Photographer Art Wulf and his works. Art Wolf - interview with the legendary photographer. Torres del Payie National Park, Chile

Acclaimed wildlife photographer Art Wolfe has spent over 35 years traveling through mountains, forests and deserts in search of amazing wildlife footage.

American photographer, artist, teacher Art Wolf is 61 years old. He is the winner of numerous professional awards, the author of more than 65 books and manuals, the host of his own television show Travels to the Edge, and the founder of Wildlands Press. Like no one else, he knows how to demonstrate the beauty of wild nature, the life of wild animals and all the colors of our environment.

Work on a project called Vanishing Act began back in 1980. This series of photographs depicts animals and birds that can become invisible. These photographs were shown to the general public only in 2005. “Finding and photographing animals in the wild is a very exciting and painstaking process,” says Art Wolfe. “Work on the project is still ongoing, adding new footage of animal camouflage.”

You can find more mysteries of the wild on Art Wolfe's website - artwolfe.com or on his blog blog.artwolfe.com

Owl

Giraffe

Wolf

Partridge

Deer

Gopher

Deer

Parrot

Caiman

Ptarmigan

Viper

Macaques

Before you start reading this interview, let me say that I myself am a huge fan of Art Wolf's work and am very glad that I had the opportunity to publish an interview with him.

Art Wolfe on location in Bhutan

? How do you manage to maintain your internal motivation and constantly find relevant topics for photography?

— I photograph with an open mind, almost anything can be my subject, and so when I'm out in the fields looking for snow leopards, I'm happy to capture stunning rock abstractions, picturesque landscapes and cultural or religious images of local life. I usually have about two dozen different projects in my head at the same time, books I'm thinking about, presentations, new ideas, and so I photograph wherever I find myself around the world, any object that will fit into any of the the whole variety of my projects. I also challenge myself by going back to old subjects that I've photographed many times before and looking at them with fresh eyes - I try and find new ways to photograph with the equipment that is now available. There was a time when ISO 100 was “super-fast film”, ISO 400 was quite often too sensitive for my work... Now, if conditions warrant, I can shoot at ISO 1600 and have no problem going up to 6400 or even higher if necessary. This opens up a whole new world of photographic possibilities for me that were previously unattainable - like being able to hold a 400mm lens in my hands while sitting in a small boat that floats down a river and photographing jaguars hunting monkeys in the dense bush. Or photographing macaws in flight, when you have less than a second to see the bird, focus on it and take the photo before it disappears from view and disappears into the branches of trees - such photographs were simply impossible 10 years ago.

I constantly re-evaluate my work and learn, constantly improving. What I do is creativity, I don't just try to capture the world as my eyes see it, I try to create a work of art, and therefore I can return to old objects, while discovering new stories from a different point of view.

? What advice would you give to aspiring photographers?

— If you have a passion for photography, then follow it, just don't try to make it your only way of living and pay all your bills from this activity from the very beginning. This is a very difficult path, on which many enthusiasts quickly got burned. Most of the people who come to my seminars or workshops are professionals who have followed a traditional career path and are trying to develop their creative and artistic sides. Find your balance in life, that is, a state that allows you to fuel your passion for photography, but does not require too much stress, does not turn into a burden and a “routine job” when the spark of inspiration burns out.

Once you start to see the rewards of your work, invest in the best lenses you can get and a camera that's a little worse than the best you could afford. Quality lenses will serve you for years, even decades, before you need to upgrade them - while the camera you buy today becomes obsolete in a year or two as soon as a better or improved model comes out. At the moment I still shoot with a traditional Canon DLSR DSLR, but I don't neglect mirrorless systems as lenses for these systems are improving and we will see more professionals turning to them in the future. Today, at the age of over 60, I am all for small sizes and light weight, as long as it does not affect quality.

? Did you study photography at school?

