Emily Blincoe was born in Austin, Texas, and she currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her dog, Eleanor. She started photography when her brother bought her a film camera and showed her the basics. She forgot about it for a while and later she bought another camera so that she could document her life and memories. Soon, she was using a more creative outlook when it came to her photographs, and she bought a better camera to go along with that. When Instagram launched, she joined and used that as her way to share her photos. Back then, she only used her iPhone camera for Instagram posts, but she gained a following as more people started to appreciate her work. In 2013, she left her job and dove into photography, where she has been since. Her mother was diagnosed with PBC and made it seem like it wasn’t a huge deal, but when she reached stage 4, she was in need of a transplant. Now, her treatment is stable, and so are her liver enzymes. She loves photographing her mother, and they spent a week together for a photo shoot and she really connected with her mother a lot then. She is raising awareness of PBC by photographing many women who have it. This work is titled ‘LiveHer.’ She has traveled around the world to find people who are living with PBC, and is working to raise more awareness for the cause and to help other people learn more about this disease.
Style
Emily’s style (that I am focusing in on, what she is most known for) is more directed towards still lifes and collections. She sets up many scenes and uses everyday objects that are organized in different ways to express herself. She also takes portraits, pictures of the places that she has gone, and her dog. The majority of the pictures that she has taken, and what she is known for are her still lifes. For example, she uses fruits, flowers (for example, she took a photo of the life of the flower, starting at the seed and finding it through it’s stages towards the full bloom), leafs, products (that all have a theme, for example bathroom items or currency from different countries), tree bark, sticks, bugs, lollipops, candy, matches, and many more different types of things. They all are arranged a certain way, and every photo is different yet similar in their own way. There are many similar aspects of her work to that of historical art in the way of the arrangement. Back in the day, if you wanted to have a family portrait done, you had to stand there and wait while the artist drew you and got everything correct. With Emily’s work, she is spending great amounts of time finding and arranging the items exactly how she wants them to be perfect and it takes a long time to do. She also does a lot of portraits, and goes around the U.S. and to Mexico and takes pictures that express the everyday life and show how people are living.
Philosophy
Emily started photography to document memories and events in her life, and she slowly started to have a more creative eye towards it and enjoy it. There is no real motivation besides she loves what she does and wants the world to enjoy it as well. She also loves documenting the colors of the world and documenting nature and things in their natural environments. She just wants others to enjoy her work as much as she does and that her work can make others happy. The reason she does photography is because it is her passion, and she loves to travel the world and photograph for a living. The main thing that she is trying to do use color to her advantage and to express herself. You can easily see this by looking through her photos. There are a lot of vibrant colors, and the images are very defined.
Influences
Emily is influenced by her love for photography, and by her family. She works to raise awareness for the disease that has affected her mother’s life, and could potentially affect her life. She also likes to organize the little things. She finds inspiration in faces, new places, shapes, colors, light and quiet little moments. She is the perfect mix of a photographer: she is trying to raise awareness for a disease that affects her family, and she is also just doing what she loves. The way that she arranges her objects is very intentional, and she draws your eyes to the full image and encourages you to look closer at the image, finding the details. This is a skill that is hard to find, as people now are more focused on the big picture and not on the little details. How it is arranged is distinct, and if you don’t see it, you won’t fully comprehend the message
Images
Emily's all can be found on her website, linked below
Chiclets Tulum, Mexico
Untitled
Untitled
Mine
Chiclets, Ann Arbor
Reflective Rooftops
Healthy Choice
Artist's Statement The images that I have taken for this project use many of the things that I have learned in this class. For example, in all of these photos, I am using natural lighting to create the desired affect within each photo. The first image (of the chiclets) is organized and set up in way that is desirable to look at for the viewer. In the second image, I am using a mirror to take the photo that I want total. In the third image, I am using the natural lighting and the arrangements of the flowers to my advantage. I have learned a lot in this class, and by comarping my photos now to the photos that I would take at the beginning of the trimester (and before this class) you will definitely see great improvement in my photography.
Compare and Contrast
In the first set of images, I am basically doing the same thing that Emily was doing. I used the same color background, the same type of chiclets (gum in Spanish) even the same brand (Canel's). In her image, she doesn't have any shadows, and in my image (as it was taken later in the day when the sun was going down) has shadows for every piece of it. This does add an affect that makes it seem more real, however. Emily uses more variance in colors and has a perfectly arranged color scheme. I only had access to the four colors, and tried to make do with what I had.
In the second set of images, I have taken a different angle than of what Emily did. She had her car in a field with trees and a lovely sunset, whereas I have a car in the grass. I don't have the same type of car that Emily has, but my car does have a skylight, so I had my brother sit on top of the car (which he had always wanted to do) and I took many pictures. I liked how the side mirror reflected the feet, and so I went with it. It may look blurry, but it is from how clean the mirror is. The photo was also taken at sunset, so the lack of lighting may also contribute to the graininess of the photo. For the last set of images, I took a different take on the french fries and ketchup. Instead of doing those, I did peppers and dressing. It is arranged in the same format, with the full pepper (or bag) at the left corner and the individual pepper slices (fries) spread out in a systematic order with the dressing/sauce at the end. This changes the whole dynamic and purpose of the first image altogether, but it has it's own creative take on it. I also didn't use a solid background, which contributed to the kind of messy look of the image. I was aiming for that look because it adds an element of difference. The images are very similar in arrangement.