Michael "Nick" Nichols

Nick is a wildlife photographer for National Geographic. http://www.michaelnicknichols.com/
I am really drawn to his work. He uses remote cameras that are triggerd by animals breaking an invisible beam. Some animals are so afraid of humans that it’s nearly impossible to photograph them up close. The trick is to have the animal make the kind of image that you would do if you were there.

He used this method to capture images of leopards. "In that first foray, after months of trial and error, we only had one publishable image (of a leopard with half his face out of the frame). Since then, we’ve refined the process, with much better results, as you’ll see here.Leopards have a huge range, from Northern China and Siberia all the way down to South Africa. The only place they can be seen regularly is in the private game reserves of South Africa, where baiting and hidden radio transmitters have been used to habituate them for tourism. They are incredibly secretive — a few even survive on dogs, pigeons, and rodents in the streets of Bombay."
"Legend (and maybe fact) has it that one leopard killed over 500 humans before finally being killed by the famed tiger hunter Jim Corbett. They are not meant to be seen except with a fleeting glance that leaves you unsure of what was there."

He took the famous image of Jane Goodall with the gorilla reaching out to touch her hair. I like this because she is not afraid of the animal and uses disarming body language with him.
I like the intimacy in his photographs. They make you feel like the people or animals do in the image.

Christophe Huet

Christophe Huet is a french photoshopretoucher. I find his work very interesting and fascinating. He does advertising and I think that is even better because he can make money from his work. He created advertisings for Nike, Motorola, AIDES and Playstation. He started out working as a printer, and he trained himself on retouching. He has been retouching now for 10 years. I read that his main purpose is to make people forget the retouching itself even if it seems obvious because of the singularity of the image. Now he keeps on working as retoucher and manager at ASILE since 2005.
Sometimes, he refuses projects for personal reasons like ads for cigarettes, for junk industrial food, or others that degrade any kind of people. He thinks we have to be responsible for our act, that’s the attitude he tries to have for himself even if it’s not always easy to do. He does not want to say ‘yes’ to everything in the name of money. The artistic part of his job can’t make him forget his responsability. Likewise, he always tries to keep time to offert his job for association that struggle against cancer, smoking, aids, all bad treatment, ecology...
On his website, we can view his work and he also has a section where he shows the different steps involved in making the complex images. I find it amazing how he starts with one image and ends up only using a portion of it. He uses so many images in one piece and he makes it look so real even though most of them are impossibilities. I think his website is great. I like how he is not just a photographer and a retoucher, he comes up with the advertising ideas that are so original and eye catching.
I hope to develop photoshop skills that are half as successful as his are.
link: http://www.christophehuet.com/

Mary Ellen Mark

Mary Ellen Mark has traveled to make pictures that reflect a high degree of humanism. Today, she is recognized as one of our most respected and influential photographers. Her images of our world's diverse cultures have become landmarks in the field of documentary photography. Her portrayals of Mother Teresa, Indian circuses, and brothels in Bombay were the product of many years of work in India. A photo essay on runaway children in Seattle became the basis of the academy award nominated film Streetwise, directed and photographed by her husband, Martin Bell. She is best known for being a documentary photographer, photojournalist, portrait taker, and advertising work.
"She demands clarity of issue, excellence of technique, and the ability of any image to stand alone. To elaborate, while editing she abstracts herself from the circumstances of taking the photograph. Mark is not a prisoner of nostalgic memory such as, "this is the woman who fed me when I was hungry in Mexico," "this was a good/bad day for me," or "the man in the hat had survived many tragedies," and so forth. The image itself, therefore, must prove its own reason for existing that will be meaningful, in some way, for the viewer."
Mark says, "I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul, and I think you have to be clear about that."

