Jenny Sampson

 Jenny Sampson-

Jenny Sampson is a portrait photographer from California who explored using wet plate collodion, traditional black and white and commissioned portraits. Wet plate collodion involves hand coating a metal plate with a slated collodion and then putting it in silver nitrate then as its still wet its put in the camera and the exposure is made. After washing the chemicals off it turns into a beautiful one of a kind metal photograph. It is a long exposure photograph so the model has to stay perfectly still. After reading Jenny's blog about shooting skaters I feel really inspired and feel like I relate to what she's saying which has inspired me to incorporate a similar subject into my own work. She write how she wanted to capture the rebellious group but after shooting them realised they aren't rebellious at all they are very curious and motivated in their sport. The process captures the beauty of mixing contemporary, modern culture with an older technique. She captures the depth of the skate culture and community in her local areas. The wet pate technique requires a lengthy set up of tripod and chemicals yet the outcome is amazing and totally worth the exhilaration process. Her projects and words inspire me, one of her projects 'skater girls' captures the hidden skate scene that celebrates women in skateboarding. the ruse of images to tell a story is something I would like to incorporate in the magazine project I am working on.

Jenny Sampson's work has slight textural qualities as use uses metal to capture her beautiful portraits on. This creates a thick, hard physical print of her images which adds a unique quality to it as nowadays not many older process like this are used. She incorporates a deep pictorial space in her images as she focuses on the main subjects (the person) however the background is blurred which gives depth and really draws you eye to the subject. Her use of materials are very authentic and honest which adds to the overall outcome of her images. Her portraits have intense atmospheres and emotions, each persons she capture radiates different energy (some happy some intimidating some bored) but each gives the camera a direct almost intimidating stare. A wide tonal range is used in her work as her monochromatic portraits include highlights and shadows some more than other depending on the natural lighting conditions. The effect of this is a nice amount of contrast in the images which adds depth. The mid tones dominate her images due to not direct lighting. Her subject matter is powerful portraits of very dominant individuals. She shoots at her local skate park shooting strong individuals.