la BOULOGNAISE – Amandine Paulandré

January 31, 2012 Leave a Comment

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la Boulognaise – Amandine Paulandre – Paris, France

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I was wandering the Bois de Boulogne, a forest near Paris, with a friend, I wanted to shoot her. I like to say something different with my images, I think I have a pretty neutral style but I also like to play with the lines of Nature. So, when I saw the big tree on the ground I knew I found what I was looking for, since I wanted a shot in the serie without the face of the model. It’s more a one of a kind i guess. I’m not sure what it conveys to other people but for me it has a certain sense of serenity. The hair look like octopus’ legs, i liked this idea.

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No matter how perfect and inspiring the result image is, model photography can be utterly boring in the dullness of repetition: beautiful model, beautiful setting, beautiful everything and again. In la Boulognaise, Amandine Paulandré breaks out from the cristal box and create a connection between a perfect setting, a forest by end of summer, and a beautiful girl … We can’t see her, that’s true, but how could it be otherwise with all that beauty around?! Imagination.

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colors are WASHED away, like MEMORIES

January 9, 2012 Leave a Comment

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Aguas Verdes is a peaceful seaside resort along the cost of Buenos Aires Province, in Argentina. Nothing fancy nor trendy, almost no restaurant but a rundown café on the beach, two food sellers and one general store called Nudist Beach, which actually doesn’t exist … the beach not the store: it’s a tourists trap. In late december the beach, the other beach, coast-long and pretty wide in low tide, is almost deserted, while the water has the typical chocolate hue of the resorts located in the upper part of the Province. One day, though, a unique combination of sea currents and winds, painted the waters in light emerald green, as the name itself suggests.

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OPENING – Aurélien Foucault

January 6, 2012 Leave a Comment

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Opening – Aurélien Foucault a.k.a. Фуко - Beijing, China

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My family and I have just moved to China and this picture was taken during our apartment hunting in Beijing. We had visited so many places and started to feel desperate. During one of these visits, we walked past that little ray of sunshine and the contrast between it’s softness and the decaying wire fence just hit me.
So I took out my phone and snapped that picture with the Hipstamatic App.
I don’t often take my heavy camera gear with me when I’ve got things to do in the city, so my phone has become the “on the spot” camera.
My “serious” photography work is done with medium-format cameras (Arax & Mamiya) and a digital Nikon.
I never edit pictures coming out of the phone because the resolution is just too low.

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See, imagine, shoot is the usual photographers’ protocol, which hasn’t changed since. When technology gave us good enough cameras in mobile smart phones and editing dedicated applications, creative photographers began to drop bulky equipment for iPhones or similar, not as an alternative, but as a new fun and catch-the-emotions gadgets. iPhoneography is called the photography made with the iPhone; the cons: low resolution, minimal editing mainly done by choosing apps presets; the pros: creative freedom, easy sharing.

Here, the trained eye of Фуко transforms a dull cut in the fence into a message of hope.

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Berlin LOVERS – Jürgen Bürgin

December 19, 2011 3 Comments

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Berlin Lovers - Jürgen Bürgin – Berlin, Germany

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‘Berlin Lovers’ is one of my earlier photos, it’s made in the subway station at Berlin Alexanderplatz. For me it’s somehow one of my own classic photos. Some of my photos I’ve seen too often for myself, but with this here it’s really different, I still can look at it, and somehow the scene touches me still. Maybe it’s one of my photos that explains best my understanding of photography. It has much to do with storytelling. I like to tell those untold stories that are happening every day in every place on this planet, those small little stories of love, hate, deception, sympathy, pride and so on… But I’m not telling the real stories. Although this photo isn’t staged, although the people here aren’t actors, although they are real persons that were there accidentally on the day on which I took the photo – despite all this, this is a piece of art, that is telling its own story. To be exact: Not the artwork, and neither the artist is telling the story. The artwork is only evoking innumerable different stories – in the mind of the viewer, in the fantasy of the beholder. So the viewer – and his individual perception of the artwork - is becoming an essential, or even the only relevant part of the artwork. The artwork is coming to existence in the perception of the recipient, and nowhere else. And I still like this photo for its openness, for its big variety of connotations it is evoking in me: connotations to movies and novels, connotations to my own experiences with loving someone, the connotation of a big city jungle.

