BRANDON WOELFEL
August 15, 1994-NOW
Brandon was born in the united states and his photography is now based out of New York. He was born on August 17, 1994. He attended the School of Visual Arts and has since graduated. His love for art began when he was very young, throughout his life he has been searching for things that interest him. A few years ago he came across a few photographers on Instagram and was inspired by them and thought that was they were doing was absolutely amazing and that is how he began his start as an artist, Instagram.
Brandon's style is a very young, new and contemporary way of photography. He uses lots of contrast of darkness and light in his photos. He loves to use reflections and lights to create something that no one has seen before. Most of his photos are taken during the night using lights around him to be able to capture the photo, using all sorts of lights from neon lights from signs, to fairy lights, christmas lights, even black lights. All of his photos have at least one thing that draws in the viewer’s attention that is some sort of pop of color or light. He uses models in his photography most of the time. His photography is based out of New York, which allows for him to get lots of photos in the city.
Most of Brandons photos are taken during pure joy or beauty. Some of his favorite pieces he has taken are of friends together having a fun time laughing and they seem like they couldn’t be happier. Brandon finds a way to capture that in one single photo, these models could have just meet each other five minutes ago but his photo can tell a a story of lifelong friendship. People say a picture is worth a thousand words but Brandons photos are an entire novel. His models in his photos are always young and look like they would be in their 20’s, typically woman sometimes men. But these women look absolutely stunning in Brandon's photos he finds a way to capture someones pure beauty. As for the photos that don’t have someone in them they are of something that looks like it had been paused in time, things such as paint falling or water. They look like he paused a ripple in time just to take the perfect photo. These photos might be showing that you need to slow things down a little to really enjoy the little things.
Trying to imitate Brandon’s photos has made me realize how difficult it really is to take these kinds of photos and edit them. While taking these images it forced me to do something I had not tried before which is to take photos in the dark and using only a small amount of light in these photos. I really enjoyed trying to pick apart Brandon's photos and his style because it forced me to see things differently and to have more of an appreciation for photographers. Now when I am downtown or at a restaurant I think wow that would be a good place to take a photo look at the lights just the other day I was driving and saw a neon sign and almost asked my mom to pull over to take photos. I discovered Brandon’s photography two years ago and have loved it since then but until this class I had never thought to try and take my own. I like taking photos at night because it forces you to focus on the little bits of light in things. Someday I would like to try and adapt Brandon’s style and give it some sort of twist to make it my own and discover my style as a photographer.
BRANDON
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MINE
For this image the main subject was purposely somewhat off center to have an unbalanced photo trying to simulate the image to the left as best as possible. The focal point of this image is the model subject, but the neon detail is supposed to be a detail was well but the neon is more so used as leading lines towards the subject. The background of the image is very plain to leave the focus in the foreground of the image.
In this image I made the focus of the image the flame of the lighter, I made the room completely dark so no other distractions would be in the background. I tried to do my best to center the lighter in the middle of the image, which was very hard considering I had to hold a big camera and a lighter at the same time. By having nothing else in the background that forced the flame to be the main viewpoint of the image.
For this image I tried to do my best to focus on the glasses in the center of the image using the rule of thirds. The lights I used ended up sort of getting in the way of that and ended up becoming the focal point of the image. The way the lights turned out I found to be very interesting and it was almost a distraction from the background of the image but also made the background the focus.
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COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Image One-
Brandon's image was much more detailed in the way of the neon lights but I struggled to find a way to edit them into my photos without ruining the models face. Brandon's also was much better just in the way of how the photo was positioned on the subject. If I could reshoot this photo I would find a better setting to shoot in and learn how to add the neon lights in properly in photoshop.
Image Two-
Image two was very difficult I found a room that was completely dark but I could never seem to take the photo at the perfect timing of the sparks. I tried to figure out a way to edit the sparks into the photo but they never turned out right. Brandon typically has a blue tone in his photos so I did my best to copy the blue layer tone.
Image Three-
For image three I used fairy lights, which is brandon's go to lighting that was used in this photo, but whenever I used the fairy lights they didn't turn out like dots they became blurred lines. Brandon uses a very high shutter setting for these types of photos so maybe that was where I went wrong. I also didn't have anyone around at the time to take this of, but I thought I could do my best to capture the light in the glasses which he typically does very well as you can see.
Image One-
Brandon's image was much more detailed in the way of the neon lights but I struggled to find a way to edit them into my photos without ruining the models face. Brandon's also was much better just in the way of how the photo was positioned on the subject. If I could reshoot this photo I would find a better setting to shoot in and learn how to add the neon lights in properly in photoshop.
Image Two-
Image two was very difficult I found a room that was completely dark but I could never seem to take the photo at the perfect timing of the sparks. I tried to figure out a way to edit the sparks into the photo but they never turned out right. Brandon typically has a blue tone in his photos so I did my best to copy the blue layer tone.
Image Three-
For image three I used fairy lights, which is brandon's go to lighting that was used in this photo, but whenever I used the fairy lights they didn't turn out like dots they became blurred lines. Brandon uses a very high shutter setting for these types of photos so maybe that was where I went wrong. I also didn't have anyone around at the time to take this of, but I thought I could do my best to capture the light in the glasses which he typically does very well as you can see.