Steve McCurry

Whilst looking at photographers to inspire me, I cam across the infamous name of Steve McCurry, a photojournalist that studies people in their natural environments, especially those in India, Afghanistan, the Far East and in some cases at home in the USA.

His use of colour is probably the most striking aspect of his work. He claims to take thousands of photographs, and he sure has plenty of work published, perhaps I too need to take more?

I bought two of his books, 'The Unguarded Moment' and a collection of portraits, entitled 'Portraits', with the iconic image named 'Afghan Girl' on the cover.

The unguarded moment is capturing everyday human life, and concentrates on images from India, Afghanistan and the Middle East. All of the images are inspiring, the colour and tones are perfect,'Dust storm, Rajasthan, India' captures an amazing image of women sheltering around a tree with brilliant reds and an orange hue in the storm. I wonder how much the colour of the sand and storm has been manipulated, perhaps nothing at all, but a video on you tube with Steve describing this shot is more grey and therefore I think this has been boosted for the book. There is also a very interesting collection of points of people creating rhythm in the image

This image and a narrative are from Steve's Blog at http://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/262/

Other images that took my eye were the Ship breaking in Karachi, with the immense sense of scale of beached ships  being dismantled by hand and the portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi taken in Rangoon, Burma 1996, and inspiration to many for freedom.

I could go on forever about the many images of children, looking like rabbits caught in the headlights of a car, but one of his more famous images ' Boy in mid-flight, Jodhpur, India' is the reason I bought this book. again a narrative from McCurry gave away that he waited all day in this lane taken hundreds of images just to capture this split second, a moment in time......

Thank you Steve for the inspiration.....