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Bürgin’s Lovers are unique people in a dull environment. Dark green edited image creates a Metropolis’ setting that steers the focus on people instead of the surrounding architecture (beside the artificial, Alexanderplatz train station is to be seen, as many others along U-bahn). The photographer catches that very single moment capable of stimulating a wide range of emotions in the viewer. What are those lovers talking about?

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Tour de MANHATTAN – Simon Garnier

December 10, 2011 Leave a Comment

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Tour de Manhattan – Simon Garnier – New York City, Usa

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I took this picture in one of my Manhattan’s photo walks. It was toward the end of the day, when I usually take my best pictures. I noticed the toys selling guy from 20-30 meters away and this gave me time to observe the biker going around between the legs of pedestrians. As I approached, I knew I wanted to take a picture of that scene, but I needed something more than the toy itself. After 2-3 minutes wait a man, with gilded sandals and shiny green toenails, walked toward the toy. That was the element I was missing. I quickly crouched down and snapped a first picture, but I knew the angle wasn’t good enough. So I decided to put my camera closer to the ground. I only had 1 second to do it, no time to look through the viewfinder: I aimed instinctively.

The picture is a little bit fuzzy because of that (and because it was a bit dark too), but I think it gives the whole scene a sort of illusion of movement that completes the story well.

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Street photography requires fast judgement of people movements, quick decisions and, sometimes, unorthodox camera positions. Not to be missed: framing skills and vision of how the settings and characters will compose by themselves. Garnier gather all of these qualities into a single shot. Strong colors and the original toy stand out in a surprisingly interesting background, where lines and chewing gum residues add an intense city texture.

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SEOUL: a city where FOOD is FUN

December 5, 2011 1 Comment

If difference is part of fun, then Korean food is definitely a great enjoyment.

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from the WEDDING Album – Roman Tripler

December 2, 2011 Leave a Comment

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From the Wedding Album - Roman Tripler – Hennef, Germany

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I don’t do wedding pictures, I don’t want to screw up freedom with contracts. When Miriam and Bodo, very good friends of mine, asked me if I could do some shots, beside the ones taken by the official wedding photographer, I accepted with pleasure. The other guy, whom by the way always swaggered with Camera Porn, was standing in the way all the time, but the few occasions in which I was alone with my friends we had great fun. The results are photos like this one, because they could and would not pose for me. They really loved the album I gave them, it’s full of life and emotions.

I love life as it is and I want to show things that people forget or not see. This awareness will be also slow but steadily lost and we have the task to save it.
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Unconventional Wedding Photography is a new trend which aims to fix feelings and emotions instead of focusing on dull aesthetics. Strip the newlyweds from tight formality and show they love each other … and that are having fun together.
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your HAND is so soft

November 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

Buenos Aires: sharing affection in a café.

iPhone / camera+ / fx sepia

 

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untitled – Georg Pagenstedt

November 18, 2011 Leave a Comment

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untitled – Georg Pagenstedt – Hamburg, Germany

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I made the photo in a subway station of Hamburg Central Station, on the way back from Hamburg Övelgönne beach with my family. I was just taking some snapshots while we were waiting for the train. The elder son in the red shirt is reading the soccer magazine and he’s totally uninterested in hat is going on while my wife throws our younger son through the air.

The upside down view looks a bit disturbing. Seems strange. I like to make pictures of unusual moments.
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There’s no need to see faces or smiles to capture the joy of the moment. The impossible torsion, if it were one single person, puzzles the mind and at the same time opens the door to emotion.
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Balloons of Bhutan – Jonathan Harris

November 14, 2011 2 Comments

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Balloons of Bhutan – Jonathan Harrys – Bhutan

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Organizing its national agenda around the basic tenets of Buddhism, Bhutan uses “Gross National Happiness” instead of GNP to measure its socio-economic prosperity. In 2007, Jonathan Harris, artist and photographer, spent two weeks in Bhutan interviewing and photographing 117 people about their concept of happiness. Balloons of Bhutan gathers those visual moments and people’s wishes both in image and recorded voice.

Jonathan Harris prefers to edit photos according to his memory, instead of the way they should look to be perfect, and that’s probably why the amazingly beautiful light in the photo. The perspective given by the line of balloons and the framing from the tall trees convey a sense of ‘perfect place’, the one chosen for a Happiness moment.

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