Recently in my weekly newsletter, I shared a video of photographer Art Wolfe giving a talk at Google. This video struck a chord with many.

The trick and the challenge is to constantly come up with perspectives, points of view, that haven’t quite been done before. That’s what gets me out of bed, that’s what motivates me.

Art Wolfe is a world-renowned travel and wildlife photographer, as well as art educator. Even so, he tells us that he’s not very technical. As a matter of fact, he may only know 4% of what his camera can do.

His point is that his strengths lie more in the composition and seeing aspects of photography.

 

The hardest thing for a photographer is to find a compelling image in that 360 degree world we live in. What I try to teach is how to find your subject as you’re walking down the street in any location on the planet and pull out something that 99% of the rest of the population would never see.

The video covers a wide range of subjects and is well worth watching. However, I was particularly drawn to his abstract work. Art Wolfe has a background in painting and he goes on to say that his greatest influences in photography have been painters.

Impressionist Painters

 
He was first influenced by the Impressionists of the late 1800’s, particularly Georges Seurat, who painted everyday life in Paris in the pointillist style. Wolfe goes on to show many examples he’s found in nature that reflect this style. The example above is one of my images of this style. You can see Art Wolfe’s examples in the video. Note: All images are by me, not Art Wolfe.

Another example he cites is Monet, a well known impressionist painter, who used imprecise brush strokes. Wolfe began experimenting with longer shutter speeds or taking advantage of wind blowing or snow falling to create impressionistic images – something I like to do as well.
 

 
At first, he didn’t understand the chaotic abstracts of Jackson Pollock, until “he saw a Jackson Pollock in a mud-spattered vehicle in southern China.”
 

 
Van Gogh is another impressionist painter, although his are completely unique and surrealistic. Wolfe describes how reflections that distort reality can often look like a Van Gogh painting. Picasso’s cubist-style can be found in overturned boats and Georgia O’Keefe’s flowers in icebergs in the Antarctic.

In his early years, Wolfe became known as a wildlife photographer. Today he says,

I’m shooting rusting cans in a gutter, to the grand landscapes and everything in-between. As an artist, and having a background in painting, and illustration, and graphic design, I shoot without prejudice. And, it just opens up the world. I never run out of ideas.

I love that saying – to shoot without prejudice. It opens up so many possibilities.

 
Wolfe goes on to explore composition (something he teaches), the value of leading lines and using different lenses, and shows some of his recent work. One project, called Migrations, is about animal migrations, but is really about patterns. In another, he photographs cultures from above, creating abstract views of people.

More Reading

 
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