© 2020 Nomadict. All rights reserved.
The fascinating perspective
of an artist
Vol. 4
Nomadict Art Gallery
We appreciate our community, and we are so thankful for you all being part of it! During the last month, we celebrated our first collaborative editing contest and we couldn’t be happier with all the entries that were presented by many different creators!
To host such a contest was special to us, so today, we would like to celebrate this with all of you, creator or not! Together with @withsarahkaja, @rose_wandering, @ivory_mint, @silvio_pfiffner, @constantinseuss, and @lplamp we have put together some great prizes for a special giveaway.
We will now introduce you to the photographers and the 6 prints carefully selected for the GIVEAWAY. Get ready to be inspired by their unique pieces of art as we discover their artistic perspective!
This shot was taken on a morning where every photographer was chasing the red sky. You would never imagine that an hour after some epic burn in the sky, this cold wintery scene would presented itself. Country scenes in remote Victoria are often foggy in the winter and that’s why I drove out to this particular landscape. It is pretty spectacular to experience, especially when you live in a suburban jungle like me. It reminds us that nature and its beauty is in all forms and never too far away.
When I saw so much fog I knew I would be able to find some mystical compositions – and hopefully capture a unique shot. The composition I chose for this photo works so well because it’s quite minimalistic. It has got rolling hills and fog with not alot of distraction. It’s easy for the eye to see the definition in the lines on the hills softened by a blanket of fog.
In addition, there is one element that makes this scene special besides the landscape itself; there is a nomadict caravan nestled in the lower third of the image.
"I didn't know it was going to be there so it was a lovely surprise."
Editing this image consisted of ensuring the greens were at a muted tone that I like and enough contrast was achieved between the whites and greens without losing atmosphere. Fog can be tricky to edit, you have to be careful not to lose the details when you sharpen, so sharpening with a mask is better in that case. I cropped the overall image and upped the highlights a little and really after that not much else was needed. Keeping images looking natural with a bit of magic is always a hard balance.
Many photographer’s have a favourite scene they like to capture. It is true many chase the sun, the clouds but for me it’s always the fog. With scenes like this, it only confirm why that is!
Last year, my girlfriend Nicci and I decided to make a long-awaited dream come true. Scotland. As it was going to be our last trip before Nicci would go to England for 6 months, we wanted to make it something special.
We decided to rent a van and while searching the net, we saw this beautiful shiny orange Volkswagen T2. Initially, we were a bit unsure and dismissive – Such an old vehicle would definitely not be the right choice for Scotland.
But the doubts didn’t last long. Not only was Scotland our dream, we also had always wanted to travel in a van like this one. What could go wrong?
We were dazzled by the beauty of Scotland. I usually prefer warmer destinations, but the rugged Scottish landscape gave me a strange feeling of being at home. This lasted until the second night.
We almost flew away. The wind was stronger than expected and at 3am our carbon monoxide detector went off. After three hours of uncertainty we found out it was a false alarm. In any case, we didn’t sleep.
The next night the heating turned off and never came back. We froze to the bone because of the cold wind coming through the vehicle and then the night after we woke up as there seemed to be a whole in the roof – Half the interior was covered by water already.
"We decided to get a break in Inverness to recover. But as soon as we left Inverness to reach our actual destination, Skye, we were warned by huge LED screens and police officers. A storm is moving across the Highlands."
And so we turned around and threw our entire route out of the window. We then had three wonderful days exploring the coasts and castles in the east. When everything seemed to be fine, the impossible happened: Our side door entirely broke away from the vehicle.
After 1-2 hours, the towing service came. The owner was very embarrassed because he was so sure that everything was fine, but he concentrated too much on the engine. And he was right. The engine ran for more than 1200 miles without any problems. Hooray!
Nevertheless, we were very disappointed. Neither of our dreams really came true and we couldn’t really do what always makes our trips so unique. Photography.
BUT what I didn’t realise with the setbacks all this time:
We wanted something special. We got something special!
When traveling through Kyrgyzstan, we hadn’t planned to go to Tash Rabat, a caravanserai along the Silk Road from Central China to the Mediterranean Coast. But we started reading about it and then we were really regretting not having added it to the itinerary.