— This also relates to the previous question - what advice would I give to aspiring photographers: I didn't go to photography school, instead I studied fine art in college (University of Washington). Long before I became a photographer, I was an artist, and this gave me the most thorough knowledge that any photographer should have in the field of art history and art appreciation. Explore what exactly allowed masterpieces of fine art to survive the centuries, while many of their contemporaries were long forgotten. Take painting classes, sculpture classes, learn the basics of most different types of art. The principles you learn there directly apply to the art of fine art photography. I'm not talking about photojournalism here, I'm talking about the ability to use a camera and lenses, shutter speed and aperture to compose an image, where you make conscious decisions about what to include in the frame, what to focus on, what to highlight positively or negatively, using lines and patterns, which an artist would use with a brush and canvas. Simply pointing the camera in the same direction and at the same time, as professionals do, is not artistic photography; understanding why and what exactly you are showing in your composition is just the beginning.

As for my mastery of modern cameras - in general, I studied it on my own, because at that time there were no courses where I could study from professionals of my level, they simply did not exist, but even if they existed, then I’m talking about such did not know. It took a lot of time to learn curves and many things about overexposed or underexposed photographs, however, albeit slowly, I gained the knowledge that is already available everywhere today.

? How long have you been a photographer?

? How would you describe your style?

— My style has evolved over the years and continues to evolve as I grow as an artist, learn new things, re-evaluate my work, try new techniques and new methods, and I think this evolution will continue indefinitely as long as I live. My style is deeply rooted in my experience as a watercolor and oil painter and in the fundamental courses I took in college. Initially, my lens was focused on wildlife, first in the Northeast Pacific, then throughout the Western US, and then around the world as I began to travel, photographing more and more of the amazing species that live here. earth with us. At first I took classic trophy style animal photographs, the hunter's head, his piercing gaze, a blurred background that was cut off near his shoulders. It was only while going down the river with a wildlife illustrator that I noticed that in his work he included not only the entire animal as a whole, but also many details that were around in nature and in the habitat. From this point on, I began to take a step back and include more and more of the landscape in the frame to give the viewer a sense of the place.

I have always tried to place animals in the foreground of the frame, making them expressive and attract the viewer's attention, and for a change I decided to do something exactly the opposite of this. Photograph the animal in such a way as to allow its natural surroundings to obscure it from the viewer's view. Allow the animal to blend into the landscape in the photo and disappear from view. This became a completely new direction of work, to which I devoted 9 years of effort, and which resulted in the release of the book “Vanishing Act”, which is planned for adaptation and re-release in October 2014.

Later, I began to photograph the distinctive cultures of indigenous peoples around the world (many of which are already heavily influenced by the West), using a more cinematic method of photography, i.e. shooting with a wide-angle lens, from a close distance, thanks to which the subject became truly dominant in the composition, distorting the view of the background. I also used this approach when photographing wildlife, which is reflected in the book “The Living Wild”.

Another shooting style that I played with and had a lot of fun with was the style of emphasizing the speed and energy of a running animal, which I demonstrated in my book “Migrations”. In part, this was imposed by the equipment of that time, the then slow transparency film, which simply did not allow the image of a bear running in the river to be clearly captured in the frame. Later, I had the pleasure of working with the complete opposite technique of shooting with modern digital cameras at extremely high ISO settings, which allowed me to capture every single drop of water in the air as a bear rushed into the Alaskan river to chase salmon.

That is, these have been my “styles” over the years, I guess that they are connected only by the fact that I approach the issue as an artist, that I try to create a beautiful picture, and not just document the world as I see it. I use different lenses to compress or stretch the landscape to change the relationship between the foreground object and the background, I use filters to darken the sky and balance the entire exposure of the image, I photograph as if I were painting a picture.

? Who or what inspires you in your personal life and work?

— In my personal life, I am an avid gardener. Over the past 20-plus years, I have transformed the surroundings of my West Seattle home into a Japanese garden, the style influenced by the majestic vistas, stone towers, and real bonsai trees I discovered in the landscapes of Huang Shan in China. My home is dedicated to art, housing my collection of artworks that I have acquired while traveling the world over the past 40 years, and my garden, which I return to after every trip, allows me to relax and thoroughly recharge.

