“Imagine being out at night, alone, under starry skies. Listening to silence, watching the world slowly move, all senses alive, thinking, imagining, dreaming. The camera is recording, creating, documenting, seeing what the eye cannot see – cumulative time. Or the sensation of being in a field as the snow falls on a single, exquisite tree. White all around, just the sound of snow falling.”

Check out Michael Kenna Photography

AWARDS:
2003 – Honorary Master of Arts, Brooks Institute, Santa Barbara, California, USA
2000 – Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters, Ministry of Culture, France
1996 – Golden Saffron Award, Consuegra, Spain
1989 – Institute for Aesthetic Development Award, Pasadena, California, USA
1987 – Art in Public Buildings Award, California Arts Council Commission, Sacramento, California, USA
1981 – Imogen Cunningham Award, San Francisco, California, USA

The list of PUBLISHED BOOKS AND CATALOGS is very impressive. From it, I mention he’s “A Twenty Year Retrospective” publication from 2002. Publishers: Nazraeli Press, USA (English edition) and Editions Treville, Japan (Japanese edition). Reprint of 1994 Treville book. Essay by Ruth Bernhard. Introduction by Peter C. Bunnell. 130 photographs.

Biography:

Mapplethorpe was born and grew up as a Roman Catholic of English and Irish heritage in Floral Park, New York, a neighborhood of Long Island. He received a B.F.A. from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where he majored in graphic arts.
Mapplethorpe took his first photographs soon thereafter using a Polaroid camera. In the mid-1970s, he acquired a Hasselblad medium-format camera and began taking photographs of a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, including artists, composers, and socialites. In the 1980s he refined his aesthetic, photographing statuesque male and female nudes, delicate flower still lifes, and highly formal portraits of artists and celebrities. Mapplethorpe’s first studio was at 24 Bond Street in Manhattan. In the 1980s Sam Wagstaff gave him $500,000 to buy the top-floor loft at 35 West 23rd Street, where he lived and had his shooting space. He kept the Bond Street loft as his darkroom.

Mapplethorpe died on the morning of March 9, 1989, in a Boston, Massachusetts hospital from complications arising from AIDS; he was 42 years old. His ashes were buried in Queens, New York, in his mother’s grave, marked ‘Maxey’.
Nearly a year before his death, the ailing Mapplethorpe helped found the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc. His vision for the Foundation was that it would be “the appropriate vehicle to protect his work, to advance his creative vision, and to promote the causes he cared about”.

I’ve been a bokehddict for some time now. I started off just doing the odd one here and there. Nothing dangerous, I thought. I can cope with this. I could stop anytime. I had the right kind of lens, that’s all – but when I look back now, I can see that everything was just right to encourage it, to feed the habit.

And then it all started to get more frequent. It might be every other day. Then every day. Then most shots. It was just bokeh, bokeh, bokeh.

Then I fell in with some others. They were addicts too. And it was all good, you know? There wasn’t any problem. We would all bokeh together. There was a site for it! We had groups where we’d bokeh. Lots of groups. Special days for special kinds of bokeh. But we thought there was nothing wrong with it! We’d celebrate the really good stuff. Breath it in and inhale it, bokeh after bokeh after bokeh after bokeh! Such a rush when those sparkles just fell into place, when that hazy background smoothly showed just what I wanted.

And now? Now I can’t stop. I need that bokeh fix. I have to make those spots show me their worth. I plead with them to give me what I want. I’m dreaming in little dots of light.

My name is harold. I need help.

Don’t you even dare to stop Harold!

Through his early work as a nature and wildlife photographer, Dan Coburn developed a great appreciation for our natural places. Over the last few years his work has evolved into a study of mans relationship with the environment. Many of his photographs depict man-made structures and objects existing in visual harmony with the landscape.

Coburn has garnered regional, national and international attention for his photographic works. He was chosen as one of a handful of artists for the Artist in Residence program at Rocky Mountain National Park for the summer of 2007. His photographs are included in many corporate and private collections accross the united states.

His images have been published in Camera Arts magazine as well as several local publications. Dan is currently president of the Lawrence Photo Alliance.

My desire to see the world and live among the animals has grown and I feel that my photographic setup is almost ready for me to bring the beautiful world of the dying rain forests and dwindling biodiversity into the light of the public eye. My desire to make documentaries on primates and other forest animals is also becoming apparent. I shall stick to still photographs for now but later I intend on getting some broadcast quality video equipment.

She is a photographer environmentalist vegetarian scientist engineering student and totally self proclaimed superartist and megagenius, also a member of the homo genus. She lives in Idaho and loves the wide open spaces. People who know her say that Jasper has more imagination, spirit, spunk, creative ability and talent in her little finger than most people.

My goal? To bring technology into the creation side of life. To use my knowledge of electrical engineering to capture things otherwise impossible, to bring knowledge and reconstruction to the world of people. I am no great public speaker, politician, or philosopher. My place is the gathering of facts and the sharing of information. The study of the earth and the facts alone speak more towards conservation than anything I could ever say. Every little bit counts and the simple redirection of energy can have dramatic nonlinear effects in the real world.

