Yousuf Karsh

Luke has a book of portraits that Yousuf Karsh took and they are beautiful. I looked further into his work on the internet. It amazes me how great the work is despite the drastic difference in technology from 50 years ago to today.

One of my favorites by him is a piece titled "Elixir."

Karsh said that he enjoyed experimenting with optics and surrealism during the 1930s. 

I told Mr. Pasquier about Karsh and as I was showing him some photos, I wondered how many pictures he must've taken and how many negatives he must of produced. For his portrait era of his career, he had 15,312 sittings and produced over 150,000 negatives. That is insane. And of course that's a major reason as to why he's an amazing photographer. He spent countless hours taking pictures and working with them as well.

If you look through his portraits, you'll notice that artificial lighting is his trademark. He learned about artificial lighting while studying techniques used at the Little Theater (I have no idea how to insert a footnote in a blogpost, but the citation will be found down below). Since he worked at the Little Theater, he created many connections through meeting the governor general of Canada. This then led to ties with other Canadian politicians, and eventually that would led to Karsh meeting Winston Churchill. 

Before Karsh photographed anyone, he would thoroughly research them and learn as much about them as he could. He would even try to get to know people who knew about his subjects to learn more about them. It's not just about taking a picture, it's also about building relationships/connections with people because it changes the experience of photography. It also can be useful for future connections because it creates a good first impression (that you even bothered to know something besides their name and position). 

"Yousuf Karsh." Newsmakers. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. 14 Feb. 2013.