Eg+Edward+Weston

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Edward Weston was a famous photographer known for his pictures of natural objects such as vegetation and shells, which he called “Natural Studies.” He was born in 1886 Highland Park, Illinois. He was given a Kodak Bulls-Eye #2 Camera for his sixteenth birthday, which he immediately put to use. Only one year later in 1903 he had the Chicago Art Institute exhibit his photographs. He moved to California after the San Francisco Earthquake as a Surveyor. He married Flora Chandler and had four sons, Edward Chandler Weston, Theodore Brett Weston, Laurence Neil Weston, and Cole Weston. At the end of 1910 Edward Weston had his first photographic studio in Tropico, California (Glendale today). His career changed when he met Tina Modotti, his assistant and lover, in 1919 where in Mexico he decided to give up pictorialism and instead go into straight photography. He went into some of his more famous works at this time taking up photographing vegetation and shells calling it “Natural Studies.” He also was a founder of the famous f/64 club. F/64 refers to an f stop (aperture) that allows for the background and foreground to be evenly sharp. Other members of this club included Ansel Adams (famous for his landscape photos of the Midwest) and William Van Dyke (apprentice of Edward Weston and produced propaganda movies for the government during World War II). He did a lot of famous photographs during the 1930s. Edward Weston experienced symptoms of a disease known as Parkinson’s disease, which is an illness that affects the locomotion of a person. In 1948 he shot his last photographs and his sons Brett and Cole printed a 50th anniversary portfolio of what he deemed his 800 most important negatives under his supervision in 1955 to 1956. He died in his home on January 1, 1958 at age 71. He is widely regarded as one of the best photographers of the 20th century.







To mimic these great photographs I set up a a back drop of black felt and used three main lights at far away distances and one fill light to achieve a soft light on the shells, a diagram of what it looked like is



The images I took that mimic Edward Weston