Portfolios

Sometimes, the work of a photographer attracts my attention for reasons even more personal than usually. This is exactly the case here with the pictures of Dave Mead on facial hair. I loved it.

Copyright (C) Dave Mead

In May of 2009, photographer Dave Mead traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to photograph the contestants of the 2009 World Beard & Mustache Championships. On the day of the contest, over the course of eleven hours, Mead captured the portraits of 130 bearded/mustached subjects. This Summer, 54 of his portraits were on display at Chelsea Market in New York City. The exhibit, titled “Magnificent Specimens“, has since ended but prints can be purchased online by visiting http://davemead.bigcartel.com/.

It has been a long time since my last portfolio about a pure landscape photographer. When I found Christian Del Rosario, I immediately decided I wanted to give him a space here, because his pictures exploit light at its best. “An overcast sky is the friend of the landscape photographer” seems to be his motto.

Christian Del Rosario: Visit the many picture galleries of his web site.

Emyr Pugh is both linguist and photographer, an unusual association which visibly gives him a tight link to people he meets, all the more in Mongolia where he lives.

His web site, www.dogfen.com (‘dogfen’ is the Welsh word for ‘documentary’) is a window on Peoples and Humanity. Moreover, the great generosity of Emyr leads him to offer his pictures in very large format: Admire his web site in full screen; Image loading may be somewhat slow, but it’s well worth being a little patient.

Copyright (C) Emyr R. E. Pugh

In his photographies, Toby Smith creates a world of his own. From my very first contact with his work, I have to admit that I was shaken -altogether- by the perfect mastering of lights that seems to be out of our world and a personal sense of space that is most perceptible in the Estranged series where I extracted the following image, “Carriageway”.

Carriageway, Copyright (C) Toby Smith

I shot this image during the snowstorms of 2009 that swept across the South of England. With severe weather warnings all of the roads and landscape were ghostly quiet.  I spent two night exploring the landscapes in my car looking for subject matter that evoked the right feel.  Ironically turning my camera on the road and my own made a fantastic shot from a frozen cattle bridge. Images from this week went inspired me to complete my latest body of work “The Renewables Project” within Scotland but during the coldest months.

Toby Smith is relaunching his web site; This is the right opportunity to visit it: www.shootunit.com.

Who said landscapes and graphic design could not meet in a photograph? Not Misha de Ridder.

Bergwald, Copyright (C) Misha de Ridder

The photo is called Bergwald and is from the series Abendsonne. It has been on show in 2009 at Juliètte Jongma Gallery in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Sometimes natural phenomena can become so estranged and mysterious, that we are inclined to describe them as unreal realities. It might be the extraordinary shape of a tree, a mountain, a shadow, a cloud or the mirroring reflection of nature in a lake, but it is foremost the unfamiliarity of the natural aesthetics of reality.

The series Abendsonne literally refers to such an unfamiliar natural phenomenon, a phenomenon that appears twice a year during the end of the autumn and the beginning of spring for the period of one week in an area in the Swiss Alps. During the winter season a village is permanently covered by the shadow of a high mountain in the west, which eliminates all direct sunlight. A week before darkness falls, the sun appears one more time after it has set every evening. A mysterious phenomenon known as ˜Abendsonne™.

The photos are visual repetitions of the area where the ‘Abendsonne’ appears, at a lake, known for it’s flat, almost mirror-like surface, taken under different natural circumstances and presented in different printed scales. This juxtaposition of difference and equality evokes questions about authenticity, originality, reality and the representation of reality within the medium of photography. Unambiguous reference to the unreal reality of the ˜Abendsonne™.

The photo Bergwald has been shot with a very long exposure after the sun has just set, so that it looks like it’s light, but actually it’s not.

All Misha de Ridder‘s work is made with a Linhof Technica 4×5″ large format camera.

Photographer who are also climbers of the highest summits of our world know very well how difficult it is to render the tough conditions their activities are developing in and their beautiful environment. That is the single reason that I cannot avoid recommending a visit to the mountain photographs of Jimmy Chin.

