Amber Mahoney is a photographer living and working in New York City. I found her work from the magazine Human Being. Her work consists of bright, soft coloured and almost poetic portraits. Her work is genreally based on portraits, documentary and fashion photography. Her approach to fashion photography isn’t of a cliché format and her outcomes are more fairytale like.
In the series, ‘Mary Jane’, published in Human Being she works with model India Salvör Menuez to create a series of images with a cross between documentary and fashion. all of the images appear to have been shot in natural daylight, with the lighting being soft and golden, perhaps in the evening. She uses backgrounds to compliment the subject with colours flowing, harmionising with the golden lighting. Some images have been taken in the shade and others with the model stood in the light, usually creating interesting highlights, adding depth to the images.
This image is from the series. It shows a portrait of the model leant against a wall. The background is a brick wall which is made from orange and yellow tones with grey and green. Ivy grows up the wall, more so on the right hand of the frame. The green of nature against the more beige tones of the wall work well together and ocupy the right side, as the model sits on an angle, towards the left. The model is wearing neutral colours, making her gold hair and orange glasses pop in a subtle, soft way against the background. The image appears to have been taken with a shallow depth of field, present from the sharp focus point of the model and the softer background. I would guess F/5.6, with the iso being reasonably low, due to the amount of avaliable light, perhaps 200. There is a highlight hitting the subject on her left side, suggesting the positioning of the sun to be low, in front of her.
This image, also from the series, Mary Jane, shows the same model. She is stood next to a building, with her upper body in a highlight, with the lower part being in a shadow, broken up by flecks of light. The image appears to have been taken in the evening, at golden hour, as the lighting is very warm, complimenting the warm tones of the subjects hair and red coat. The image has been taken at around f/4, with the background being our of focus. There are a lot of lines in the image due to the contrasting of shadows and highlights. It doesn’t appear to have been lit by an additonal light source, similar to all the other images from the series.
In conclusion, I would like to use this series as inspiration for my work. I would like to think and plan colours that will be used, from clothes, to the subjects hair and backgrounds. I would like to use sunlight to emphasise tones and create a similar almost surreal lighting to add more depth to a standard fashion shot.
Jodie Tovey PJD blog 