Quest
SHOW #29
Quest for the Perfect Photo
One brief window of opportunity where all the elements align themselves. The light, the look - it all comes together.
And then the --- click. A fleeting magical moment come and gone then lost forever. But preserved in one picture. Join CNN’s Richard Quest, this February, as he goes in search of the perfect photo.
“Get me Demarchelier!” One of the orders barked by the infamous editor in The Devil wears Prada. Patrick Demarchelier was indeed worth that special mention in the film. Richard visits this uber fashion and portrait photographer. In New York Demarchelier teaches Richard the techniques involved in composing the perfect picture.
The great Henri Cartier Bresson once said of photography:
‘photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event''. Magnum Photos bequeathed us with a living record of our history. From Tiananmen Square to the Normandy Landings, Magnums’ members have captured some of the most iconic pictures of our time. Richard finds out what it takes to join this elite brotherhood.
In New York he visits Steve McCurry, the man behind the Afghan girl. Then it’s off to Delhi and to meet the legendary Raghu Rai
What ever you do don’t photograph wildlife and babies! Richard is off to find out why getting that perfect shot can often be next to impossible. Try getting either to stand still!
Quest learns from the masters in both of these – the acclaimed baby photographer Anne Geddes and in San Francisco, award-winning wildlife photographer Frans Lanting.
Back to New York and Quest is finding out what kind of a picture makes it onto the coveted cover of Harpers Bizaare? Richard is on a Vera Wang fashion shoot and then sits with the magazine’s editor Glenda Bailey as she decides which picture will make the cut. But while covers always look ‘picture perfect’, Richard finds out about the wonderful world of airbrushing and how photographs often lie. He gets his own photo touched up. Find out what he really can look like!
You just have to look at our newsstands to see what a celebrity obsessed culture we live in. Every few months a new gossip magazine emerges promising even better and more compromising pictures of celebrities. Celebrities at their best, at their worst, showing us what they’re doing and what they definitely should not be doing.
We are the voyeurs, and we just can’t get enough of them.
The paparazzi have spawned this celebrity culture showing celebrities as anything but perfect. In London Darren Lyons, snapper turned celebrity himself tells us how his business really works.
But while we all love to curl up with a good gossip magazine, most of these photos will never be remembered. But there are photos that will endure, like those taken at our weddings.
The wedding photographer is one of the honest jobs in the business. We visit a wedding in L.A. and capture a couple’s special moments.
Quest is back with Frans Lanting in San Francisco. And this time he is the one taking the photographs. They go to the Ano Nuevo state reserve to photograph the colony of elephant seals. Richard shows us his metal as he snaps away. But then its back to the studio to see if his photographs will indeed seal the deal.
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