The shot below is certainly one of the best examples of how he can balance composition, dynamics, landscape in one picture:

Conrad Anker climbing the Shark's Fin of Meru, during a North Face expedition to the Garwhal Himalaya, India

Taken at a raptor recovery center here in Nebraska in August of 2006

Let’s celebrate the book from Joel Sartore, co-published by National Geographic, “Rare: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species”. It started out as something for him to work on close to home while his wife was treated for breast cancer (thankfully, she has since made a full recovery.) Showing animals on simple black and white backgrounds gives equal weight (and hopefully attention) to creatures great and small — from peregrine falcons to endangered flies. The goal is to get readers to care about these species, and to save them before it’s too late.

Joel Sartore Photography – www.joelsartore.com

Also visit www.rarethebook.com.

American photography generated a wealth of great artists. Some of them are very well known, but it may not be the case for most. Working in documentary photography may make things even tougher. Kathryn Obermaier is a freelance photojournalist currently based in New York.

She has been working in many locations, and is currently working with an NGO in India documenting the lives of the students at the Ashray School in Varanasi. And I recommend you to visit her web site. But what has caught my eye is her work about Cheerleaders, a most American landmark.

Obviously, I was not the only one to notice this documentary series, since Kathryn was chosen for the Associated Press award for this project.

In my story about Cheerleaders, I follow a competitive high school team in Upstate NY. They travel throughout the States competing. This photo was taken as they were announced as the winners at a competition in Connecticut. I choose to follow cheerleaders because of the combination of sport and pageantry, these girls are between the ages of 15 to 18 and are still developing who they are, I found the moments surrounding the competition to be beautiful, and honest.

Kathryn Obermaier

When you find a good portraitist, you should stop and watch. Robin Ryan is definitely worth your time. Both for this picture and for his web site.

Copyright (C) Robin Ryan

Should we present Miguel Lasa? World-class photographer and in love with wildlife, he has a web site (www.miguellasa.com) that anybody should visit.

The leopard below was found in Zimbabwe while driving back to the camp.

Before arriving to the base camp we spotted this leopard on a tree. After waiting more than one hour he/she decided to go down for a drink.

This led to a picture that is clearly out of the usual:

Copyright (C) Miguel Lasa

Copyright (C) Per-Anders Pettersson

Africa is a place where the world is changing, maybe faster than elsewhere in the world and photographers are trying to document the changes. Per-Anders Pettersson went to South Africa and Congo and his web site has some echoes of the shouts of the people torn in these wide moves.

A busy street corner where women sell traditional food such as grilled sheep heads and cow intestines, in the heart of Khayelitsha, the largest and poorest black township outside Cape Town, South Africa. Many people here come from the rural areas in the Eastern Cape province to search for work. Most of them end up in shanty towns trying to make a living, if they are luck working for about 10 Euros per day as maids and casual laborers.

Copyright (C) Peter Shah

At first, Peter Shah seems to be the usual astronomy photographer. He goes out at night to look at the sky with a photo camera and a very big lens on a tripod. This is actually wrong. Peter Shah is actually a perfectionist. Where most amateur astronomers learned to grind a mirror by themselves in order to build a bigger, better astro lens, Peter has perfected the art of improving the little details that make a difference between a good lens and a near perfect photo.

For example, covering the concrete pier, where the 8 inch lens is affixed, with a gold mylar sheet was a step into reducing unwelcome heat radiation that was impairing his pictures. [Peter Shah's equipment]

You should absolutely go and check his wonderful stars and nebulae’s images. Peter authorized me to copy here a photo I would love to be able to do (any time I start shooting stars, of course): A full color photo of the Horse Head Nebula (in my eyes, one of the most marvelous sight in our skies).

Now, as we are on YLovePhoto and I am always tempted to help my readers improve their photos, I also found a useful article by Jason Anderson (from Canon Blogger) posted on the excellent DIY Photography web site. You will learn how he built a DIY star tracker (very much what astro-photographers would do). But you will start by the excellent basic advice of 5 tips:

1. Use a tripod
2. Turn on the in-camera noise reduction
3. Drop your ISO to its lowest setting
4. Make sure you are working with fully charged batteries and have some spares!
5. Try to shoot in a remote area where there is not much stray light

The Create Wonderful Astrophotography Images With A DIY Star Tracker article will have you brain working. Maybe, you will try your photo camera at night, too.

