Style Paragraphs - Morgan Lang

          Hugh Morton:

I looked at one of Hugh Morton’s photography books, entitled “Hugh Morton North Carolina Photographer”. While looking over his photographs, I found his them to be very peaceful and elegant. I’d have to say his style is rather soft and calm. His images don’t attack you but rather invite you to look at them with a sense of peace and wholeness. Morton took a lot of photographs with his wide-angle lens. This allowed me to see the vast and lushes’ landscapes as if I was there, which in turn created a sense of awe. His photographs had a mix of different apertures based on what he was trying to capture. For instance, he captured a black bear cub in a tree above him, by using a low aperture setting to blur the background and create less depth, so the viewer could focus deeply on the bear, rather than what is behind him. However, for other photographs like “Linville Peak of Grandfather Mountain”, Morton used a large aperture setting to make the landscape have great depth, while still being in focus. Finally, I found a photograph entitled “Shortia”. The image depicted a waterfall, however the water looked like a soft cloud instead of a flowing stream. I assume he used a very low shutter speed to blur the water, or perhaps used a time lapse to create this effect. Overall, I was very impressed by Hugh’s work, and enjoyed looking at his photographs.

Sally Mann:

Another book I chose is entitled “Deep South”, by Sally Mann. I was amazed by how she was able to create the effects in her photographs and capture it with such skill. Her images throughout the book are spooky and eerie. This left me wondering how she was able to produce this effect. I know she used monochrome in all her photographs, however I’m unsure how she was able to make it look like fog throughout the picture, unless it was actual fog. She couldn’t have used a low shutter speed to blur the image, because the background is still in focus. My best guess is that that might just be the effect a photo-negative produces naturally. Even though her images are a little eerie, I still find them to be very calm and simple. Sally didn’t include a lot of subject in her images, making it very easy for the viewer to look deeply at a very specific object, without being distracted. Some of her images she used a low aperture value to blur the background and focus more on the bushy vine in the foreground. Also, a lot of her photographs throughout the book were taken from a lower point than the subject, creating more of that spooky, eerie effect, because you feel small in comparison.