Nicola Callaghan's Photography (North East England UK): Portrait

Sunday, 4 January 2015

Portrait - David Bailey

David Bailey is another fashion and portrait photographer, like Rankin and also a very well known English photographer who has created iconic photographs over the years which many people are familiar with. Such as his famous photo of Jean Shrimpton, which he photographed many times. He is known for his black and white portraits of celebrities. The majority of his works are close ups of the subject with very few too far below and past the shoulders. Like mentioned, he is well known for black and white photos however he does shoot in colour also, where I think there is good reason too and sometimes within his black and white photographs he will introduce the slightest of colour sometimes, for example by using a red lipstick.
The first image is of Jean Shrimpton and one of his most well known and famous photographs. Also out of his black and white photographs is his other most famous photographs which one are of the Beatles, particularly a certain image of Paul Mccartney and John Lennon, another is of Mick Jagger and is a great example of his style of cropping of a photograph. Michael Caine, which is, again another quite specific image because of the rule of thirds, this image as well he shot again in the sense of he shot Jude Law in nyon the same pose and style. Another good example of his use of rule of thirds and cropping is the portrait of Andy Warhol.
The following photos are all perfect examples of Bailey's cropping style. Apart from the first one they all crop near enough the same, half cut of heads for example. These are all great examples of his earlier work in the 60s. The top image, of Jean Shrimpton, is slightly different to the others, his crop is still tight though in this image as you can notice her hands and elbows are just in the crop, they will have been his border line.