In my work, I am most inspired by classical artists such as Monet, Renoir and Escher, as well as more contemporary artists such as Tobey, Wyeth and Pollack. Looking at the world around me, I constantly look for inspiration in the styles of great masters, looking for how I can refer to their style, which they embodied on canvas, in the frame of a photograph. In my work “Human Canvas” I directly explored these influences, as well as the patterns in the art of native and indigenous peoples, which are easily visible in the compositions that I created as models for paintings, recreating them in clay, and in intricate patterns and then positioned them in front of the background image he was drawing before rendering the final composition for the photo.

? Tell us a little about your camera and lenses?

— Over the years, I've shot on a variety of systems, including Nikon, Canon, Sony, Leica, PhaseONE, and more. And they are all great. Use what you have, I won't say out loud that one system is better than another and that you need to have it, they all have their pros and cons. Once you start purchasing lenses that will last you a decade or more, you will find that switching from one brand to another becomes very difficult.

Nowadays I shoot with Canon equipment, the 1DX and 5DMIII cameras are always with me in my bag. I have 2 favorite lenses that I remember using for much longer than others, the 16-35L and the 70-200L f4 (lighter and just as sharp as the f2.8). Perhaps more than 80% of the more than a million photographs from my archive were taken with them. I purchased a 24-70 lens a couple of years ago and it turned out to be a great lens for walking around a small village photographing markets and portraits. And just recently, I got a new 200-400L for large telephoto work. It has a built-in 1.4x extender, excellent quality, and I can even set it to 2x, taking the focal length up to 1120mm and still get reasonable results at less weight than the 500 or 800mm lenses I had to lug around in the past.

Equally important are a tripod and a ball head. I love Gitzo tripods and use a Kirk ball head - the best thing about it is that it's light enough that you can carry it with you and use it all the time. A great camera and lens may be useless on an unstable tripod or mounted on a monopod. Using a tripod does more than just stabilize your camera for sharper shots—using a tripod slows you down, forcing you to examine your composition more carefully. Think about the aperture and shutter speed settings. Gives you time to check everything from four corners of the frame and adjust or remove any distractions.

Photographer Art Wolf

ART WOLF (Art Wolfe)

Photographer Art Wolfe visited different parts of the world, he photographed natives of different countries, took photographic landscapes, and photographed wild animals. Since childhood, he has been in love with nature, and he has always been drawn to free spaces. But, despite his passion for nature, he did not become a biologist, botanist or geographer.

On this website in our online store you can use oil on canvas; examples of work can be seen in the section "sale of paintings", and also provides a custom portrait service from a photograph; see examples of such paintings on the main page.

Says Art Wolf: “I received an art education because my mother was an artist, and her love of art was inherited to some extent by me. Love for nature and love for art, united after 25 years, produced a new landscape photographer.” Wolfe received his bachelor's degree from the University of Washington in Seattle. “While studying at the university, I studied art history on weekdays, and on weekends I went to the mountains, enthusiastically photographing there. We can say that at the same time I put into practice certain creative concepts that I became acquainted with at the university. Over the years, I moved more and more away from painting towards photography, as creating pictures through the camera became more and more interesting to me,” recalls Wolfe.

As a photographer, Wolfe is self-taught. “Of course I’m not proud of it, but that’s how it happened,” he says. — When I entered the university, there was no photography department. I think if I was going to become a photojournalist or a printer in a darkroom, I would be able to find the appropriate educational institution. But there was no art photography course, and I didn’t even think about a career as a landscape photographer.”

Having chosen to become a professional photographer, Wolfe is now almost always on the go. During his twenty-five years of hunting for the perfect photograph, Wolfe had the opportunity to work on every continent and see hundreds of landmarks and exotic corners of the world. Currently, he spends at least nine months a year traveling the world, not only looking for suitable subjects, but also giving lectures. He shot more than 2,000 rolls of film, creating approximately a million photographic images. Many of Wolfe's photographs were published in magazines, and about fifty of his books were published.