Historically Tash Rabat is at the nexus of the famous Silk Road trade route, the route traveled by explorers such as Marco Polo. Caravanserais like Tash Rabat served as inns for merchants, travelers and wanders. A place to seek protection from the harsh weather conditions and possible bandit attacks. Tash Rabat is one of the few well preserved inns where you can still glimpse what life would have been like on this historical route.
We discussed the options and my boyfriend was like, “We should just go; we cancel our last day in Bokonbayevo and leave at dawn.” You always say you’ll see something “next time” but then you never end up coming back. So we took off at sunrise. Totally unplanned. We had no yurt booked and prayed they had space or we’d be sleeping in our Land Cruiser. We showed up and got the last yurt just outside Tash Rabat, ate an incredible noodle soup with a Kyrgyz family and it even snowed that night.
The photo was taken the next morning, driving back to Naryn. We had just walked through another 600 year old stone caravanserai. An old woman opened it up just for us and it was almost eerie wandering the maze of 31 dark domed rooms and feeling so small surrounded by so much history. I was still in that place of awe while driving as the Tian Shan mountains appeared on the horizon.
Shortly after, I saw that lone rider, the jagged Tian Shan range behind him wrapped in clouds, and told my boyfriend to stop the car. I almost jumped out when the car was still moving. I liked the way this tiny rider created that sense of scale. He was the only person we’d seen in kilometers and I really wanted to capture the awe I felt experiencing such vastness. I snapped multiple shots waiting for him to get to the center of my frame. The flat planes and huge jagged peaks pretty much meet at the center of the shot.
My editing style is constantly evolving but I tend to go more moody and lean towards earthy tones – oranges, rusty browns, desaturated greens and blues. The mountains had this amazing hazy blue tone and I pushed the ground a bit more in that orange complementary color direction. I actually couldn’t get the exact tone I envisioned in Lightroom and took it into Photoshop and added a color layer on the foreground part. I also added a slight gradient to the bottom to draw the eye upward to the rider and cleaned up a couple odd grass bumps – but I wanted to keep most as they added nice lines and texture. Some photos take a really long time to edit, but honestly, I knew what I wanted with this one right away.
"I love the diversity of the landscape; how it is so flat right in front of us and then so rugged a short distance away."
I like how it tells a story of Kyrgyzstan nomadic culture too. In my mind I’ve made up a bunch of scenarios on where that rider was going and who he was. I only wish I could have talked to him and found out more about him. If I learned anything from this shot, it’s when an opportunity presents itself, go for it. When you learn about a new fascinating spot, drop plans and go see it!
In April 2018 I went back to my beloved African continent, and this time we skipped the lodges and decided to experience the wildlife much closer. Equipped with two 4×4’s including roof tents we headed into the Okavango Delta and the Makgadikgadi Salt Pans to camp in-between elephants, hyenas, lions, and hippos. Waking up in the middle of the night to the sounds of roaring lions or hyena laughs was frightening in the beginning but the longer we stayed, the more I enjoyed it – to the point that I often miss the sound of nature once back in Switzerland.
During our 2 weeks in Botswana, I saw more elephants than I had ever seen before. They were everywhere, and whilst I love to see them, they also made driving extremely difficult. The bush was very thick at that time of the year and you just never knew if there would be another elephant standing in the middle of the road around the corner or walking out of one of the bushes next to the road. The last thing you want to happen is being chased by an angry elephant when you are miles away from any civilization. This picture with the elephant standing in between bushes casually chewing on some grass perfectly represents my experience.
"Somehow a little bit intimidating but also calming and beautiful at the same time."
"The original picture was taken from quite some distance and horizontally. You have to make sure you stay at a safe distance from Elephants in order to not scare them."
I really liked how the elephant was partly hiding in the bushes, enjoying his meal but carefully watching us as we drove by. For the final result, I decided to crop the photo into portrait orientation so the bushes are framing the elephant nicely.
To change the look of the photo, I made some more adjustments during the editing process. I gave the picture a much darker look and highlighted the elephant in the middle to make its presence even more focused and stronger. I think the colors make the picture moody and powerful but also peaceful in some way. In the end, the photo looks quite different from the original file but still very real.
