Is Mark Seliger's Simple Truth - Learn From It. 

Awesome to have you here again! Thanks for watching. My favourite period of photography is this 90's era. Which is yours? Be sure to check out the video on David LaChapelle next: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-b_IubPXaSM0.html

Keep them coming Alex, I love the content you're producing. I have all the gear I need, I don't need another 12 videos discussing the "next best thing" (that I don't need), I love videos like yours. There should be more channels *about* photography, not about the equipment. Thank you for this video, looking forward to the next one!

While the gear channels serve an important role in understanding what different gear does for us, not many channels are around that show what photography does to us. Your channel is such an oasis of incredible, insightful and so well delivered material. I know even before I click start on your videos, I'm about to learn something genuinely worthwhile knowing about photography. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and experience.

I have seen this video before. But, it came up in my RU-vid feed again and I watched it again. I’m glad that it did. It was a very inspiring video for me. Thanks again for making this video.

You saved the best for last . . . namely the importance of printing your photos. Sadly, the print is often a disappointment to what you imagine the photo will "be" when staring through the viewfinder and pressing the shutter of a digital camera, but if it becomes the lesson by which you approach your next photographic episode then not such a disaapointment after all. Thanks again.

Hi Alex. A wonderful selection of images. Appreciate your point about studying the portrait rather than the subject. I found Karsh’s book secondhand which is full of famous people. On first look, I was very focussed on who he was photographing but was soon drawn past celebrity to become fascinated with his amazing style and superb lighting. I fully understand your love of such books (although my wallet suffers horribly) and what we can learn from contemplating the work of others.

Man, Mark is one of my all time favorite photographers.

I'd like to know how the lighting, costumes, and poses were arrived at. How much was Seliger, how much the subject, the press agent, or pure accident. The magnetism of these porraits cannot be separated from the iconic familiarity of the subject. How many would stand on their own with a "nobody" in the frame. That's the right discussion here.

Thanks for sharing.... great video & comments.... amazing photos... cheers 😀

Don’t forget to check out the Photographic eye group on F B post your photographs and join the conversation

Thank you. I remember why I love this art.

Thankful to have stumbled onto your channel. Awesome insights.

I have been gradually acquiring some photo books by photographers who might be aspirational for me. Your recommendation that we get more photo books persuaded me to get some more! I could only get Helmut Newton's 'Portraits' in the Spanish 'Retratos' version, but the photos are still excellent. Mark Seliger's 'Photographs' arrived this morning ... heavy book! Leaving all the text at the back of the book really encourages the viewer to absorb the photos for themselves without being distracted by text. It's another fascinating book.

My printer is only an arms length from me , ALWAYS PRINT is my mantra of 45yrs. Inspiring content,thanks for that.

Printing may be the most important thing we do as photographers. A print is so much different than a image on a screen. A screen image is lit from behind and gives you an image much different than a print which is not only reflective but what the image is printed, how the image is printed all of this matters and the reason a printed image so more important.

Spot on about the image as a whole. He created the setting as well as the subject of the photograph and that tied it all together.

Seeing these does indeed take me back to my youth in the 90s. And makes me want to take portraits, a genre I have yet to fully explore.

What a nostalgia hit. In art school back in the 90s I used those exact Drew Barrymore photos for a project that involved a photocopier, airbrush and a lot of copy and pasting. I loved the finished product but never put much thought into the photos themselves, just the subject like you mentioned. I kept that piece of art for 30 years as I loved it but now I truly appreciate the photographer and what the images actually show. Thank you for this eye opening look at something that was such a vital time in my artistic life that I'm now only understanding.

Having a vision and ideas is very important. But you do need the technical background necessary to make your ideas real.

love it, it takes a lot of hard work to be simple in image. its like a holiday snap can only be taken by a holiday person and not a photographer, they don't compose, just take.

Cracking video, thanks Alex. Nice to discover a great photographer, that I was only vaguely aware of.

Excellent video. Thanks for sharing!

Thank you so much again Alex! Very inspiring, informative video! God bless you!

Yeah Drew B was - is a goddess. Great show, I’m not a portrait photographer but I love the art of portrait photography.

I really liked this episode a lot 🙂. Bought one of Seliger's books quite a few years ago, to marvel at the enormous variety in settings he created with his subjects. Not to copy this, but to remind myself I should not be afraid to step far beyond my comfort zone from time to time. Completely agree that you should try to stay connected to the tactile bit in photography. Gonna do that for the walls of my soon-finished daylight studio. Can't wait to see some prints on the wall again 🙂.

As a loyal follower and subscriber from almost the start of your channel, Alex, I love your content, have not missed an episode and think your approach is stellar. There's one thing that strikes me ~each time: your voice audio. It sounds locked in or muted in the upper frequency range. This reduces intelligibility a bit and makes listening more fatiguing than necessary. Not sure how this happens, so not sure how to solve, but the solution may be very simple and may need zero out-of-pocket expenditure.

