Born: March 12th 1968
Age: 47
Place of birth: Germany
Age: 47
Place of birth: Germany
Martin Schoeller is a photographer whose style of hyper detailed close up is distinguished by similar treatment of all subjects whether they are celebrities or unknown. His most recognizable work are his portraits and shots with similar lighting, backdrop and tone. Although he has photographed musicians, olympic athletes, world leaders, scientists, war heroes, celebrities and presidents. Schoeller maintains that his favorite kind of work is to document people who have not had their pictures taken countless times and perhaps to even take their first ever photograph. Martin has explained which involves taking many photographs until he manages to catch his subject at an honest moment ideally when his or her guard is down and he thereby exposes in them something viewers would not otherwise witness. His tightly cropped representations his models face him squarely even despite the blaring studio light he turns in their direction. His rigorous and systematic approach to image making echoes the grand tradition of German typographies pioneered by Hilla Becher and he often exhibits his photographs in neat and orderly grids that the human content it contains. Martins photographs are minutely observed studies of the human face, its features, wrinkles, gestures and expressive capacities and his images share a history. Growing up in Germany he was deeply influenced by August Sanders countless portraits of the poor, the working class and the bourgeoisie. He advanced as a freelance photographer and produced portraits of people he met on the street.
"I think all photographs lie. They capture such a small amount of person's personality, if they capture anything."
He has also taken pictures of body builders.
My favourite picture
This picture is unique to his other portraits because he has taken this picture of the person facing sideways and his other portraits are facing to the camera and this is the only image that has an object in the picture which is the flower in his hair. Martin has even captured the detail of the hair at the top which are facing in different directions which is questionable to the audience thinking why his hair is neat at the bottom but messy at the top. The man in this picture appears to be masculine due to his facial features and this hugely contributes against the flower which can be seen to be feminine but these two different categories can make this image interesting and therefore it could confuse the audience to what this image is really trying to explain. The man is looking away from the camera which has lost the connection between the photographer and the person because we think that the man doesn't know that his picture is being taken. Also there is a huge contrast in colour when we see two different colours for example the background of this image is a black colour but the colour of the flower is purple and yellow which shows a dark and bright side. As well as this the picture has been taken in bad quality and proberly with different lens or camera because it has different effects and it's not clear and the picture is slightly blurry.
My attempt
In this picture the person is focused and clear and the backdrop is blurred which is what Martin does with his pictures and the subject is not in the middle but at the side which makes it a unique portrait. As well as this there is lots of colour and excitement in the picture because the person is smiling and the audience feels happy when they see this picture which creates emotion. The colours red, black and green combine together which are mixtures of dark and bright colours which makes it questionable and there is reflection in the persons eye which is what Martin has in his pictures and is a key point in portrait photography. Also there is lots of detail in this image in every place of the image and in order to capture this kind of picture you have to have the brightness up on the camera and the light in both ends have to be the same but not too bright or it will make it overexposed and the lens have to be zoomed in on the person to make and you have to use a macro or telephoto lens. The depth of field has to be close from the camera and subject and there is white balance on the backdrop so you have to remove unrealistic color casts at that particular place and keep the focus on the subject.