Landscape Photography

Summary:

Jim Brandenburg is one of the world's most renowned nature photographers. He worked for many years for the “National Geographic” and traveled the world.

We all know his pictures from a great number of publications, from exhibitions or from documentary films, he did for television. FotoTV had the opportunity to do a detailed interview with him.

Part 1 shows you how he managed to make his way from the rural areas of America in Minnesota, to get reputation on an international level. He tells us why he quit his arts-degree - for his artistic vision – and how his encounter with a wolf changed his life.

Enjoy the film.

Summary:

John Davies is one of the most important British photographers. Born 1949 in Sedgefield, UK, Davies became famous for his detailed views of the english industrial landscape. His black and white photographs tell stories about processes, changes and transformation of Great Britain. He describes his works as documentary landscape photographs.

In the mid-70s, John Davies began with the analysis of wild and natural landscapes of the British Isles and its changes caused by the climate before he decided to devote himself to the documentation of british cities. Here he concentrated on the changes provoked by the industrial and post-industrial landscape.

Some years ago, John Davies started the Metropoli project, to document the major post industrial cities in the UK from high vantage points to reveal the architectural infrastructure and topography of the city. Those tales from topographic cities were shown during a retrospective at the PhotoEspaña in Madrid and the National Media Museum in Bradford.

Summary:

Here it is, the start of a new series with Fred Picker. The already departed master printer was also an excellent black-and-white photographer, as we can see in this series.

In the first part he analyses some pictures to show us how to achieve vividness and emotion in your photos. Similar structures for example can enhance the expressiveness of your photos. You can also attract more interest in your pictures by using optical illusions. Even after taking the shot, the moods in a photograph can be manipulated by using the different techniques in the darkroom.

Summary:

In the 1970s Michael Westmoreland invented a spectacular form of giant panoramic image: the aerial-film colour transparency. He employed very rare antique rotational cameras and a special film-stock which was only manufactured once. Nothing like them had ever been made before, and it is highly unlikely for a number of reasons that anyone will ever repeat the experience.

We are talking about rolls of film emerging from the camera with 500 times the information content of a 35mm slide. This was not technology for its own sake but an intention to make visible astonishing subjects which had never been seen before in such a form.

They were viewed at the time in a number of exhibitions at leading locations and received prestigious awards: however, the work is relatively little known because the reproduction technology of that era couldn’t deal with such large originals and this precluded its use in any form of mass media.

In "Behind the Garage Door" Michael Westmoreland takes us into his now-defunct darkroom to demonstrate the processes involved.

Summary:

After studying art, Douglas Busch worked as an assistant to Morley Baer and worked with Al Webber and Ansel Adams. Early on, Busch interrupted his photographic career to join the family business and become a jeweler. But some years later his addiction resurfaced and he founded the de Golden Busch Inc., where he started to build the largest portable camera in the world.

His works ranges from early "Street Photography", to large format black and white photographs with extraordinary landscapes and cityscapes to bizarre portraits. His latest work is a highly abstract series called "Waves."
Douglas Busch's photographs can be seen at the Museum of Modern Art, NY (MoMA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Getty Museum.

In this interview, Douglas Busch gives an overview of his artistic works.

Summary:

Using some of the pictures from his book, "Take Your Photography to the Next Level," George Barr discusses composition. Through a compositional analysis of those images, he shows us how photographs are conceived and why they affect the viewer in the way they do.

Watch this to learn how symmetry and arrangement can influence a picture, and why sometimes less color is better.

Summary:

Ruben Smit is a passionate ecologist and photographer. As a photographer, he specializes in outdoor photography and gives us a guided tour of his nature photography. Most of the pictures seen in this film, were taken at the Veluwe Areal near the German-Dutch border. In 2006, Smit published an illustrated book, Verborgen Veluwe, featuring pictures from this area.

This film can also be seen as a travel guide for the largest dutch woodland. Ruben shows us highlights of the Veluwe and gives some tips for finding accommodations.