I find it very helpful to take a step back from a photo sometimes to gather new inspiration. For example, when I go over my older pictures I find hidden gems for editing because I look at them with a different perspective or new ideas. It was the same for this particular picture. While looking through my pictures in order to pick one to give away, I came across this one by coincidence, visualized how it could look, and created the end product.
"Besides conveying the beauty and power of these animals, I hope to make people think about their role and importance in African ecosystems."
Through their natural behavior, the elephants help generate new green growth, make room for smaller species to coexist, and create water holes used by other wildlife. According to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the African Savanna Elephant is classified as an endangered species. We must urgently put an end to poaching and ensure that sufficient suitable habitat for both forest and savanna elephants is conserved. Africa needs these beautiful giants! And so does everyone – everything in the natural world is interconnected, after all.
Several years ago, I saw a photo of this place in Emmental Valley, Switzerland, and I liked it. It caught my attention, but didn’t get that excited about it since I was not into photography back then. The years have passed and, in the meantime, I discovered my passion for photography.
For whatever reason, that photo popped up in my mind again – out of the many photos I had seen in the meantime, I hadn’t forgotten about that one. I set myself the challenge to find that spot. I was more excited about finding it than actually going there and taking the picture myself- but once I found it, there was no reason for me not to go there.
The place itself actually isn’t that spectacular. I remember standing there and being kind of disappointed since there were no clouds, fog or anything that made this scene more special. Nevertheless, once everything was set and I got this specific composition, I found the scene quite impactful:
"That lonely tree in front of that massive 4000 m peak in the background."
This composition can only be seen from far away, so you need a long lens to get this look. I decided to also do a timelapse of the sunrise. For that purpose, I tried to include some parts of the nearer surroundings too and didn’t zoom in all the way (which I regret now since I lost quite some pixels on the final crop).
Once I was back at home and reviewed the final images, I realized that the scene wasn’t missing anything – it was winter and everything had this soft white touch to it. No fog and no clouds were needed to make it more beautiful. I decided to keep the edit as minimal as possible so what you see is actually almost what my camera saw. There’s a small forest near that place that, if I didn’t crop the image, could also have been part of the final product. That composition works too, but with this crop I think that the focus lies only on that tree and the peak behind it, which is ultimately what I wanted to achieve – something minimal.
This experience showed me once more that even the most normal or seemingly unspectacular landscape can hide some very powerful compositions.
"All you have to do is take the time to look more closely at your surroundings and see the hidden."
It was around evening twilight when I was walking different pathways in the southern part of the Eifel, a mountain range in Germany. Thanks to the rain that day the air was crisp.
Since I can remember, walks in nature calm me down. That day, when I saw this quiet and mystical creature sitting on a branch close to the trunk of a tree, it wasn’t any different.
I sat down and just watched this curious animal through my lens for a while. That moment I wished I was able to see what it saw, and when it looked in my direction – the moment felt anything other than a brief one.
The feeling of not only being recognised by it but also being able to look into these big eyes gave me a light shiver. The owl was paying attention to me, and right then and there, I felt like I could see myself through the animal’s powerful eyes. They say that they can see your soul, and it felt like he was reading me. Have you ever felt that when an animal looked at you? It was a very rare and special moment, an incredibly short instant that felt like it lasted for minutes. The rainy and gloomy atmosphere only added up to that.
"As soon as I took the shot I knew what this picture was gonna look like in the end. I wanted the darkness to surround the eagle owl to make it look even more as if there was only him devoured by nightfall."
The soft transition and appearance of the body represents quietness as well as mystery. Even more fascinating was the vigilance of the eyes. To put the focus on that I wanted to highlight them, these intense eyes, which, even without editing, seemed almost fearsome and jeopardising.
Because of that, there was actually no color editing needed. The darkness is standing out to underline the mystic of this bird and to give it the original value of how I saw and experienced it. The play of shade and darkness, like in most of my works, made it possible to embody my vision. That’s what I do as an artist – embodying my vision, my emotional experience, my imagination.
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