Construction dairy

The year 2012 is about to draw to a close, so it's fitting to look back through the past 12 months and see what viewers have been looking for in photography and the visual arts. While this blog features different photographic styles and mediums, most of the popular posts seem to share a common theme. Here then are the top photography posts of 2012.


10) Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein - The Different Body Types of Olympic Athletes

Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein collaboration on athletes from different Olympic events is an eye opening presentation on the beauty and marvel that is the human body. One portrait on one athlete from one event can already make for a great image, but the variety presented by the photographers just goes to show amazing human are when it comes to physical adaptations. Truly, photography series was a fitting entry in time for the 2012 London Olympics.


9) Chuck Close - Not So Typical Daguerreotypes


Chuck Close's use of the century-old photography technique called the daguerreotype process proved to be a refreshing introduction into the medium. Following the same pattern as his gigantic paintings, Close's daguerreotypes are close-ups of his artists friends. He also made portraits of a few celebrity faces, but the daguerreotype process he used presented these familiar faces in a new light.


8) Sally Mann - The Beauty of Family


Sally Mann's beautiful black-and-white portraits of her immediate family have been a topic of conversation for photographers and artists ever since she published these photographs. No doubt the controversial nature of photographing her nude children helped bring her to the spotlight, but after all the hubbub and racket, her intimate portraits are worthy of the highest praise.


7) Martin Schoeller - Up Close and Personal


Martin Schoeller's dramatic close-ups have been featured on magazine covers and posters around the world. The photographer has used his unique style to capture everyone from female bodybuilders to tiny twins, but it's his celebrity portraits that have made him famous. Schoeller's use of hard light and shallow depth-of-field highlights every nook and cranny of his celebrity sitters, making them instantly captivating.


6) Platon - The Power of the Portrait


Platon's portraits are also quite dramatic, but in a different way. As with Chuck Close and Martin Schoeller, Platon uses extreme close-ups to present familiar faces in a new way, but his style is more subdued than Schoeller, and more modern than Close. Platon uses the same philosophy as Henri Cartier-Bresson in that he waits for that perfect moment before clicking the shutter. Based on his portraits, he's found that perfect moment every single time.


These five entries make up the tail-end of the top photography posts of 2012. Interestingly enough, most of them feature photographers who specialize in studio portraits, and three out of the five use extreme close-ups for their work, a technique that has proven popular in the last decade, especially for magazine covers and the like. Check back in a few days for the top five entries of the year.

Turn on your television nowadays and it's likely that you'll stumble onto some news of the London 2012 Olympics. Looking at the sports individually, it would seem like all athletes have the same muscular body type, but when seen side by side, their differences are astounding. The different body types of Olympic athletes is presented in glorious detail by Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein.


Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein's images have graced the pages of different publications including Time, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated and many, many others. Their photographs have also been exhibited in museums worldwide.

The photographers have covered all kinds of portraiture subjects, from athletes to pregnant mothers to dancers. Going through these different images and projects, it becomes easy to see their signature style: efficient and creative use of studio lights to illuminate the beauty and grace of the human body.


Athlete is the culmination of Schatz and Ornstein's previous work on the human body. After finding inspiration in the graceful form of dancers, the photographers turn to athletes. Unlike dancers however, these sports specialists show off the beauty of the body in different shapes and sizes.

Schatz and Ornstein show off the variability in the human species, from the smallest ice skaters to the tallest basketball players. The similarities and differences are even more obvious with the backdrop, attire and lighting used in these photographs: Athletes wearing simple black undergarments against a plain black backdrop. If you're wondering where your own body fits in all of these magnificent specimens of humanity, check out this Olympic athlete body match on the BBC website.


In some cases, the build difference is interesting but expected: high jumpers tower over gymnasts and marathon runners are lithe compared to bodybuilders. What's surprising is the variety in builds even in the same category: Some athletes in the weightlifting category look twice the size of their colleagues while in synchronized swimming, the swimmers have almost the same body size.

The difference in muscle and fat distribution also becomes more obvious: weightlifters have huge shoulders while runners are almost skeletal compared to everyone else. It would take many days to write down the similarities and differences of these Olympians, which goes to show how well planned and executed these portraits are. Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein should receive their own gold medal for this laudable Olympic project.


This is Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein's website. All images were taken from Nina Matsumoto's blog where you'll find more body size comparisons. Schatz's collaboration with Ornstein on the different body types of Olympic athletes can be found in the book Athlete. They also has a number of other publications, including Nude Body Nude and At the Fights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing.