Shoot In the Style Of- Emma Charbonneau
About the Photographer
George Hurrell was born on June 1st, 1904, and died on May 17th, 1992. George was born in Kentucky and was raised in Cincinnati. Although, he became a photographer he had an interest in drawing at an early age. He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and then moved on to Academy of Fine Arts in his teens. George took a job hand painting photographs in commercial studio. Even though he was good at painting he found that his photographs sold better than his paintings. He met Edward Steichen in 1928 when he asked to borrow George’s darkroom to develop pictures for a client (International Center of Photography). He was Eugene Hutchinson’s apprentice, and his friend Pancho Barnes was a major influence for him and his posed for him a lot. Later, he opened a photographic studio in Los Angeles. George’s first major commission was to photograph the actor, Ramon Novarro (Wikimedia Foundation). Hurrell is most known for his dramatic lighting in his images. For him to accomplish this he uses, precision lighting, spotlights, shadows, and re-touching to achieve a dramatic or romantic style. This look became so popular that it started to be known as “Hurrell Style” because so many people used it. Most of his pictures are Hollywood glamour (The Walt Disney Family Museum).
Why I Chose Him?
In my opinion, I absolutely love this style of photography, it mixes in portraiture and dramatic lighting together. I have always been interested in using dramatic lighting and George Hurrell does an amazing job with it. I chose him because I just found the way he positioned the models were incredible. As well, from a few of the pictures I scrolled by most of them were not looking at the camera. This gives a whole new meaning to the image because, it keeps the viewer interested and what could possibly be going on in their mind. The photos below are some of my favourites but there are so many more that I absolutely love.
(Figure 1) George Hurrell, Heddy Lamar 1938. (Figure 2) George Hurrell, Joan Crawford 1932.
(Figure 3) George Hurrell, Joan Crawford 1932.
My Opinion about Him and The Photos I Chose
I find a lot of his pictures to show some sort of emotion in each one, but everyone can interoperate each one differently. The Figure 1 could mean mysteries or passion or love just because of the way she is position it looks as if she is looking off into the distance looking for something or someone. Figure 2 is a completely different meaning; this one could be despair or sadness. She is clearly in pain or sad by something that happened. You can see in her face that she is in discomfort of some kind and just her facial expression in general is just saddened. And Figure 3 is like Figure 1. This one looks like she’s suspicious or even flirty. But it still gets the viewer thinking what it could possibly mean or show. This why I love these images so much because it’s so dramatic and really gives a whole new meaning to black and white pictures.
About my Recreation of the Photos
From the research I did on him, was that a lot this technique is basically a lot of lighting techniques and positioning of things. As well in these pictures the light is only coming in one direction and most of the background is black making it a dramatic setting. In Figure 1 the lighting is not as dramatic as Figure 2 and 3. As I was trying to figure out a way to make the lighting dramatic it was hard to do as most of the places, I had in mind had a lot of light shining through it. How I managed to create something similar to Figure 3 is I did some retouching in Capture 1. The images I am talking about of my own is Mysteries which is the image above. As well, what I did to make this look dramatic I used more of an angel and had the eyes looking directly at me. This was one of the best ones I shot for this assignment.
Mysteries by Emma Charbonneau 2023.
Testing More Lighting
Despair by Emma Charbonneau
Daze by Emma Charbonneau
More About My Images
The other two images are Despair and Daze these images were tester for Mysteries, but I still quiet liked them so I still wanted them to be a part of the image series. Now for all the images it was very difficult to find a place in the school to take them as the model and I was not able to find a common time to book the studio so I made do with what I could find. We found a window and it was sunny that day so it was perfect because the one side of the face would be lit and the other would be darker. I tried 2 different angels, and both worked, and even though this was just me playing around with the lighting. I still think that these images represent the style of George Hurrell very well even as testers. I also really liked the idea of adding in some modern era of COVID and such, although I didn’t use them in the end as the final product, they are still an amazing was of expressing a world problem that had happened. Although these weren’t my best, I still really like them and maybe I can use again for something in the future.
End Results
Though these are my own interpretations of these images it still gives the effect of dramatic lighting. The only major struggle was trying to get the right lighting within the image. I basically scoped around to find potential places that we would be able to use. I also wanted to use as little editing as possible as George did very little editing as well. Something I think I could do better for these images to be more dramatic is to book the studio and use lights and reflectors, so it truly brings out the contrast between the light and the dark of the image. As well with the lighting I would not have to do a lot of editing, as I did with the images for this project. Overall, I enjoyed this assignment too, and I am really excited to add this dramatic lighting to my other images moving forward.
Citations
Internal Center of Photography. George Hurrell. George Hurrell | International Center of Photography. (n.d.). Accessed: November 10th, 2023 https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/george-hurrell?all%2Fall%2Fall%2Fall%2F0
Walt Disney Family Museum. Lights! camera! glamour! the photography of George Hurrell. Lights! Camera! Glamour! The Photography of George Hurrell | The Walt Disney Family Museum. (n.d.). Accessed: November 11th, 2023. https://www.waltdisney.org/exhibitions/lights-camera-glamour-photography-george-hurrell#:~:text=Hurrell's%20signature%20use%20of%20precision,known%20as%20%E2%80%9CHurrell%20style.%E2%80%9D
Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, April 9). George Hurrell. Wikipedia. Accessed: November 12th, 2023. Wikimedia Foundation. (2023, April 9). George Hurrell. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hurrell#:~:text=Hurrell%20also%20found%20that%20photography,photographic%20studio%20in%20Los%20Angeles.