Copyright (C) foto.jollypix.com

There is something against trying to cram too many pixels into a camera

When Maxim received his Sony Alpha 200, it was in pretty bad shape. Most people would have merely returned it. Maxim Mayorov, as a true photographer would do, took the opportunity for a studio shot with an unusual model.

All the shots are copied on EnglishRussia. But Maxim’s web site is foto.jollypix.com.

Contrary to what other photographers have to offer, Chloé Thôme does not show you anything, but she watches the world and let us see what she saw. Exceptionally, I felt the urge to present two pictures at a time from the same photographer, maybe because they are linked by a same eye.

the first was shot in 2003 in Nepal, during a traditional Gaï Jatra ceremony as celebrated everywhere in Kathmandu -and in Bodnath too- where there is the great stupa. These women were fascinated by the show of the croud turning around the stupa. The doors of the domain dedicated to the god of death, Yama, are closed from May-June. During these festivities, children, clothed in cow suits attempt to force the doors open to allow the recently dead members of the family to join heaven.

Copyright (C) Chloé Thome

The second picture was shot in December 2009 in Kampuchea, in Battambang, second city in the country in the North-West, during a trip when Chloé worked with several NGOs. (see http://lemondesolidaire.canalblog.com for more news about the humanitarian project). These women were part of a funerary parade and followed the casket on a small Buddhist altar. Maybe they were family members. They were clothed in white, the color of mourning in this culture (contrary to Western habits). This little croud walked through the whole city for a very intense time.

Copyright (C) Chloé Thôme

Chloé Thôme is also visible right now in the FNAC of Gent, Belgium (up to 30th April 2010) where you will find more of her pictures from the Kampuchea series. If you cannot travel there, you should visit her web site: http://chloethome.canalblog.com/.

I am not only a photographer but I do play some computer video games. Since most of my friends noticed that I tend to react a lot to the action on the screen, how could I not be sensitive to the Gamers series of Phillip Toledano?

Phil made a portrait series interesting by adding an external element to the photo shoot: Having people playing games revealed some of their inner selves in interesting patterns.

Copyright (C) Phillip Toledano

But if you appreciate a photographic style which enhances the graphic side of things and the mere bareness of the image (like I do), I would advise you to also go and discover his web site and his Artic Circle series. Your time will be spent traveling in a very unique photographic world.

A Marseillais in London

Grégoire Bernardi is a French photographer from Marseilles whose work had me immediately reacting. First, I noticed some of the photos in his I’m a Marseillais series which initially seemed too near to a personal souvenir album before discovering the depth of his wider newspaper report approach. On his web site, you will find documentary photo that I deem most interesting, under the names of New Burlesque II or First time in London, and like me, I’m sure, you will start to love the fresh whiff of air blowing in his photographic work, some kind of bare documentary.

Copyright (C) Grégoire Bernardi

This photo was shot in Marseilles (Bouches du Rhône, France) in October 2006, during a firemen demonstration in front of the Préfecture. When it was shot, tear gas bomb had just been dropped around the demonstrators and the journalists present at the time, which made work difficult!

Copyright (C) David Bacher

This photo is part of a series on the Sami people living in northern Sweden near the town of Kiruna. I took this picture at a reindeer corral during the month of December at around 14h. The Sami villagers work long hours, separating their individual reindeer herds. The temperature was approximately -15 Celsius. The light was a combination of overhead spots that the Sami use to illuminate the corral and a touch of natural light as days are very short during the winter.

David Bacher is a photographer whose international ascendancy helped in cultivating a multi-cultural sensitivity. You will find him under all skies, in front of all horizons, in many photographic styles. The photo above is part of an on-going documentary in Sweden, where I loved the texture and the color. But you must also visit the rest of his site.