Film – Page 3 – Andrew Nixon Photography

August 1, 2014

Friday Inspiration: Albert Watson

I was poking around on the Phase One website recently (more about that in an upcoming post) when I came across a pair of videos (here and here) of Albert Watson working with a Phase One camera system to make landscape images. I felt as though I knew the name but it wasn’t until video 2 that it dawned on me from where. Albert Watson, as I’m sure you’re well aware, is perhaps best know for his fashion and celebrity portraiture. The photograph that kicked his career into high gear was of Alfred Hitchcock holding a plucked goose and the photograph that I was most familiar with was the photograph of Steve Jobs. It was surprising then for me to see this icon of celebrity portraiture out in the wilds of Scotland taking landscape photographs and a reminder of how important it is to sustain a long a fruitful career to find the things that are out of your everyday, that energize and push you and make the time for these things.

I also found an additional documentary that features Albert Watson’s landscape work that was shown on BBC4. I must admit to scratching my head a little about that one – I can remember when there were only 3 tv channels in the UK and BBC2 was a little out there. The documentary has lots of take aways including: “Always have two assistants, that way if one falls off the mountain you have a spare” more seriously was his way of having a series of words that he uses as an intellectual framework for what he’s trying to achieve with the project. Something that we all can use right now. Check out the documentary below:

June 6, 2014

Friday Inspiration: Carl Chiarenza

I’ve been looking at work by Aaron Siskind over the last few weeks and as part of that reading came across Carl Chiarenza who wrote ‘Aaron Siskind: Pleasures and Treasures’. Chiarenza is a splendid photographer in his own right in addition to being a great teacher. Check out the video below to get an introduction to Chiarenza. Check out the additional conversations between Chiarenza and Brooks Jensen that can be found here.

A Conversation with Carl Chiarenza from Rochester Contemporary (RoCo) on Vimeo.

January 31, 2014

Friday Inspiration: Pentti Sammallahti

I stumbled across Pentti Sammallahti’s photography again this week. Sammallahti, born in Finland in the 1950’s, has travelled widely as a photographer – Russia, Asia, Europe and Africa, including stops in Siberia, Japan, India, Nepal, Morocco, Turkey, Europe, Great Britain and South Africa. His photographs of the White Sea in Russia are regarded as his best work, with Sammallahti himself selecting the image above as his best photograph. He describes the making of this image here.

Photographs from both his native Scandinavia as well as from his travels can be found in the retrospective of his work ‘Here Far Away‘ and the book is reviewed by Sean O’Hagan in The Guardian here.

While Sammallahti’s sense of humor comes through in many of his photographs, I must admit that I enjoyed looking at his photographs of the ocean the most. One example is shown below.

January 3, 2014

Friday Inspiration: Martin Henson

Unless my skills with the google are failing me, there are surprisingly few interviews (I couldn’t find any!) with British photographer Martin Henson. Spend some time reviewing his galleries by clicking on the link here and you, like me, will wonder how that can be.

Martin is based in Leeds in the North of England and, from what I can tell, much of his photography is essentially local. Excursions to the nearby coast and the Yorkshire dales – places that I’m reasonably familiar with – result in photographs that really do give a sense of what raw and wild these places can be.

I hope that you enjoy exploring the work of Martin Henson and I’ll leave you with another favorite of his images below.

December 6, 2013

Friday Inspiration: Eoghan Kavanagh

I wish I could remember how I came across the work of Eoghan Kavanagh. Most likely an extended wandering from some other Ireland based photographers.

Eoghan is based in Kenmare, Co. Kerry which gives him easy access to many of Ireland’s great locations. Check out more of Eoghan’s work here and in the videos below.

Evergreen Forest from Evan Payne on Vimeo.

Reenagross from Evan Payne on Vimeo.

Barley Lake from Evan Payne on Vimeo.

July 16, 2013

Playing with Presets Redux: Black & White Preset Download

When I originally wrote about using presets to explore the potential in my images I had intended on providing the final black and white preset that I made as a downloadable file. Unfortunately I couldn’t quite figure out how to do it. Should be easy enough right?

I continued to use the preset and have used it on all of my black and white images that I’ve posted here over the last few weeks, including the one above. Then finally I figured out how to provide the file.

Click here to download the preset and instructions on how to install it.

Installation of the preset is quite easy:

1. Open Lightroom

2. Navigate to the ‘Develop’ module

3. Find ‘User Presets’ in the presets panel on the left hand side.

4. Right click or control click on ‘User Presets’ to open a menu.

5. The menu has 2 options – New Folder and Import. Click import.

6. A file browser will open that will allow you to navigate to the preset you downloaded. Click on the preset you wish to import and then click ‘Import’.

