Steve McCurry
McCurry's work deals with culture and religion around the world, which is import ant historically. His images absolutely do show social change, while showing the life of people around the world from different cultures, and the way that they live. McCurry's work promotes cultural understanding, and shows it in a beautiful way. The images also promote environmental awareness, showing different cultures in their own environment, in a fascinating way. His work shows a life that many people are not familiar with, and probably don't know exists. He takes what may be a harsh, rough life, and turns it in to something beautiful.
This image taken by McCurry was of Muslims in Afghanistan. It looks like the people in the image were practicing their religion, while sitting on their land at sunset. The lighting in the photo is from the very beautiful sunset, and is backlit. The contrast varies in this photo, because the back of the image is lit up really bright by natural light, and the foreground of the image is very dark, causing the people to look almost as a black shadow. Depth of field was used to create the composition of the photo. It helps you get a feel for how big the field is, as you can see the hills off in to the distance. The people were sitting closer to the camera when this shot was taken. This photo was taken with a fast shutter speed, everything is in focus. This photo was taken straight on, and is balanced throughout. This photo follows the rule of thirds, and the main focal point in the mountain in the middle of the image, which is darker than all of the others. The photographer visually framed the photo and created a sense of depth with foreground, middleground and background. When I look at this photo, I feel a sense of peacefulness and mindfulness, which portrays to the mood of the photo. This photo doesn't necessarily tell a story like some other works of McCurry, but it shows a culture, and evokes a peaceful response. McCurry's purpose of this image was to show the beauty of the culture.