1) How long have you been photographing waterscapes?

Probably around 18 months, originally I started out just exploring every style of photography in an attempt to properly understand how things on my camera worked. As this progressed I naturally moved to capturing the movement of water as I love the ocean whether it be swimming, sports or relaxing around it.

2) When did you realized this is your most desired subject regarding photography?

I’ve noticed a change in my attitudes to waterscape, originally I was impressed with the effects which a long-exposure can create(the mystic feel of the water). But now I’m more fascinated with the geology, colour of the water and other conditions. Every location is different and I think this is what encourages me to keep shooting, coming across new places is always interesting and exciting.

3) For those who want to obtain similar results, what gear do you recommend? (What do you use? What accessories?)

My main waterscape kit consists of a Canon 350D, Canon 10-22, Cokin .3 .6 .9 nd grad filters and of course a manfrotto tripod. Sometimes I will mix things up and use my Canon 24-70 if I find I can’t get close enough to the area but I mostly use my ultra wide 10-22.

4) What is the secret of the rightly exposed long shutter speed water scenes?

Choosing a long exposure time for waterscapes is a interesting topic. If the shot is taken at 3 seconds, this can greatly differ to a shot which may be taken at 30 seconds. I’ve enclosed two shots to illustrate this:

The first shot has a sense of power, fury and looks quite nasty. Being a short exposure this is possible to be captured however using a long exposure (as in the second shot) the water has less fury as it crashes against the rocks and instead is more calm with a mystic effect.

5) Do you post-process your pictures? If yes, what software you use and what changes to you make to the pictures.

I like to look at my shots and have a sense that it’s captured accurately. I have alot of respect for people that post process as some people are amazing, but at the same time too many people are over doing it with over-baked high dynamic range(HDR) shots. For this reason I like to minimize my post processing as much as I can, my usual workflow would consist of: levels, increase saturation, USM sharpening, minor vignetting and occasionally I may have to remove rain drops from when I’m shooting in the rain and water gets on my filters.

I’ve uploaded two before and after shots which is available at http://www.alexwisephotography.net/pp/

6) I noticed you have recently started a photo blog where you also posted a tutorial on shooting waterfalls. Will you continue to write tutorials about water photography?

I launched my blog earlier this month (November 2007) to discuss my travels and also the techniques I use. Initially I was a little unsure if there was any point in documenting my techniques as I don’t see myself as a genius at photography but far from it. But as someone that loves to look at others work, I found that people are making simple mistakes at waterscape photography but then again, something which may appear simple to me, may not be for someone else. For this reason I have decided to try put as much as my knowledge down as I can, if I can help someone out there then I’m happy.

Thanks alot for the interview Alex! I love your water scene photos and I’m looking forward to see what comes next from your camera.

Books:
The Great British. Photographs by Eve Arnold. New York, 1991 (photo-eye Cat# KN044)
All in a Day’s Work. Photographs by Eve Arnold. New York, 1989 (photo-eye Cat# BA003)
Marilyn Monroe. An Appreciation. Photographs and text by Eve Arnold. New York, 1987 (photo-eye Cat# KN032)
In China. Photographs and text by Eve Arnold. New York, 1980 (photo-eye Cat# KN009)

Tags: eve arnold, photographer, celebrity photograper, black and white photographer, magnum photo

Tags: inspirational photos, inspirational photography, Fatih Duzgoren

He travels to Africa caring his telephoto lenses, pursuits silently the big powerful creatures with great courage, sits hiding in the big grass waiting with patience for the lions, rhinos, giraffes, and all others to stand still, feed, play, fight or attack other animals. The results is that his pictures are breathtakingly beautiful and touching in their honesty and emotion….”He clearly has an affinity with these glorious creatures that’s heart-stopping.” – Sunday Telegraph, Australia.

His pictured were gathered together in one of a life time album with 132 pages called “On this Earth – Photographs from East Africa”. A link to this book is at the bottom of the article.
From July to December 2008, he’s photos will be exhibited in England, at the Fox Talbot Museum of Photography, in Lacock.

Giraffes in Evening Light, Maasai Mara 2006

Two Rhinos, Lewa Downs 2003

Elephants & Egrets After Storm, Amboseli 2007

Lioness with Cub Feeding, Masai Mara 2007
A link to his gallery here and here.

Tags: wildlife photography, wild animals, Nick Brandt

“When you get a picture you like, you really feel you have opened the eyes of the rest of the world to something worth looking at.”
“Ultimately technology is just a tool… It is easy to get caught up with all the gadgets and all the technology, but the most important thing is to be comfortable with the tools you have.”
“After a zillion years of being a magazine photographer, there is still nothing I’d rather be doing, except maybe stand-up comedy.”

Tags: journalist photographer, david burnett, times magazine, national geographic