7. That’s it! The preset should now be loaded into the ‘User Presets’ section of the Lightroom develop module.

To use the preset is easy enough. Select the image you want to work with, open the develop module (I usually just hit the ‘d’ key), under the user presets click on the B&W Preset. Done!

Of course sometimes you might be done, other times you might want to work the image a little more. The most common additional edits that I do are: apply lens correction, change the vignette – which is found under the effects panel on the right hand side, and to change the grain characteristics – also found under the effects panel.

You might want to do other things but I hope that this serves as a solid jumping off point. Let me know if you like this, how you’re using it, what works, what doesn’t. I’d appreciate the feedback.

June 21, 2013

Friday Inspiration: Alberto Placido

While Alberto Placido’s commercial work focuses largely on architecture it’s his personal work that explores the natural world that I find most appealing.

The image above is the first image in the Inscape series. I have particularly enjoyed look at the work that deals with the coast (perhaps not too surprisingly), the very dark images of the ‘Invisible Landscape’ with highlights of white from the sky or breaking waves reminded me of my own pre-dawn visits to the coast, while those of ‘Between Sea and Sky’, such as the one below, give the sense of standing on the deck of a boat looking out at the ocean.

Alberto’s video below is interesting and I’d love to see the still images that came from this trip.

Mist from Alberto Placido on Vimeo.

May 31, 2013

Friday Inspiration: Mary Randlett

When I was poking around on Bainbridge Island recently I did a quick tour of most of the interesting shops on the main drag, Winslow street. I wasn’t looking to buy anything, my bags were perilously close to the 50lb limit imposed by the airline as it was, but rather looking. Looking for inspiration, looking for things that I could use later. In Bainbridge Arts & Crafts I came across a book by Mary Randlett called Landscapes that I thought was amazing.

Mary’s photography came to the notice of the public as the person who took the last photographs of the noted poet Theodore Roethke. She then went on to photograph Roethke’s students and other Northwest artists (including one of Johsel Namkung who I’ve written about previously), their artwork and architecture. As I understand it (from one of the essays in the Landscapes book) Mary’s landscape work was ‘personal work’, photographs that she made for herself and shared with friends as christmas cards. These photographs eventually were published in the Landscapes book.

What particularly appeals to me about Mary’s work is that there is little of the grand landscape here. The feeling is much more of someone who had spent time with the landscape, enough time to let the landscape reveal itself.

To see more of Mary Randlett’s Landscape work I highly recommend the Landscapes book. The University of Washington has some of her work online in their digital collection. As always let me know if you find a good resource that I missed.

April 11, 2013

Friday Inspiration: Arno Rafael Minkkinen

Arno Rafael Minkkinen is a Finnish photographer who has lived in the US since 1951 and currently is a Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. I first came across Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s work through a documentary on PBS. I can’t find this program online but it is worth checking out to watch Arno in action. His photography has a sense of whimsy to it and is often slightly surreal, reminding me a little of Jerry Uelsmann’s work. His photographs are largely self-portraits: A naked Arno (or at least the part you can see is) integrated into the landscape. What is quite interesting to me is that all of his images are captured in camera on a single frame of film. No digital hanky panky here! In looking at his work I find myself trying to work out the ‘trick’ to how he pulled it off. His camera has a cable release and a 9 second timer, which allows him to get in position before tripping the shutter and throwing the cable release out of the frame. Even so, some still leave me wondering.

Check out the video at this link to hear Arno talking about his work.

February 10, 2012

Friday Inspiration: Rolf Horn

Rolf Horn‘s work caught my eye when I was recently poking around on the Soulcatcher Studio website. I had been looking at the Paul Caponigro images that they have displayed there and decided to spend a few moments looking at the work of some of the other artists that they represent.

Rolf’s square black and white images, often long exposures, are reminiscent of the work of the other photographers that I enjoy – especially Michael Levin, David Fokos and of course Michael Kenna. I perhaps shouldn’t have been surprised, although I was, to find that Rolf had worked as Michael Kenna’s assistant for a while.

Like Kenna, Rolf uses medium format cameras (Hassleblad) and film for his work, producing silver gelatin prints. He is very much committed to this mode of photography, in fact if his comments regarding digital photography in this Black & White article when taken at face value are quite inflammatory – ‘thems fightin’ words’ as we would say where I grew up. In addition the Black & White magazine feature, Rolf’s photography has been featured in a number of other magazines. A full listing can be found here.

Rolf’s website is well worth exploring, there a large number of his completed bodies of work to dig into. What I find interesting is that some of the portfolios date back to the early 1990’s and so as you look through it’s interesting to track Rolf’s aesthetic evolution. His most recent work has a quiet energy that I particularly enjoy and I have to say it – his snow monkey picture (below) is one of my favorites to date.