Madison's Commercial Photography Blog: December 2016

In the series “Tales by Light”, there are five great photographers who show their work in each episode they are in. Although the photographers featured in this show are all amazing, they was on person who especially stood out to me, Art Wolfe. Art was my favorite photographer because he wasn’t afraid to do anything in order to get the photo he wanted to accomplish.

Art was featured in two different episodes. Both of the episodes were very different from each other because they both had a different subject of photography. In the first episode, Art photographed animals in the wild and how they lived in their environments. I really admired this subject because he got up close in order to accomplish his goal of the photo.

The second episode that Art was featured in was about different tribes and their traditions and rituals that they go through in their day to day life. In order for Art to accomplish these pictures, he drew out how he wanted the pictures to turn out and places the tribe members accordingly. I also really liked how he photographed the process of the tribe members painting their faces with the colored clay. Most tribal photographers only photograph the end result of the face painting and head pieces, but Art photographed the before and after including the processes in between painting the face and and washing the clay off.

The tribal episode in this series was probably the most personal episode because they explained their day to day life and their different family traditions. The most interesting thing to me was how Art photographed the women in the tribes’ lip piercing and how they eventually stretch out their lip using a wood tool. I found this fascinating because I have never seen anything like it and the photographs really made me curious and wanted to learn more about that tradition.

This series really made appreciate how important and cool photography can be if you really try to accomplish what you want to capture. I would definitely continue to watch this series because I really want to expand my knowledge on photography and the different photographers around the world and what they photograph.