The document discusses three portrait photographers - Yousuf Karsh, Cecil Beaton, and Nick Brandt. It focuses on Cecil Beaton, describing his photographs of famous people like Marilyn Monroe and analyzing the composition, techniques, strengths and weaknesses of his 1956 photo of Monroe holding a flower with her teeth. The analysis discusses how the medium shot captures her emotion without focusing solely on her body, and that Beaton was able to make his subjects feel at ease and photograph them in intimate moments.

1. Unit 57: Photography and
Photographic Practice
Research of other
photographers work

2. Photographer:
Yousuf Karsh,
(December 23, 1908 –
July 13, 2002) was an
Armenian-Canadian
photographer, and one
of the most famous
and accomplished
portrait photographers
of all time.

3. Photographer:
Sir Cecil Beaton
(January 14, 1904 –
January 18, 1980) was
and English portrait
photographer, known
for his photographs of
very famous people.

4. Photographer:
Nick Brandt is an
English photographer
who photographs
exclusively in Africa, one
of his goals being to
record a visually poetic
last testament to the wild
animals and places there
before they are gone at
the hands of man.

5. Examples of photographs

6. Examples of photographs

7. Examples of photographs

8. Cecil Beaton is known for his photographs of very
famous people, such as Pablo Picasso, Winston
Churchill, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly,
Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Andy Warhol, Mick
Jagger, Barbra Streisand, the Queen and many more.
His photo’s convey the famous person at their most
intimate, getting the photo’s that not many other
photographers could. This is because he built a
reputation as a trustworthy person who was very good
at his job.
The Marilyn Monroe photo proves this point to a tee. It
looks as though she is naked, only using a towel to
cover up. She is happy, biting on a flower, even if she
doesn’t look as glamorous as everyone was used to
seeing her. The main thing is that she is happy, and
Beaton was able to capture the pure emotion of Monroe,
rather than a perhaps feigned smile on the red carpet in
her best dress.
The photo was taken in 1956, just as Monroe was
finding international success as an actress, model and
singer. This, I believe, was the perfect time to take her
picture as it was taken in between her stages as a
young struggling actress to a ill woman ravaged with
personal problems and drug use before her early death
just 6 years after this picture was taken.

9. Composition
Cecil Beaton chose to include a medium shot of Monroe,
with the most focus being on her face even though it is not
a close up. The medium shot is a good technique for doing
that because it shows off the face really well without making
it the only thing you see. You still have half of her top half of
her body, as well as a prominent background and of course
the flower she is holding with her teeth and hand. He has
chosen to exclude the rest of her body because I feel her
wanted to capture the pure emotion on her face, rather than
only seeing it from a larger distance if we had her whole
body in shot. If he had zoomed out, we would have seen
her body, and what she was or perhaps wasn’t wearing in
this instance, as it looks like she could be possibly only
wearing a towel. I could be wrong but the background looks
like a cupboard, so that is another reason why it might have
been better to not zoom out any further as a cupboard isn't
exactly a great background choice unless it is zoomed in
like it is. Maybe though, the photo didn’t crop out the
cupboard as, like mentioned earlier with her genuine smile,
it makes her seem more normal and happy with a
conventional object. This would be better than, for example,
Monroe stood in front of a Rolls Royce as that would show
off her fake emotions by trying to corporate herself with
materialistic possessions.

10. Techniques used
In this specific photo, I don’t think Beaton had to think a lot
about shutter speed as such. It looks as though Monroe
was asked to sit in a position so he could take the photo.
Nothing appears blurry which means he didn’t necessarily
use the long/slow shutter speed. And short/fast shutter
speeds are used for photographs where a lot of action is
going on and the photographer needs a still image that
looks very sharp (such as in a football match or race, etc.)
I am guessing that the black and white aspect of the photo
isn’t an added effect and is rather how it was originally
taken – with black and white film. I think this because
although colour photography was available, it wasn’t very
popular when this photo was taken back in 1956. Colour
photography didn’t get very popular until much later.
I think he possibly lit up the scene because the cupboard
background looks to be shining and Monroe herself looks lit
up too but not in a way where it looks like she is sat outside
or with a door/window open. The dark shades of the
cupboard suggest the photo was taken in a relatively dark
room.

11. Strengths & Weaknesses
I like Cecil Beaton’s work. He was obviously hard-working
and had to earn the right to take the photographs of the
calibre of people that he did.
His style is very effective. After researching some of his
other work, he has his style and he sticks to it. Every photo
looks very sophisticated but always seems to capture the
emotion of the subject, rather than having them spend 4
hours in hair, make-up and wardrobe - he captures the
stars at their realest.
If I was to do a portrait photograph then I would look at
Cecil Beaton’s work for inspiration. It would help me to
make the subject stand out and look very good without
looking ‘very good’.