Macro for inspiration

Macro photography is the art of taking close-up pictures that reveal details which can’t be seen with the naked eye. For example, while we can see the fly on the wall, our eyes aren’t equipped to make out the fine details of the hairs on it’s face. This is where macro photography comes in. It gives us a glimpse into the world of the very small, which goes largely unnoticed by us as we hurriedly shuffle through our day. Compared to other types of photography, macro photography is quite difficult, because of the nifty equipment, lightning and other techniques involved. However, in the end it comes down to what kind of pictures you want to take and what level of precision you are striving for.

In this edition of our Inspiration set we present beautiful and amazing examples of macro photography. A round-up of some truly revealing and inspiring macro photographs which are sure to have you marveling at the world around you.   (more…)

Idris Khan’s multi-layered photos

Idris Khan creates multi-layered photos, often of appropriated art and books, in a way that both augments the aura of the original and reveals the idiosyncratic trace of his own hand. Khan’s work explores the history of photography and literature, the beauty of repetition and the anxieties of authorship. “it’s obviously not about re-photographing the photographs to make exact copies, but to intervene and bring a spectrum of feelings – warmth, humour, anxiety – to what might otherwise be considered cool aloof image.  You can see the illusion of my hand in the layering.  It looks like a drawing.  It’s not systematic or uniform.  The opacity of every layer is a different fallible, human decision”. Idris Khan graduated with an MA in Fine Art from the Royal college of Art in 2003. (more…)

Helmut Newton

Helmut Newton is the doyen of fashion’s dark side, a photographer who has fundamentally changed the terms of the fashion image. Over the last forty years he has brought a unique mixture of style, sex, and theater to fashion photography and has shaped not only magazine imagery, but fashion itself.

(more…)

Andrzej Dragan

Andrzej Dragan’s portraits terrify on one hand and addict on the other. One has a strong need to come back and penetrate inhumanly realistic elements of the photographs going deeper and deeper. Power and clarity of the detail, and crystal purity of the color, sober and gloomy light are the elements of Dutch paintings. This is probably the source of the impact of Andrzej’s photographs. Portraying so well-known characters as David Lynch, Mads Mikkelsen or Jerzy Urban in the manner of old, Rembrandt style surprises the viewer used to contemporary photography which is so close to spontaneous expression, escaping from reality through exaggerated effects such as movement, blurring the image or taking the colors down to unnatural scale. Dragan’s works remain inside one’s mind for a long time and most of all – they stand out among thousands of others images surrounding us. (more…)

Andreas Gursky

As the world’s most collectable living photographer, Andreas Gursky has photographed a wide array of scenes: from the worker bees at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, seen from high above, to a remarkable neutrino observatory in Japan (Kamiokande, 2007). Than the photographer has captured North Korea’s incredible Arirang Festival where 70,000 choreographed performers entertain 50,000 rapturous spectators. (more…)

Ervin Olaf

Erwin Olaf (Erwin Olaf Springveld) is most famous photographer for his commercial and personal work. He has been commissioned to photograph advertising campaigns for large international companies such as Levi’s, Microsoft and Nokia. Some of his most famous photographic series include “Grief”, “Rain”, and “Royal Blood”. Never one to shy away from controversy, Olaf’s work is often daring and provocative. Humorously however, one of his early photographs was once expelled from a show on the basis of NOT containing nudity. His work has received many awards and he has held exhibitions around the world. (more…)

Jan Saudek

The man’s body, a self portrait, is muscular and sculpturesque. The woman is opulent and misshapen. The gauntness of the male is placed opposite the fleshy, fat body of the woman. 0ne is tanned, the other pale, almost worryingly so.

Jan Saudek’s imaginings draw on such opposition, forming a backdrop to the many questions raised by the human condition: love, and its cortege of unmentionable feelings (jealousy, voyeurisme the breaking of taboos, fetishism, the temptation of regression), an obsessive awareness of passing time, the presence of death (the magnificent photograph “Slavic girl with her father”) under the frailty of the skin. (more…)