For those of you who haven’t heard of Jill Greenburg you definitely know her work. She is infamous for a lightning technique known as the Jill Greenburg effect, which uses many background lights and a ring flash for the subject, the ring flash is what creates the effect that you see in most of her images. Ring flash is a circular bulb that surrounds the lens of a camera, when the flash goes off it creates a halo effect on the subject, making them illuminate and causes a wonderful shadowing in the background. Jill Greenburg uses only ring flashes, which is why they call this lighting technique the Jill Greenburg effect. Greenburg is a very talented photographer that has been successful both commercially as well as in fine art. A lot of her work is done as portraits of children, animals and famous people. She has also done landscapes as well as underwater images she called, “Glass Ceiling.” Above are a few works from her “End Times” “Monkey Portraits” “Ursine” and “Commentary and Dissent.” Since photography is about lighting more than subject matter, Jill Greenburg can photograph anything and gives it new life just with her use of ring flashes. Please check out her website to see all of her works she will not disappoint.
http://www.jillgreenberg.com/
Jill Greenburg also uses photoshop to further manipulate the images but mostly uses the ring flash to create the effects you see above.
ReplyDeleteJill uses her lighting/photography style to create a timeless beauty within images that would normally not be considered beautiful, for example the crying children series entitled "end times" is comparable to paintings of angels, where the lighting and imagery is so wonderfully whimsical that the subject matter takes on new meaning. Her series "Commentary and Dissent" is a perfect example of making things that are disturbingly grouse seem beautiful for example the pig's head takes on the pastels that make the image look like a wonderful watercolor painting where the colors jump off the image and into mind making the subject dissolve and you forget that you're looking at a dead pig's head. She has many other images in this series that do the same thing, like the headless cadaver sitting on the floor. Her images bring beauty out of horror and angelic qualities out of tears and her contrasting subject matter with the finished images is what makes her work different from all other photographers. As critics say "Jill Greenburg doesn't give a shit." And she doesn't she does what she wants and does it well.
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