"Migrant Mother" on The Nerdwriter

There’s a fun video podcast that I like following called The Nerdwriter (Evan Puschak). He covers a wide range of neat topics and many of them are related to art.

His latest video is a nice short (~5 minutes) looking at the famous Dorothea Lange photo “Migrant Mother” (or, as the Library of Congress lists it: Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California).

It’s a particularly interesting look at the evolution of the image through multiple versions before arriving at the classic that many know. I love getting chances to see these types of “behind the scenes” or thought processes of the photographers to see what goes on in arriving at a final image.

Anyway, have a look!

http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8b29516/

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Enlightening…

can’t wait to watch this once I’m out from work

@patdavid it’s interesting because based on the tones of the face I’d say the image is slightly underexposed, but otherwise the distribution of tones in the image looks natural. If I underexpose an image to get darker skin tone (say for BW conversion, because it looks cooler) the image as a whole would look like it’s lacking something. I don’t get it.

Sample from google search:

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