Assignment 5 - Virtual Essay (Jay Maisel)

 Jay Maisel is recognized as one of the top natural-light photographers in the world. He is well known for his ability to capture light, color and gesture in every day life. His photography career started in 1954. He has more than 55 years of professional shooting experiences during his 81 years of life journey. He is a New Yorker who has been living in New York his entire life. Manhattan provides a wonderful backdrop for Jay to practice and became a master of street photography.

Jay Maisel began his artist road in painting rather than photography. In Jay’s early ages, he went to a high school to study Hebrew. In the high school, he met this wonderful art teacher who taught Jay a wide range of arts subjects. Jay learned painting, graphic design, typography and lettering during his high school life, which also rooted his interest in painting.

Jay Maisel studied graphic design and painting at Cooper Union and later graduated from Yale University. He then became a photographer in 1954. The painting studies that emphasis on light and form, which provided Jay best possible training for being a photographer.

Jay Maisel has always been considered a purist, as he never manipulate his images. In the early film days, he even not considers cropping his images. However, in recent years he started doing cropping mainly because the high resolution images produced by digital camera gives him the opportunities to experiment.

Jay Maisel believes photography is arts of seeing. His photography is about framing but not composition. In his street photography world, composition is almost impossible, as the reaction time needs to be fast in order to capture the “moment”. There is virtually no time left for the photographer to think about how to compose the picture. It is mostly driven by the photographer’s experiences and his instincts to capture the magic moment.

“Be aware of every square millimeter of your frame” – Jay Maisel

Light, color and gesture are the three most important aspects of Jay Maisel’s works. As Jay said “You see shape, and how the light hits things, how the color changes from one end of the photo to the other, and how movement affects the mood of the photo”.

“I never saw light as something that casually fell on something in my picture, but rather as an integral something in my picture, like a solid object.” – Jay Maisel

Light is a perfect tool to guide the viewer’s eye to the focal point of the image. Light can also set the mood of the entire image, photographer should always aware of the air and atmosphere.

 

Morning Light - Darmin Ladiro

Morning Light by Darmin Ladiro resembles  the look and feel of Jay Maisel's Maine Forest Mist.

Both pictures show sunlights travel through the mist in the forest and creates the amazing looks of light trails.

Maine Forest Mist - Jay Maisel

Jay Maisel only shoots in color. He believes life is not black and white. If we are trying to capture life as the way it is, then it should be captured in color.

Nature's Fountain - Chad Peters

Chad Peters captures this beautiful photo that has a fountain sitting at the middle bottom of the picture and it becomes the focus of the image. Through the small window, viewer can see details behind the wall. The whole picture using red as the main theme color. 

When comparing the Chad's picture to below Jay Maisel's picture. They both using strong color as the main background of the image. In addition, they both used third object with details as the focus of the picture.

Blue Wall and Doves - Jay Maisel

Jay Maisel believes gesture should always precede graphics; one should always go for the gesture instead of trying to obtain a clean frame. Jay believes gesture is what makes the image emotionally involving so it should be placed as top priority.

“Gesture will always reveal narrative, which light and color alone find it difficult to do. Gesture can tell a story.” – Jay Maisel

The following three pair of photos are all related to gesture capturing. Each pair of photos share some similarities in the form of atmosphere, mood, color usage, and gesture.

Set A - The look

A Guarded Look - Bob Boyd

Man in Bus - Jay Maisel

Set B - Color usage and gesture

Purple Dreams - Alexander Gubin

Vegetable Man - Jay Maisel

Set C - The Atmosphere and mood

Sudden Hail - DOF Factory

Hot Cabbie - Jay Maisel

“I don’t believe as the dictionary says that gesture just has to do with the movement of arms and faces and legs. I believe the gesture is involved in everything we photograph. We’ve all photographed gesture all our live. We just have not always been aware of it.” – Jay Maisel

Pictures Credits

• Morning Light, Darmin Ladiro, http://500px.com/photo/3804157
• Nature's Fountain, Chad Peters, http://500px.com/photo/4210190
• A Guarded Look, Bob Boyd, http://500px.com/photo/3694609
• Purple Dreams, Alexander Gubin, http://500px.com/photo/2208773
• Sudden Hail, DOF Factory, http://500px.com/photo/8123131
• Maine Forest Mist, Blue Wall and Doves, Man in Bus, Vegetable Man, Hot Cabbie, Jay Maisel, http://studio.jaymaisel.com