Over the weekend I was flipping through a magazine when I came across a photo by Dimitris Theocharis. I was sitting in the doctor's office flipping through a FW Magazine when I say this photo:
I am one who likes extreme contrast in photos. In this photo, there is not extreme contrast but the sand variation is was caught my eye. Almost literally, the man's skin tone goes from dark to light from his hair to his upper stomach. Now normally I would never take the time to follow up on this photographer, but I wanted to see more of his works.
After searching through the dozens of photos of Theocharis, I found myself returning to one to make sense of it. Along with extreme contrast, I love blurs in photos. I often attempt to do this in my photos, but Theocharis's ability to do this amazes me.
I'm curious as to how he managed to blur the entire body of the model but not the facial features. The The hair, ear, body, and hair accessory are all blurred but the face manages to stay still. I first thought of the use of a fan, but that does not explain how the body is blurred. I thought over this for nearly fifteen minutes while looking at this photo, but came up with no answer. I do love the color choices in the photo, the black, white, red and blue. The colors all balance and your eye is not overwhelmed. And then Theocharis perfectly balanced the space of the photo with nothing on the left and heavy movement and matter on the right. Over all, an amazing photo but not my favorite of Theocharis.
My favorite would have to be the photo of the model Tokumbo....
This photo has everything! The yellow background drew my eye to it then it focused on the model. The model's skin color has high contrast with the background and then the nails and eye shadow do the same. The hair shows movement. I love the background though. It seems to be a light source of its own, but yet doesn't. You know that it is just a backdrop, but how can it look to be its own light source. Theocharis is a photographer I will continue to look for and keep up with. His photos always create a bunch of questions for me about technique that I can never answer on my own and I find that it makes his pictures that much more interesting.