In 1998, Wolfe was named Outstanding Photographer of the Year and received the Landscape Photographers Association of North America Award. In 2000, he received the Alfred Einstead magazine prize, which is the dream of many photographers.

Ward's photographic philosophy is quite simple. “Whatever story I shoot,” he says, “I always strive to clearly and clearly record the emotions I am experiencing at the moment. I try not to overcomplicate my compositions or overload them, even when working with a wide-angle lens, because I am convinced that simplicity best promotes a good understanding of the thought put into the work.”

Wolfe is also quite pragmatic about his equipment. “For me, a camera is just a tool. I use different models of cameras without being tied to any particular camera,” says Art Wolfe. — My constant principle is this: you need to shoot with the camera and lens that need to be used in a given situation to ensure the optimal result. So far I have had no reason to doubt the correctness of this approach.”

Star trajectories over Deadvlei. Namibia

“In order to capture this composition, a double exposure and some pre-calculation were required. With compass in hand, I determined in what position - relative to the silhouettes of two acacia trees in Deadvlei - the constellation of the Southern Cross would be located. After that, I created a mental image of the future with a low horizon line, designed to emphasize the wide scope of the sky over the desert.

For the first exposure, I wanted to accentuate the darkness of the sky while still leaving some landscape detail, so I combined a polarizing filter with a 2-stop gradient ND filter. As a result, the sky turned out to be quite dark. I also deliberately underexposed the entire scene, thus ensuring that the sky was completely dark. After that, I waited until night fell and made another exposure. For the second exposure, I locked the shutter open for an eight-hour exposure, as I intended to capture the movement of the stars across the sky. The brightness of the starlight also made it possible to clearly identify the surface of the earth.”

Canon EOS-IN, Canon 17-35mm lens; first exposure: 1/60 sec., f/2.8, polarizing filter, gradient ND filter, Fujichrome Velvia; second exposure: 8 hours, f/2.8

Granite arch. Sierra Nevada, California, USA

“Having formed over the eastern borders of the Sierra Nevada, a typical lens-shaped cloud, which locals call the “Sierra wave,” hovered over the mountains. That morning I had intended to shoot Lone Pine Peak and Mount Whitney framed by the arch, but then I decided to include the cloud in the frame and changed the angle. The cloud was a strong compositional accent that balanced the arch.”

Canon EOS-1N, Canon 17-35mm lens, ½ sec, f/22, 2-stop ND filter, polarizing filter, Fujichrome Velvia

Torres del Payie National Park, Chile

Torres del Paine is an incredibly picturesque national park located on the Patagonian Plateau. Both the sky and the landscapes here are impressive. The sun was rising, brightening the layered clouds above. It is at dawn that you can observe extraordinary optical effects here that are unlikely to be seen at other times of the day. The sunrise over the Southern Andes is an amazing, unforgettable sight.”

Canon EOS-1N, Canon lens 70-200 mm, 1/15 sec., f/16, Fujichrome Velvia

Jokulsarlon Lagoon, Iceland

“Filming in this stunning Icelandic location, just a mile off the coast of the stormy Atlantic, it was a lot of fun to work with, and the weather helped me a lot. This unsteady landscape was formed by two large glaciers. Water undermines glaciers, resulting in the birth of more and more icebergs. At dawn, which comes here at three o'clock in the morning, I walked along the shore and came across this iceberg, whose icy edges sparkled with the reflection of the rising sun.

In this photograph, I managed to maintain a balance between light, well-lit areas and darker areas where the sun’s rays have not yet penetrated.”

Canon EOS 1N, 17-35mm lens, 2 sec, f/22, 2-stop ND filter, Fujichrome Velvia

Ducie River Basin, Royal Canyon National Park, California, USA

“I hate getting up early, but as a professional photographer you don’t have to choose: the sun won’t wait for you to get out of bed. Personally, I rarely wake up later than six in the morning. But my work ends when most people are just beginning to awaken; at least on clear, sunny days.

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