Weekly Post, Bryan Schutmaat, Grays the Mountain Sends (also :) )

Bryan Schutmaat, Grays the Mountain Sends

These photos were taken by Bryan Schutmaat in his series, Grays the Mountain Sends. These photos have low key lighting and the colors are soft and muted. He photographs these photos mostly during grey overcast days, hence the title of this series. The series consists of portraits, landscape photos, and photos that we can assume to be rooms inside homes. I chose photos that I was attracted to the most out of this series, although I was fond of this series and each photo still caught my attention. I was attracted to this series because his photos are very simple and still are able to tell a story and bring an emotion that you can feel just by gazing at it for a bit. These photos have low key lighting and are very soft. The colors in each photo always complement one another and they are very quiet. Most of his subjects are iconic, placed in/or close to the center of the frame. He also uses a very shallow depth of field when focusing on a single object and a deeper one when focusing on multiple objects. 

 In Schutmaat's series, I chose his photos inside rooms and his portraits. His photos inside rooms I can describe as being sort of simple, but ironically broad. The objects that Schuutmaat decided to photograph and focus on are balanced in the photographs. They are complementary, and bring a personality to the room even though they seem to be abandoned. His portraits have a very shallow depth of field and his subjects are all iconic. His subjects also have very little to no expression on their faces. His close up portrait's depth of field are more shallow than his mid range, while his focus is strictly on his subject's eyes bringing attention to them first. While his subjects have no expression on their faces, Schutmaat still is successful bringing emotion to these photographs. Since his focus is so sharp on the subject's eyes, we can feel the expression from them without the subject having an expression on their face. Schutmaat's mid range portrait's also have a sharp focus on the subject's eyes, but the depth of field is more deep, so your attention does go to the person's eyes and face, but then eventually goes to the subject's environment bringing more emotions to the photograph. 

Each photograph in this series has the same mood, same feeling, and same tone. You get an eerie feeling from them but at the same time the mood of these photographs are very calm, quiet, and peaceful by his use of color, lighting, his subjects, and depth of field.