Art Wolfe [Contemporary Photographer]

Art Wolfe can pretty much photograph anything and it will turn out amazing. You name it, people, places, nature, he does it all. The photographs of the people and the places are all very well done and interesting, but what struck me the most were the more abstract pictures of nature.

There is something I really love about this picture. The contrast between the white snow, dark tree and the bright background is so unusual. There is so much detail in the branches and yet there is a sort of simplicity that makes me want to hang it on my wall.

Although slightly different, this is another one that stood out to me. I love the various colored rocks and the patterns that are formed in the water (at least I think that's water) to the left.

Art Wolfe is great at finding beautiful colors in nature. Here is an example from a hot spring in Yellowstone Park. It almost looks to good to be real.

David Muench [Contemporary Photographer]

Modern day Ansel Adams? Dacid Muench has a gift of bringing out the beauty in landscapes. His reflections seem unreal. Landscape photography takes a lot of patience. Although this is not what I am doing my project on, I have respect for people who photograph like this.

Diego Gravinese [Contemporary Artist]

Photorealism is a artistic movement in which the artist gathers information from photographs and paints a picture that looks as realistic as the photograph itself.

Some people question the reason for this type of art. If it looks so much like a photograph, why not just use the photograph as the art? I think in this case it is not so much the subject of the piece that is meant to impress but rather the technique and time involved in making the piece. It is more about the artist than the artwork. Here are some other examples of photorealism:

Eric Zenner

Richard Estates

David Burdeny [Contemporary Photographer]

I wanted to blog about David Burdeny because his photographs are somewhat mystical. They remind me of how beautiful the world is.

I love the simple compositions that lead the eye throughout the frame. They are mysterious and peaceful.

Ian Scott Newcomb [Contemporary Photographer]

Upon Ian Scott Newcomb's first visit to New York City he felt an overwhelming sense of familiarity. The taxis, the tall buildings and people hurrying all over made him feel like he was on the set of a movie or tv show. Media ambushes us with images of people and places and New York City is probably on the top of the list. This gave Newcomb the idea for a photography project. Was what he saw in reality the same as how it is portrayed in media? In order to do this, Newcomb took pictures in the city and then projected them onto a tv screen. He then took a picture of the tv screen with the image on it and printed the final picture.

William Eggleston [Contemporary Photographer]

William Eggleston, born in 1939, was influenced by artists such as Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Eggleston grew up with an artistic touch but only started experimenting with photography in 1965 when he was 26. At first he began photographing in black and white but soon moved on to color. What really distinguishes his work is dye-transfer printing. At the time it only seemed to be used for advertisements, but Eggleston fell in love with the saturation of the colors. He said that. "every photograph I subsequently printed with the process seemed fantastic and each one seemed better than the previous one."

The subjects of Eggleston's more recent work are relatively common things, most of them old or broken. He finds beauty in ordinary things by drawing out the colors. He takes the mundane and draws people into the photo by making it beautiful. He shows the complexity of the simple things we see everyday.

This sounds a lot like my project. I want to study the effect different color saturations have on my photographs.

Untitled (Topiary Trees, Hollywood), 2000.

Untitles (Woman Walking of Sidewalk), Las Vegas 1968.

Untitled (Open Door into Trailer, Arizona), 2000.

Stephen Shore [Contemporary Photographer]

Steven Shore's pictures usually consist of a building, a road and a sky. They don't have much going on in them. Shore, born in New York in 1947, began photography at the age of eight. He wasn't just a child wanting to play with a camera, he actually knew what he was doing. At age fourteen he was selling prints to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Shore's accomplishments in helping photography as an art form was the use of color. As he traveled around America he couldn't help but think about photographing in color. His boldness to step out has influenced other photographers such as Nan Goldin, Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth.