Art Wolfe is one of the most famous photographers working today, in part because of his television series Travels to the Edge. I had the opportunity to attend his recent tour as he visited the Boston area.
Art formally studied painting. Interestingly, he draws inspiration from many painters, such as Hopper, Manet, Escher, etc. In numerous examples, Art showed an image by one of these famous painters and then showed some of his photo images which he created specifically because he saw echoes of these painters. Quite interesting really. I have never seen this from any other photographer.
Art readily admits to being technically challenged. He uses Lightroom, but does not know anything about the computer he is using. He has assistants for that sort of stuff. If Art Wolfe was forced to listen to Scott Kelby or George Lepp for ten minutes ... well, let's just say it would not be pretty.
Apart from "My Favorite Lenses", he did not talk much about equipment. Mostly spoke about composition, patterns, color, light, etc. Different than most seminars. I enjoyed it.
Art often feeds on numerous themes filed in his head. Animal migrations, tribal body painting, etc. Surprisingly, his next book is about dogs. While this may seem a bit trite, it is not quite what you might think. He is drawing from his thousands of existing photos ... Burma, Chile, Tibet, even the Yanomamo tribe. (Does not include your Aunt Millie and her groomed Pekinese.) For the first time in his life, four different publishers were bidding for this project; he had to beat them off with a stick.
On my bookshelf, I have one book by Wolfe: Light On The Land. Fabulous.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
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