Start of Sequence as a Story Blog

Art Wolfe- a great landscape and travel photographer that I was reading about in the library. The book was photographs of landscapes and native cultures. I checked out his site and he is also shooting the world's fastest-disappearing wildlife. His vision and passionate wildlife advocacy affirm his dedication to his work. By employing artistic and journalistic styles, he documents his subjects and educates the viewer. His photographs show his love for the environment. His images take my breath away. Aerial shoots are amazing. He shoots people> festival, hair, human nature, portraits, world children. His places are what I am most drawn to> aerial, architecture, spotlight, surreal land. The spotlight is very interesting because it is a landscape where one part of the image is highlighted from a spotlight. It could be a whole mountain in a landscape, or a circle on a huge mountain, or inside a cave, a spotlight shinning down, or a spotlight of the sun through the clouds, etc. Wildlife includes camouflage. You don't see the animal at first, you have to really look at the image to see how the wild animal blends in with its environment. Lions in the savanna, wolves in the woods, cheetahs in grass, owls in the tree bark, white wolves in the snow, seal in the snow, etc. Wildlife also has single moment captures. This is where he gets the shot of action or movement. These are really amazing. The eagle scooping up food from the water, lions attacking a bison, a cheetah killing an antelope, a bear catching a fish, a seal about to kill its dinner, penguins jumping, hippos yawning, polar bears fighting, bats flying, horses running in water, bears swimming, birds flying, etc. They are moments that he captured. Prob. a very high shutter speed for the ones where the action is frozen in time. The environment with animals shows the animal and most of the image is showing its surrounding environment. In most of these images, he is getting pretty close to the animals, even if he used a 500mm lens. Last in this section is portrait of animals. This is basically him shooting just the animal close up. For all we know, these animals could be in captivity because we can't see their environment. Last category is impressions. This is showing color, pattern, repetition, shape, contrast, texture, framing the subject. He has prints available. Panoramas at 40" is $600! 50" is $1,000, and 70" is $1,500. Don't get me wrong, they are amazing, and I would love to have them, but it is so expensive for a print that isn't matted or framed. He has published 26 books! He is my new Favorite photographer!!

http://www.artwolfe.com/index.html

Imapix

Imapix is a Nature photography company. Wildlife including deer, birds, cows, wolves, sled dogs, owls, eagles, foxes, horses, cats, dogs, ducks, and insects. There is a combination of action, emotion, and interaction in the wildlife shots. Then there are landscapes, close ups of flowers, and also some action of dog sled racing, and bicycle racing. Overall, I think his work is very strong because of the subject, lighting, color, and the general impact it has on the viewer. 

I am interested in wildlife photography; but more wild and exotic animals. My life dream since I was little is to go to the mountains of China and photography wild giant pandas in their environment. I would hope that my pictures would inspire people to help save these endangered animals. I would also like to go and photography animals in a safari in Africa, penguins in Antarctica, the Galapagos, and the rainforest. I hope to travel to all of these places and photography wildlife and landscapes there.

 

Christian Frolich

I love this work. I found it on Flickr. He shoots landscapes, portraits, and commercial work. He has black and white landscapes, and also bright amazing colored landscapes. He has many shots near the beach. He also adds his own texture to many images. There are some with special paper on multiply, tree bark texture, and crumpled paper in the background. I like the ones with texture because I look at these images longer because they are not normal. I think the color in his images is strong, bright, contrasty and eye catching. It looks like he has traveled to many different oceans to get his seascapes and lighthouses. I am inspired by his photographs because landscapes and seascapes is a realm of photography I am really interested in. 

http://www.frolichphoto.com/ 

conclusion

Overall, I loved dig. photo this semester. I wasnt sure if I was going to take it because of field hockey practice everyday. I really didnt like missing field hockey 2x a week; but when you have a passion for two things in your life, you need to balance them out. I loved working with sports photography and developing my skills. I liked printing with Epson and scanning negatives. I used acrylic gel for the first time so that was a learning experience. I have never heard what a dyp tic was until this class and I think it posses a very interesting concept. I love the impossible image project and doing research for it on worth1000.com. I have thought really hard about my major and decided I want to get a b.a. in photography as well as a b.f.a in graphic design. I am excited to continue developing my skills.