The Top Photography Posts of 2012 (Part 1)

The year 2012 is about to draw to a close, so it's fitting to look back through the past 12 months and see what viewers have been looking for in photography and the visual arts. While this blog features different photographic styles and mediums, most of the popular posts seem to share a common theme. Here then are the top photography posts of 2012.


10) Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein - The Different Body Types of Olympic Athletes

Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein collaboration on athletes from different Olympic events is an eye opening presentation on the beauty and marvel that is the human body. One portrait on one athlete from one event can already make for a great image, but the variety presented by the photographers just goes to show amazing human are when it comes to physical adaptations. Truly, photography series was a fitting entry in time for the 2012 London Olympics.


9) Chuck Close - Not So Typical Daguerreotypes

Chuck Close's use of the century-old photography technique called the daguerreotype process proved to be a refreshing introduction into the medium. Following the same pattern as his gigantic paintings, Close's daguerreotypes are close-ups of his artists friends. He also made portraits of a few celebrity faces, but the daguerreotype process he used presented these familiar faces in a new light.


8) Sally Mann - The Beauty of Family

Sally Mann's beautiful black-and-white portraits of her immediate family have been a topic of conversation for photographers and artists ever since she published these photographs. No doubt the controversial nature of photographing her nude children helped bring her to the spotlight, but after all the hubbub and racket, her intimate portraits are worthy of the highest praise.


7) Martin Schoeller - Up Close and Personal

Martin Schoeller's dramatic close-ups have been featured on magazine covers and posters around the world. The photographer has used his unique style to capture everyone from female bodybuilders to tiny twins, but it's his celebrity portraits that have made him famous. Schoeller's use of hard light and shallow depth-of-field highlights every nook and cranny of his celebrity sitters, making them instantly captivating.


6) Platon - The Power of the Portrait

Platon's portraits are also quite dramatic, but in a different way. As with Chuck Close and Martin Schoeller, Platon uses extreme close-ups to present familiar faces in a new way, but his style is more subdued than Schoeller, and more modern than Close. Platon uses the same philosophy as Henri Cartier-Bresson in that he waits for that perfect moment before clicking the shutter. Based on his portraits, he's found that perfect moment every single time.


These five entries make up the tail-end of the top photography posts of 2012. Interestingly enough, most of them feature photographers who specialize in studio portraits, and three out of the five use extreme close-ups for their work, a technique that has proven popular in the last decade, especially for magazine covers and the like. Check back in a few days for the top five entries of the year.

Martin Schoeller: Twin Talk

Nope, you're not seeing double; they're actually twins... in which case you actually are seeing double... or are you really? Twin talk has been a mind-boggling topic for discussion to scientists, so it's not surprising to find that portrait photography would be utilized to aid in this endeavor. Portrait photographer Martin Schoeller turns his lens towards the odd couples here as he takes twin portraits for National Geographic.

Martin Schoeller has already been featured on this blog for his extremely up-close portraits of celebrities. His signature photographic technique of tightly cropped faces lit by two large in-your-face soft-boxes means that every nook and cranny of the subjects' front facade become heightened. His photographs have proven to be popular as they give viewers a different view of the same of faces of celebrities and stars.

In this case, Schoeller's technique is the perfect way to highlight the similarities and dissimilarities of identical twins. Were it not for this descriptive text, viewers might think that these pictures feature the same person photographed twice. On closer inspection however, readers might see small deviations: a scar here, more freckles there, a slightly upturned nose on one, a more prominent chin on the other. Slowly, viewers realize that they're looking at identical twins.

Monozygotic or identical twins comprise only three percent of the US population, so it's quite an event when a gathering of twins takes place. In the annual Twins Days Festival held in Twinsburg, Ohio, doppelgangers of all ages and sizes gather to celebrate their uniqueness. The large gathering of doubles has attracted the interest of different scientific and government agencies, from the Monell Chemical Senses Center studying the effect of alcohol on the siblings to the FBI collecting data for their face-recognition software.

The research that has gone into twin studies has changed society's way of looking at the nature vs. nurture debate. In many cases of identical twins being raised apart, many show the same levels of intelligence and social preferences as they grow up, making a good argument for hereditary genetics.

These faces you see here, however, belong to brothers and sisters who've spent most of their lives together. Thus it shouldn't be to surprising that most of them have the same expression and look, down to the kind of haircut they have.

While monozygotic twins still provide dozens of unanswered questions to science, it's nice to see that they can be rather beautiful subjects for portrait photography enthusiasts.

There's more of Martin Schoeller in this previous blog post. His website is here. His portraits of identical twins can be found here, along with the full twin talk article by National Geographic. Don't forget about the photographers published works: Martin Schoeller Close Up: Portraits, 1998-2005 , Martin Schoeller: Stern Portfolio and Female Bodybuilders.

Martin Schoeller: Up Close and Personal

Mole and Thomas' larger-than-life recreations of famous US icons may be awe-inspiring from afar, but there's nothing like looking into the eyes of a real person. In portrait photographer Martin Schoeller's appropriately titled "Close Up", viewers get up close and personal with Hollywood stars and celebrities in a refreshing and almost overly in-depth manner.

Martin Schoeller is a commercial portrait photographer whose images have graced the covers of Rolling Stone, Esquire, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, and many others. Some of his earlier photographs have the personal feel of Annie Leibovitz who was actually his mentor when started working in the industry in the early 1990s.

One of his most notable projects is his book, Female Bodybuilders, which is an unflinching look at award winning female bodybuilders. The series makes use of hard light and close up views, something that Schoeller is known for in his portraits.

Schoeller's most famous work is an ongoing series of extremely up-close portraits of celebrities entitled, "Close Up". Schoeller began his now famous series in the late 1990s when his career was just taking off. While he worked and continues to work in the typical portrait photography fashion, he made a name for himself by taking an objective and almost dead-pan view of both celebrities and ordinary people. He began taking a portrait every week, amassing a portfolio of faces that are now famously copied in the industry.

In Schoeller's style, the subject's face covers almost the entire length of the image, giving viewers an unprecedented view of all of every facial expression (or lack thereof). The tight view coupled with the two strobe lights directly in-front of the subject and Schoeller's medium format camera also has the secondary effect of exposing all of the celebrities' pores, wrinkles and scars.

Schoeller's images are close-up, but they aren't intimate; they don't expose the subject's character or personality but rather give an unbiased view of the celebrity as a canvas on which the face happens to be. This view is shocking at first, but it gives viewers an unique look at what these famous personalities would be like if they were standing two inches in front of you.

These images may be unromantic, but they are at the very least honest. They don't pretend to be anything other than what they appear to be. The backdrop is plain, the lighting is even, and the subjects are present. It might not be much, but that's what a good portrait is all about, plain and simple.

Martin Schoeller's minimalist website is here, which is only a jumping off point to other websites that host his close up portraits. You can also get up close and personal with his celebrity subjects in the book, Martin Schoeller Close Up: Portraits, 1998-2005 or Martin Schoeller: Stern Portfolio. Don't forget about his other project, Female Bodybuilders.