Thank you, Alex. You've made another wonderful vignette into a true icon of recent photographic excellence. Thank you for taking time to make these for all of us that appreciate both the subject and your effort in creating these. Another photographer that I haven't seen much from is Platon. For my personal work the biggest influences on me were Penn, Salgado and Platon. Platon's book on migration on the souther US border was life altering, as I was beginning photojournalism. Salgado's work in long form documentary was unattainable in my 20's. As I progressed and was making more portraits, Penn's work (especially his corner series) was highly influential. A current photographer that I truly enjoy is Bastiaan Woudt, from The Netherlands. Thank you again for your wonderful channel and all the effort you put into it.

Please don’t stop making videos, you’re amazing

Wunderbar. I love photography in all shapes and forms but only follow two people that talk about photography, it's the three elephants.... and you. Your videos are fantastic. Much love from Hamburg, Germany

Great job, Alex. I was enjoy your insight to the story behind the shot. Striking images, by Mark Seliger, that tend to entice the viewer to look at them for a long period of time. 😊

Great videos Alex , inspired , there is another Alex who inspired me hugely , Alex Jay , not to mention the sounds and visuals of the show’s he presented …

What is amazing about this work is that the celebrities in the images don't overpower the image. Meaning that it's difficult to draw the viewers attention to the image itself when the subject is very recognizable. People will tend to just look at the image and focus on the fact that that's Drew Barrymore or that's Brad Pitt. However, as I was looking at these images, I was amazed by the creativity of the artist behind the camera.

heck yeah! You've hit a great point of subject/scope/contemporaneous context. The goal, purpose for the image definitely impacts the solutions here. well done and thank you.

I Don’t Say THANK YOU enough ALEX ... ☮️❤️💪🏼

Just found your channel, you are amazing. Thank you so much for all education you giving to us. It very hard to find channel with good content neverless great as yours. Bought my camera one year ago, since then i have tried to educate my self a little bit but so far in youtube i only have managed to find 'how great is this gear " or which camera is the best" and all techical stuff i probably never gona use. Feeling inspired watching you. Hope you will continue this truly educative and helpful channel. All the best!

Another smashing video thank you!

Thanks Alex. I've never heard of Seliger, but his simple portraits are brilliant - and give me confidence to make uncomplicated images. OTOH, his "fashion" shots are for me, as for all such photography: so what?

I love your love for Drew for I myself feel the same. I love your videos

Incredible content! Congratulations!

Awesome portraits and very inspirational. Thank you for bringing them to my attention. I have a model booked for Tuesday and have just found the inspiration that I needed.

Thank you. 👍📷😎

Sounds like he followed a similar line to Annie Leibovitz. Different but similar. Thanks for sharing this guys work.

yes Drew is a babe ( if i can say that!) Fantastic photos too.

I approve the amount of Drew Barrymore images in this video… more in future videos, please 😊

These are wonderful examples of great photos. I can almost guarantee, however, if I had taken a photo like that I'd be criticized for having one eye out of focus or focusing on the hair lol.

In this context you should feature the work of richard bellia, who is amazing.

A great video and info as always! I liked the point about viewing the subjects as people and not celebrities. As a I have told many a friend over the years, "You need to learn to separate the person from the product.". Alice Cooper is a prime example of this. Point of clarification, the only thing you need be apologetic for is that there were not MORE pictures of Drew Barrymore in this video!

add on, I would never complain about more images of Drew.

Nice video, Alex, but why so little of Drew Barrymore? 😉

Having large prints made changed the way I view my photography.

Hi Alex, I'm in love with your videos and I want to thank you a lot for these helpful contents. Just noticed there is a problem with your audio in this video. The "clicks" after every phrase of your voice and I thought it should be the small "release" time of your "gate/noise gate" that you used to cancel out the noise and ambient sound in your studio. if you set the "release" just a tiny bit you'll get rid of these "clicks" in your audio. Keep it up I love to see every video you uploading here.

Great video. One can never have too much Drew Barrymore! 👍

One should never apologise for the amount of Drew Barrymore. Just perhaps for misspelling apologies…😉 As always a great video though.

The only thing I liked about Tom Green was Drew Berrymore. Whew, she was and still is a hotty.

I just finished watching a documentary on Peter Lindbergh, and ALL of RU-vid's suggestions that flashed up at the end, were to photography RU-vidrs. This video was right at the top, and looked from the cover like a documetary too, so I was expecting exclusive interviews with the photographer, not the opinions of a RU-vidr. The irony, is YOU are the RU-vidr I watched a few days ago, telling us how to beat RU-vid's algorithm, that leads us back to RU-vidrs (usually that Danish nit who talks about his childish collection of Leicas). I'm sure you're nice guy, but how do I keep YOU out of my suggestions? :) I'm so sick of this world!