Martin Schoeller is a photographer that really caught my eye whilst I was looking for inspiration for my Body shoot. One area of his work particularly focuses on straight on flat photographs of people looking straight at the camera. He uses a very small depth of field from a large aperture lens, and almost always focuses on the subjects eyes. He keeps his backgrounds simple and plain as to keep the viewer's attention fixed solely on the subject. This use of small depth of field creates a kind of veil around the parts of the photograph that are out of focus, making us look at the subjects eyes more and more. It's a very clever technique that I would love to include in my work somehow.
Martin tries to keep the Portraits he takes quite similar, but occasionally adds in extra things within the frame, such as a prop specific to the subject or allowing them to pull a certain pose during the shoot. Because he sits and talks to the people during the shoot, they never really know when the photograph will be taken so they cannot really prepare for it and add any kind of fakery to it. What is captured is a very accurate representation of their personalities and lives.
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