landscape photography

Since he picked up photography in 2003, Bryan Schutmaat’s work has been exhibited and published in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. Bryan is a member of Young Photographers United, and last year he was featured in the Humble Arts Foundation’s Collectors’ Guide to Emerging Art Photography. He holds a degree in history from the University of Houston and will pursue an MFA in photography in the fall of 2010 at the University of Hartford. This work is from his series, Western Frieze.

Christopher Schreck is a 27-year-old photographer living and working in Chicago. Of his work and process he says, ‘When I encounter my surroundings with photography in mind, I pay far more attention to my environment, appreciate details I wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, and get to record the things that make me stop and think or feel something. It boils down to being as present as possible at a given moment.’ Christopher has work in a group show, Neon and Worried, opening May 1 at The Seneca Hotel in Chicago.

Via Lost At E Minor

Wandering the deserted backroads of the American Southwest, Troy Paiva has explored the abandoned underbelly of America since the 1970s. Since 1989 he’s been taking pictures of it at night, by the light of the full moon. The colored lighting is done with a flashlight or strobe flash masked with theatrical lighting gels. Many of these subjects are already gone; bulldozed, burned down, subdivided, melted for scrap or simply vanished beneath the shifting desert sand. While there are minor digital adjustments to some of the photographs, the lighting effects are all done “in-camera” during the exposure. These images are not Photoshop creations. Troy’s surrealist night photography has been published in two monographs: “Lost America” in 2003 and the award winning “Night Vision” published by Chronicle books in 2008. Both books examine the evolution and eventual abandonment of the communities, structures and social iconography spawned during 20th century America’s western expansion, and the modern Urban Exploration culture that finds strange comfort in dancing through its ruins.

Lots of prints for sale in the Feature Shoot online store!

Documentary photographer, Ralf Grossek was born in 1968 in Kamp-Lintfort, Germany. He studied communication design at the University of Duisburg-Essen and his work is currently a part of the ‘Sugary Photographs with Tricks, Poses and Effects‘ photography festival in Antwerp, Belgium. Self-published books of his work are available for purchase through his website.

Michael Wolf was born in Munich, Germany. He grew up in the USA and studied at UC Berkley and at the University of Essen in Germany. He has been living and working as a photographer and author in China for ten years.  In 2007, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago, in collaboration with the U.S. Equities Realty artist-in-residence program commissioned Wolf to photograph Chicago’s cityscape which has undergone massive development. Wolf concentrated on documenting the central downtown area and this series, The Transparent City, is the result.

Born in New Jersey in 1978, Michael Massaia Is a fine art photographer and printmaker whose work focuses on New York City, and New Jersey life and landscape. Massaia specializes in large format black & white photography and large format Platinum/Palladium printing. All of his images are true “one shot” candid scenes that have been pushed to their limit via film developing and printing techniques to reveal the true way each moment was felt. These photos are from his series, Afterlife, which he has spent the last few years working on.

How did you get into platinum and palladium printing? And how long did it take you to perfect this technique?
‘After exploring many different printing processes (both color and black & white), I found platinum printing to be the best fit for what I was trying to accomplish with my prints. I wanted to create a print I knew would last forever (a platinum print is a truly permanent print, which separates from almost all other photographic printing processes) and I wanted it to be a truly handmade process. It took me about three years of printing every week (a tremendous amount of failure) to come up with a technique that allowed for a rich and dense print’.

Can you briefly walk me through the process of making an image from start to finish? Why does it take up to two weeks to make a print?
‘Well, first, it all starts with capturing the image. I will usually spend a few days walking around the area prior to taking the images. I try to find areas I can sneak into where I won’t be noticed. I still only use large format black & white film because of its superior resolution and dynamic range (especially in highlights). I try to capture most of my images on days when there is little to no wind. I also prefer days that are overcast, so I can get more of an even tonality throughout the entire negative.

‘I never composite or combine multiple images. Every image is created using one shot/piece of film.

‘After the image is captured, I develop the negative so it’s fairly low contrast, so I keep that even tonality intact. I then have to create an enlarged negative from the original negative because a platinum print can only be made through a contact printing process.

‘No enlargers can be used, so your negative must be the size of your final print.

‘After I create a decent enlarged negative, I then start to work on the paper in which the print will be made on. Finding a good 100 percent rag paper to make a platinum print on can be tough because of the different acidity levels, and different sizing that varies from paper to paper.

‘After you’ve found a good batch of paper, you then have to mix your chemistry, which you will eventually have to hand-coat onto the paper using either a high quality paint brush or coating rod.

‘After I coat my paper (I do multiple coatings), the paper is forced dried using a print dryer and the enlarged negative is placed onto the platinum/palladium coated paper and then placed in a device called a vacuum frame which firmly presses the negative and paper together.

‘The print is then exposed, using a multi-spectrum metal halide lamp. Exposure usually takes 3-5 minutes. I do a large amount of “light dodging and burning” which is a common printmaking technique that allows you to selectively control the lighting throughout the entire print.

‘Some of this is done on the actual negative, and some is done while the print is being exposed. After the print is finished being exposed, it is developed in different developers, depending on the look you’re going for. After the print is developed, it then has to soak in a series of acid baths (hypo-clearing agent, citric acid, etc.) to remove the excess metal.

‘Finally, the print is washed for about an hour’.

Your latest series, Afterlife, documents the final days of Jersey Shore amusement parks. When is the best time generally to shoot these locations?
‘I always find that the early dawn is my favorite lighting.They are fairly difficult images to take because most of the images were taken on wooden piers that shake slightly every time the waves crash into it. Using large format cameras and long shutter times made it very frustrating at times to capture the images because of all the vibrations in the pier and on the boardwalk. I tried to take all the images during low tide to minimize the vibrations from the waves hitting the pier’.

Have you received any commercial inquiries or assignments due to your unique style and technique? Is this something you are actively exploring?
‘I’m so involved in the technical aspects of what I’m doing, and always attempting to think of the next idea, that I tend to forget to show people the work. I’m trying to get better at that’.

Courtney Johnson creates her luminous citiscapes using a modified version of cliché-verre, the technique developed in the mid-nineteenth century by painters looking to transition into the new field of photography. Each piece is constructed in 9 parts; each part begins as a painting on glass which is then scanned as a negative and finally printed as a photographic image; the technique combines of both photography and painting. Johnson received her BFA with Honors under Deborah Willis from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University and her MFA from the University of Miami. An emerging artist, under the age of thirty, she has exhibited in the United States and has been lauded in both English and Spanish American press. She has gues lectured on alternative photographic processes and was recently added into the collections of the Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale and the Lowe Art Museum, Miami. Her work is currently on view at the Jenkins Johnson Gallery (NY) and will also be on view at The Armory Show (NY).

Benjamin Gerull is a fine art landscape and architectural photographer living and working in Munich, Germany. His work was recognized as part of The European Prize of Architectural Photography competition in 2009.

Laurie Sermos began taking pictures at age 9, shooting polaroids in her backyard while growing up in Randolph, New Jersey. She attended Pratt Institute and earned a BFA degree, with honors, in photography (1999) and later earned a Master’s degree from Bard College (2006). She also studied independently in a Master Class with Stephen Shore (2004–2005). Laurie’s work has appeared in magazines such as A Gathering of the Tribes, Four Seasons, Mass Appeal, Sex (Sweden) and Trendsetter (Japan). Institutional and advertising clients include: The National Film School of Denmark, Simon’s Rock College of Bard, Creative Resource Exchange and Wasam clothing company. She has taught photography for the University of Georgia Studies Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy (2006). Laurie lives and works in Berlin.