.

Source

• http://humanplanet.com/timothyallen• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Allen• http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/

articles/interviews/bbc-human-planet-photographer-timothy-allen-interview

• www.mitchellkphotos.com