After seeing Dawoud Bey class pictures, I have noticed some robust features in his work that have stood out to me. The way Dawoud Bey uses the lighting and foreground-background to make the subject stand out. In his portrait, the subject is the primary focus, and each subject has a different expression. For example in one of his photographer, he uses the young girl (Lauren) to portrait as someone who is hopeful and thankful. Her appearance matches well with the captions; it captures a girl whose grateful to her parents and who has a bright future. Bey’s Shalanta portraits capture a young girl whose strong and confident. The reason why Shalanta portraits this way is because of her facial expressions, her smile. Her hands crossed under her chin, and the smile shows someone whose willing to take on the world. It portrays someone who knows what she wants in life. Bey’s portraits have different subjects, each subject posing differently. The facial expression on his subject plays a significant role you get to feel and see the theme each subject is feeling. The subject expression defines who they are; you feel their hope and ideas. Their pose expresses their thoughts and emotions.  In Bey’s portraits, the background plays a role as well.  We see that they are students and they’re the future. The lighting used on the subjects make each subject proud and confident. When it comes to portraits photography, I lack in that area. I don’t often show my ideas. The ideas I got from Bey’s photography is to use lighting and foreground-background.

In a short response to this work (300 words min), characterize his portrait style. How does he use expression, pose, framing, light, and foreground background relationships to create these sympathetic portraits of young people? What ideas did you get about how you might approach today’s in-class shoot from looking at this work?

Dawoud Bey is an American photographer who takes portraits to students. He uses lots of technique that makes the photographs appealing. He uses expressions, poses, framing, light, out of focus background, relationship of foreground and background, and the use of soft colors. For each student, Dawoud Bey uses a different expression to get the attention of the viewers. Bey combine the expression with the pose to make the photo unique, and reads as one composition. Framing is also very important in his photography; he makes the subject look straight at your eyes. Most of the time, he uses the rules of thirds; placing the main subject on the side, not in the center of the photograph. Light is also another technique that Bey uses. He makes the light reflect as natural light. Also he uses busy background but you cant tell is busy because of the out of focus.

In today’s class I might ask the person how you feel today, and depending on their feelings, I asked him/her to pose in a certain way. Definitely I will use Dawoud Bey techniques to enhanced my photography.

Dawoud Bey uses serious expressions in his photographs of the high school students. They all have eye contact, his photographs of the students is based on their personal lives on their stories and who they are or what they have been through. the lighting of his photos are focused on the face not harsh but just right for this series. The background is out of focus and which makes the students in the foreground more in focus. Like you can see their stories in their eyes there face is serious but their eyes is talking. The ideas that  I got were not a lot but some ideas were the person would be siting on the floor and looking at the camera with a serious face, or sitting on a chair with eye contact but with a smirk on their face.