Art Wednesday

Nick Brandt (1966 - )
British photographer

I realise that last week’s “Art Wednesday”  and this week’s both cover wild life (in different formats), but I found and fell in love with the photography of Nick Brandt and just had to share them.  These are my sort of photos and I would just love to be able to take works as wonderful as these. They are simply AMAZING considering how he takes them.
Nick Brandy started his career as a music video director and whilst in Africa fell in love with the wild life.  He now exclusively photographs in Africa, one of his goals being to record a visually poetic last testament to the wild animals and places there before they are gone at the hands of man.  His photography bears little relation to the colour documentary-style wildlife photography that is the norm. He photographs on medium-format black and white film (these are not digital photos) without telephoto or zoom lenses. (He uses a Pentax 67II with only two fixed lenses.)  Although he shoots on film, Brandt scans his negatives, and then dodges and burns the images in Photoshop. He doesn't add or clone animals - with patience, the scenes are as he saw them.
One review described his work as “regal” and would have to agree that I have never seen these amazing creatures looking so regal.
There is a tragedy to his art work – some of the elephants that are portrayed in his works have since been killed by poachers — this breaks my heart as I think the elephant is a magnificent creature, one of Gods most amazing creations.  And this is one of the reasons why the works of Nick Brandt is so valuable — it is capturing what is slowing disappearing due to greed, corruption, mismanagement of the wildlife parks,  and political turmoil in some of these African nations.
 I could rave about his work for days. . .


~oOo~

Comments

  1. Amazing, Jo!! I love these pictures - there is something incredible about the majesty and greatness of African wildlife! :)

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  2. I like the photos, though I don't really like black and white much. Colours are so much nicer!
    Bets

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  3. Bets - I LOVE B&W so these photos made me very happy indeed. B&W have a drama about them that is harder to capture in coloured photos.

    Next week I have plenty of colour!!

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  4. Oh wow! He is brilliant!
    No zoom or telephoto lenses?!!
    Amazing photos, Jo.
    The one with the giraffes under the trees looks like it was done with infrared.
    What joy it would be to take such beautiful pictures.
    I will check him out - my hubby would love his work too!
    Thanks for the link :-)
    blessings..Trish

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  5. Lovely Jo. So much patience needed. I adore cheetahs & that first image is just breathtaking!

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