Gregory Crewdson & Lighting

Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson was a photographer I got introduced to in our last lecture. I watched a documentary of his this past week that followed along behind the scenes to his incredible photographic masterpieces.

What I immediately noticed from his work was the similarity of style with painter Edward Hopper, there's a great sense in the use of lighting being a prominent focus in both artists work.(https://jessicanadira.wordpress.com/2019/10/14/edward-hopper-artist-research/ -View my blog on Edward Hopper's work here )

Crewdson's amazing photographs look like still's from a movie, while in reality they are just a photograph of a moment with not before and after. That's the beauty of his photographs, they're a moment in time.

"What I am interested in is that moment of transcendence, where one is transported into another place, into a perfect, still world." —Gregory Crewdson

Crewdson's photographs inflict a lot of emotions when viewing, you could stare at one for quite a while trying to figure out what's going on in the photo. They always seem to contain someone going through something, and it gets you really thinking. For example in the photo above, we don't know what's just happened here, has the mother just given birth to the baby? or is she planning on leaving it? The emotions on her face shows she's in deep thought contemplating something but as the viewers do we know what? Gregory Crewdson is a mater is creating mysterious thought provoking photographs.

In his film 'Brief Encounters' he explained how he has a favourite time of day to shoot, dusk, when the sun is setting and it's getting dark. He explained that that time allows him to use lighting how he wants to with out it looking too artificial like if he did it in the dark. I think that's very clever and uses a great balance of natural light and artificial light.

The lighting he uses is very effective in that he keeps his photos mainly dark while using the light to illuminate the subject/focus of the photograph. He uses it very skilfully and with the combination of his smoke machine creates some very dramatic lighting that bring a sort of sombre, dark mood to his photos.

Like Gregory Crewdson I also have a favourite time of day to take photos- or rather a time of year. I took these shots recently of a previous project I did during the afternoon natural daylight. I absolutely love taking photos in the winter sun when it's nice a low in the sky and it streams directly through my window, it's gives such a wonderful light.

If you remember I did the same type of thing last year with my rolling pin in the same kind of light.

https://jessicanadira.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/looking-at-lighting/

After watching all the video's on classroom and Gregory Crewdson's documentary, they have given me a lot of tips and things to think about when i'm filming next when it comes to considering lighting and mood.