Ewen Spencer

Spencer is a photographer, film maker and publisher who graduated from Brighton university. When he left university there was no Internet so what is popular now like Facebook didn't exist. The popular medium was magazines. Magazines had such a large influence on sub-cultures that it could often effect music, style and fashion. He decided to photograph the world around him; focusing on youth culture. This mostly involved images from parties and raves that he went to. Spencer then went to a magazine publication called Sleaze Nation where they employed him to attend raves and take images of youth culture for their back pages to emphasise style. This magazine would have targeted the youth culture since a it was about them.

An American publisher saw his work in Sleaze Nation and asked him to come to America to do the same task. However when he came back with 20 rolls of film to develop the publishers said it wasn't enough and really pushed him to use 100 rolls in one night, all in black and white. This really pushed him to achieve greater images and a lot more of them.

He later achieved some acknowledgement from another magazine called The Face who asked him to start taking pictures of the garage scene, teens and sex. At the time he would attend high school proms and house parties. If Spencer was to attempt this now he would probably be arrested.

This is very bold because this is the sort of scene that we would usually look at. Public displays like this often makes people feel uncomfortable so we might not have ever seen this before because they are trying to accept the reality but don't want to see it. I love this image because all these people probably don't know they are being photographed, making their expressions and body position completely natural. However most of these people are probably drunk since as it was taken at a party which might make the models more confident portraying them as someone different to themselves.

He wanted to be part of the garage and soul scene so that he could focus on youth culture. That's when he found a lot of people recording music and making films. He would have to take scrap books to convince people who didn't want him around to let him take photos.

To fund his own interests he found people who wanted to sponsor him and completed some commercial work for clients including an advertising campaign for skin, Nike posters with the French football team, lastminute.com, JD Sports and EA Sports with FIFA 15.

This is quite different to the normal party scene that he photographs because this was all set up and isn't natural, however Spencer has organised this perfectly to look quite natural. I think that because the tv show is called skins, Spencer has focused on skin touching and exposing as much as possible. this might appeal to teens and young adults as parties can end up looking like this.

This image is very clever because there are different colours on each side of the model showing the two groups of supporters that would be at a football game. They show the influence that the crowds chants would have on the player. the blue light it very bright and is the main source of light on the model showing how they support him however there is still red on the right showing that the bad chants still get to him. I really like the different colours being used to add more context to the image.

When he visited Italy he became fascinated in the culture so he wanted to photograph the workers however he was then drawn back to the youth culture again.

I think that Spencer may have been influenced by Martin Parr in some of his colour images because some people might consider some of the colours quite vulgar. This is because they are so saturated and bright, like the greens, blues and oranges in this image.

Overall I think that Spencer is a very skilled photographer. Even though he photographs in a different genre I think that compositionally he is on par with great photographers like Eggleston. Spencer seems to be able to very quickly determine the exposures and positioning of everything in the frame by moving himself. I don't think that many people have this sort of skill which in my opinion makes him a very talented photographer and is a relatable photographer for event, documentary and portrait photography.

Luke Waller

Weller is a freelance illustrator who has worked in editorial illustration for 5 years. Usually it takes him around 2 hours to create a draft/rough sketch of his work. Then after some emails to the art director to confirm his ideas, Weller will start working on his final piece. If Weller has a very small time scale like 24 hours he will often use Photoshop. However if he is given a longer period of time he will often use pencil drawings and monoprinting to add colour to his images. Weller only learn't how to monoprint after his education at Bournemouth university. His grade suffered because he was so obsessed with defining his style, he never tried anything new apparently.

He stated that this image was drawn from a very small thumbnail on google. Using pencil drawings and Photoshop Waller was able to create a full sized portrait. The style of this image reminds me of illustrations that would accompany a statement or article in a magazine.

Weller likes to think that he is good at talking to art directors because he treats them like gods, he states that they in essence feed him, cloth him and keep a roof over his head. Because of this he gets a lot repeat clients. Up until late last year he worked without an agent. Now he is part of JSR. Quarterly Weller uses social networking like twitter and instagram to display his work and talk to other like minded people. Weller is always careful though not to post anything bad about anyone or anything. To self promote he sends out some of his latest images with a letter and customised envelope. Clients and agencies would feel more inclined to look and read a letter than an email because you can select and delete them straight away.

I find this very inspiring because of the bright and selective colours. I have chosen to make a project where I would be using practical techniques like the monoprinting. Using monoprinting techniques are quite difficult and Waller has very effectively created a layered black and white image with shaded areas and then used a board with red ink to create shaded areas and new subjects in the image.