David bailey research

David Bailey high key photographer investigation

David Bailey was born on January 2 1938 is a British photographer that is still working today. He is known for his advertising celebrity and fashion photography. He got first started working as an apprentice at the John French Studio, where he became involved in fashion photography. Then in 1960 he began to work for Vogue Magazine. He continued to work at Vogue for 15 years first as staff then later as a freelancer.

He changed the way people to portraits by starting to use high key photography as well as dramatic lighting effects. He used bright white background. He also wrote books and directed TV commercials as well as documentaries. so of the people he made documentary’s on include Andy Warhol who started the Pop art style in  America.

  

Some of his portraits include pictures of the Queen many celebrities such as Johnny Depp, Will Smith and Michael Cain. He also photographed the two brothers Ronnie and Reggie Kray who are very famous gangsters from the 1950s to 1960s

The photograph above is of Jude law in the image he is wearing a black suit with a black tie he is also looking directly into the camera with a cigarette in his mouth. This image is an example of high key lighting as the background is bright white with the face also being lit quite strongly from the right side of the subject and the other side isn’t as well light this might be because he was using a reflection disk to bounce the light back onto the other side of his face. There is very little emption shown on the subject’s face he is staring into the camera with a blank expression on his face. the image was taken 10x8 original like a lot of David Baileys shots. He photographers main of his male subjects in 10x8 format with an expensive camera that he says cost £50 per shot. He doesn’t take more the eight images of the subject using the same format. He also used 11x14 but he only used that twice one on each side. He also prefers to work on film and believes that digital photography and Photoshop have taken away from the personality of photographers and photography.