Photo Analysis Paper

Photo Analysis Paper Portrait Photography

Cristhian Atahualpa Prof. Dina Kantor

“Candi, Cody and Caity” produced in 2005 by Chris Verene in his hometown of Galesburg, Illinois is a picture that illustrates emotions such as, happiness, tenderness and warmth only if perceived alone with out the text. Once we read the text the image as a whole changes completely, altering our perception, emotion and ideology of the image, making us think of many more scenarios that could be possible during that frozen frame by itself.

This picture shows a family (mom, daughter and son) being portrait on a sunny day that appears to be during the golden hour when the sun is hiding and the children come out to take opportunity to play the last minutes before it gets dark. The color pallet is warmth and the colors tend to match with their environment such as, the girl’s clothes with the house in the background colors and the boy’s shirt with the grass as same as the mom’s shirt with the bike and her hair with the yellow shining sun rays.

The composition is quite catchy to the eye since it is not geometrically but instead the photographer placed the background house towards the right so he could have the natural sunlight coming in through the top right portion of the image. I believe is also evident that he used a flash whose reflection can be seen on the back tire of the bicycle as same as the boy’s back, since they were actually posing against the light he probably needed to use this in order to show more detail in the subjects.

I think the photograph complement more of Chris Verene’s work because he is photographing images and adding captions to it that completely make us think differently about what we see, thus making us pay more attention into the point that he is trying to convey, such as issues that are relevant to his hometown of Galesburg. I feel that he wants to get a certain message across that even though he portrays his American community in such a way, he breaks the perception that we first get and makes us think about what the issues that might be happening there are by adding captions into them