Other Galleries

I participate, off and on, in a number of community sites. These include:

• At the moment I'm pretty active on the all seeing, all encompassing Flickr
• The site dedicated to photography using FourThirds cameras, myfourthirds. I have my own page there, but I'm dormant these days. I don't really feelthat segmentation by camera type is particularly valid or interesting.
• I have a portfolio at ePhotozine, which is friendly but pretty crowded!
• Last, but far from least, I'm a member of Foto Club Lugano, and have some photos published there. So have some other very talented people - take a look!

Resources

The following short list recommends some sites where you can browse for inspiration, opinion, and gossip. There are many out there, but few of them are worth much time, in my opinion. These have stood the test of time.

• Michael Reichmann's site, The Luminous Landscape is a treasure trove of valuable information, strong opinions, and great photography. It grows in popularity every year, and attracts, invevitably, hordes of ill-informed detractors. Don't miss it, or indeed the unique Video Journal DVD
• Ian Lyons' Digital Darkroom - Ian has put an incredible amount of work into this accurate and reliable resource. Strongly recommended if you want to understand colour management. And don't miss the photography!
• Nature Photographers Online Magazine is a vast resource, with extensive, frequently updated articles by professional photographers (including the inimitable Andy Rouse) and a host of interactive areas.
• Don't miss the website of one of the world's best photo magazines, Chasseur d'Images. Their refusal to play the role of free publicity agency for equipment manufacturers - coupled with the fact that their circulation and influence is much too high for manufacturers to ignore - is always good for entertainment. Certain UK & US magazine editors could take note. Unfortunately another excellent print magazine (also French), Reponses Photo, does not have a website.

Recommended Photographers

This is a selection of photographers who's work I admire and recommend. Most, but not all, I either know personally, or through email. Obviously I admire masters like Ansell Adams et al, but there is little point in publicising them again!

NEW Nicholas Pye
Nicholas Pye is nothing if not eclectic. His site ranges from portrait, to close-ups, abstracts to urban landscapes, always with an eye for an unusual angle or a fleeting moment. He seems equally as comfortable working in colour as in black and white, or film as digital. There are delights to be found in all of his gallery pages, but if I had to name a favourite it would be the Paris set, where he has managed to capture a personal vision of a city which must be almost as photographed to death as Venice. And he's had the nerve to do it in black and white! Inspiring stuff.

John Isaac
John Isaac first came to my attention from the photographs he contributed to the galleries from the "O'Reilly Adobe Lightroom Experience". Since Iceland is of particular interest to me, I was browsing these galleries, and found that a certain set of landscapes really struck me by their originality. I then discovered that they were all by the same photographer - John Isaac, and set out to discover more. After 20 years as an official photographer for the UN, John Isaac has seen and photographed sights that most of us would prefer to pretend don't exist. Far from being jaded, he seems to have come out of this experience with his humanity intact, and is evident in both his writing and his photography. I don't know a lot about photojournalism, but clearly he is at the top level. His landscapes are perhaps influenced by this - there is something very different about the way he conveys his vision. He finds unusual, but remarkable angles, and can really grab your attention. He isdue to publish a book of his photography from Kashmir in the near future. I'm certainly looking forward to it. As an aside, I was also interested to find that he is a strong devotee of the Olympus E-System?if it is good enough for him, it is most certainly good enough for me!

Marco Paoluzzo
Marco Paoluzzo is a Swiss photographer who has published a series of books on places and topics all over the world, some in colour and some in black & white. He seems to be equally at home with colorful street photography in Africa as with gloomy but atmospheric black & white landscapes from Iceland and the Faroe Islands. He presents a wide range of his work on his website, which really is well worth a look. There is a particularly wonderful shot of the beach at Dyrholaey on the south coast of Iceland (a popular spot for B&W photographers, since it is essentially black & white, and very graphic), also shown on his home page.

Derrick Feole
Derrick Feole is an American photographer working in Switzerland. I first found out about his work when I saw a set of large prints of mountain views taken from a aerial perspective in the business class lounge at Zürich airport (I was travelling on air miles...). It is strange that one sees so little classic landscape photography in Switzerland, considering the raw material. Most Swiss photographers, at least the more germanic variety, seem to find highways, urban decay or endless b&w nudes more interesting. Derrick's work is far from restricted to Switzerland, but he seems to have found a strong subject here. The web galleries don't really do justice to the prints, but they give you a flavour.

Daisy Gilardini
Daisy Gilardini, an increasingly well known Swiss-Italian photographer, is equally at home with wildlife and landscapes, but also includes people in her portfolio. Widely traveled, and nearly as widely published, Daisy seems to have a strong attraction to polar regions. However, she also takes in little known regions such as Madagascar and Kamchatka. She states that photography is a side-effect of travelling, a passion which she shares through her images.

Alessandra Meniconzi
Alessandra Meniconzi, who comes from the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland would, I guess, be classified as a travel photographer. Certainly much of her photography is devoted to the people who live in the far flung destinations she immerses herself in. However, as you can see from her website, she is also a skilfull landscape photographer. Her work has a strong poetic, evocative theme running through it, and can inspire nostalgia for places never visited. Her first published book, "The Silk Road", is a treasury of beautiful photographs of places little known and even feared by the Western world. A follow up on Iceland is in preparation.

Daniel Bergmann
Daniel Bergmann is one of a handfull of well known Icelandic nature photographers, each of whom have claimed a particular niche in Icelandic photography. Daniel's approach is twofold: wild landscapes (avoiding human inteference) and wildlife. These require very different approaches, but the hardest thing is decide which he is best at. Since wildlife photography almost by definition tends slightly more towards documentary, I have a slight bias for his wonderfully artistic landscapes, but his wildlife photography is equally passionate and enthralling.

David Noton
David Noton is a leading landscape photographer, with a particular orientation towards medium format panoramics. He writes a regular for UK magazine Practical Photography which is as full of humour as it is of tips and inspiration. His photography, whilst very much of the "Velvia school" is very naturalistic, but unlike many, very much includes human activity as part of the landscape.