Commercial Photography: Austin Young

Austin Young
Commercial photography is the branch of photography that deals with taking photographs for commerce and business purposes. This category deals with photographs taken mainly for selling, marketing or advertisement of a particular product, person or service. Fine art photography is a new concept of photographic expression, and it entails the taking of photographs according to the visualization of the artist as a snapper (Wright, 2016). One such photographer is Austin Young. This essay discusses the technique and conceptual ideas of Austin Young. It also states and explains the theoretical ideas that are related to his photographic and filming work. This essay also evaluates his list clients and the importance of his work while

critiquing his work.
Austin Young is an American, aged 51 years and comes from Reno, Nevada. He is a super talented photographer, new media artist and a filmmaker currently based in the city of New York. He acquired his photographic skills from studying Parsons in Paris. He took an interest in portrait photography which led to him abandoning his early interests in traditional portrait painting (Young, 2017). He is considered as one of the best photographers of our time because of his unique eye for capturing excellent pictures of good quality. He employs different techniques in his field of work featuring pin-hole photography, long exposure photography, vintage photography and long flare effects (Jenks, 1995).
Young had conceptual ideas that epitomize the fundamental characteristics of his work of fine art photography. His theoretical ideas all arise from his experience in the line of work and the transformation of all his previously existing ideas that have now become the definition of his photographic pieces of work. His conceptual designs are based on the nuanced visual language of the pop-culture iconography, and this has helped him to go on and become a celebrated photographer. It has enabled him to be extremely popular, and thus he has worked with a huge range of musicians, artists and movie celebrities.
Some of his portrait subjects include Leigh Bowery, Dame Edna, Jeffree Star, Sutan, Amrull and Peaches Christ. He also has a list of many celebrity portrait subjects including Oliver Stone, Simon Cowell, Perez Hilton, Amy Poehler, Margaret Cho and Ryan Cassata. He has also managed to shoot photographs for and direct videos for musicians like Siouxsie Sioux, Diamanda Galas, Jane Wiedlin and Jessicka (Young, 2017). His photographs have been featured in many international publications that include Interview magazine, Flaunt and Ok. He has also seen his work make it to many solo exhibitions all over the world that include Berkeley Art Museum in California, Steven Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and Machine Project in Los Angeles.
The work of Young integrates character and individuality issues of different groups of people in a provocative and unapologetic image making process about people who often split sexual characteristics roles, socially-constructed personalities, and stereotypical limitations.

He addresses the various social issues especially matters that deal with gender equality and discrimination, and he tries to pass across a message that concerns this hotly contested and debated topic (Elkins, 2013). He uses his photographic skills to educate people of the need for equality of all people and the changing fact that both male and female individuals should be given equal opportunities. He also addresses the stereotypical limitations that people face in their daily basis as they go about doing their normal activities. He specifically tackles stereotypes that deal with social

change.
Austin's ideology of having running socially themed photography business is what initially drew me to his line of work. I feel his work is very important because of some reasons. One of the reasons is because of his ability to use his passion in photography to address some of the social issues that are currently posing a big challenge to the American society. The other reason is his capability of integrating a well successful business in photography with the practice of being unique and theme-driven in the line of work. My line of work relates closely to his, in that I am more driven and focused on the prospects of running a themed photography practice that portrays the themes of love and affection and spread the message of peace all around the world. I also closely relate to his work because of his application of fine art photography and the incorporation of various photographic techniques that make his work to be beautiful and unique.
One of the main projects of Austin Young is his Fallen Fruit project which I think did not deliver as expected as it is more theoretical than practical.

Fallen Fruit is a collaboration that was initiated in the year 2004 by a group of people led by David Burns and Austin Young. They have since continued with the cooperation to make it a very fruitful and successful endeavor. Fallen Fruit began by identifying and recording all locations of fruit trees growing on or over all parks, streets, fields and other public property in Los Angeles (Herren, 2015). The collaboration has stretched out to incorporate serialized community projects and site-specific fittings and happenings in various major cities and towns all over the world which have not turned out to be as

planned.
By always employing fruits as the primary material or focus of their work, the directory of developments and works re imagine communal connections with the margins of urban space, systems of community and change the real time experience of individuals with the environment which is good but not effective in reaching the intended audience appeal as expected in any project which is too over ambitious (Wright, 2016). Public Fruit Jams requests the extensive public to convert domestic or public fruits and join in collective jam-making as an investigation in personal narrative and inspiring collaboration. According to Wells (2015) that approach is not effective in passing the intended message as photography ought to help re invent societal ways. The Fallen Fruit’s project design is too conceptual than realistic.
Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nocturnal time locality fruit tours discovers the borders of public and private space at the brink of darkness; Public Fruit Meditations reevaluates and renegotiates the connection of ourselves through channeled visualizations and energetic and vibrant group participation. Fallen Fruit’s pictorial and graphic work is made up of an ongoing succession of narrative photographs, wallpapers, day to day objects and video projects that evaluate and come up with different ways in which we have social and political interactions between our relationships to fruits and environment around us. The fallen fruit which is a project that tries to use the art of fine art photography and the existence of fruits around us in our surroundings to try and change our perspective of how we see and visualize the world did not succeed from my viewpoint.
Austin Young successfully uses photography to pass across his themes and messages on most of the occasion even though not every time. His works are very connected to ideas of family. He tries to stress the sense of connectedness and our ability and capacity to share with other human beings. Austin is a talented person who has managed to introduce really new and beneficial ideas to the photography industry making it unique and exciting. He has a technique that is second to none and an eye for specific details. This puts him to be an edge over other photographers and hence his vast and wide range of clients ranging from famous musicians to high-end movie celebrities.

References
Herren, M. (2015, July 27). How Fallen Fruit is Changing the Art World & Life in LA. Retrieved from Los Angeles Confidential: https://la-confidential-magazine.com/fallen-fruit-changes-the-art-world-and-life-in-la
Elkins, J. (2013). Photography theory (Vol. 2). Routledge.
Jenks, C. (1995). Visual Culture. New York: Routledge.
Wells, L. (Ed.). (2015). Photography: a critical introduction. Routledge.
Wright, T. (2016). The photography handbook. Routledge.
Young, A. (2017). Austin Young-Biography. Retrieved from Austin Young: http://www.austinyoung.com/links/