Masters of Photography: Pep Ventosa

New York Skyline image by Pep Ventosa

Every once in a while, I encounter an artist who is so unique that their style is unmistakable. As a guitarist, I can listen to just a single phrase from a guitarist like Jerry Garcia, even if its from a song I’ve never heard, and know it’s him. How does someone, with all the millions of artists out there, create such a distinct and original style? Well, photography is no different. And recently I encountered a photographer whose style was so distinct that I have never seen anyone like him.

This photographer is Pep Ventosa.

Background

Born in Spain in 1957, Pep Ventosa is a photographer whose innovative style has garnered international awards. His trademark technique involves taking multiple exposures of a subject and overlaying them carefully in a way that creates an impressionistic result that is full of movement and life. He often uses iconic subjects, such as the Eiffel Tower or the Golden Gate Bridge. But some of my favorite images of his are of things less dramatic and more in tune with the every day. His series, Trees in the Round, were the works I was originally drawn to. And when I first encountered them, I knew it was a technique I wanted to try for myself.

Style Analysis

Red Tree in the Round

As with my previous examination of inspirations such as Alexey Titarenko and Trent Parke, I wanted to take Ventosa’s style and see how I could put my own spin on it. But this multiexposure technique is not easy and quite time consuming. To get a single final image, you must take dozens of photos, edit each of them separately then painstakingly overlay them. Nothing in the final result is random and if you don’t pay careful attention to detail, this style can quickly get away from you and start to look messy. I found when going about my hometown looking for subjects for this style of shot, that it takes a different eye to imagine what might work, and I admit that quite a few of my attempts fell on their faces. Some of them, however, I felt quite happy with and I thought the result provided exactly that thing I’ve been looking for with my photography, which are images that stand apart as something different, something that could not have been a mere snapshot taken by anyone with the camera on their phone. Let me know which of these, if any, you like in the comments.

Conclusion

Pep Ventosa is a master. His images are unique and unmistakable. They’re beautiful, intriguing, groundbreaking. For me, they represent the best side of digital photography. He doesn’t create something fake that never existed, but instead presents familiar scenes in a way they’ve never been experienced before. When you see one of his images, you know exactly who created it. It’s either Pep Ventosa or someone like me, trying to emulate his technique but never quite rising to the same level….

Check out my video with a how-to demonstration of Pep Ventosa's technique:

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Four Photographers Who Inspire Me (Trent Parke, Fan Ho, Todd Hido & Alexey Titarenko)

Multi-exposure street photography

Four photographers that inspire me to branch out from landscape photography are Trent Parke, Fan Ho, Alexey Titarenko and Todd Hido. Trent Parke's work, The Black Rose, gave me the idea to undertake my own street photography and art photography project that tells the human story of Alaska, not just about the natural beauty but the people who live in and visit it.

Fan Ho's incredible black and white photography helped me to start looking for contrasts, shapes and shadows.

Alexey Titarenko's work, City of Shadows, inspired me to take long exposures of groups of people or things that people were driving.

Todd Hido's moody work using liminal spaces and atmosphere and mood were crucial in helping me envision a new type of possibility in urban and landscape photography.

Join me as I examine the work of these four incredible photographers and try to imitate and apply their styles, twisting their ideas into my own and using them as a jump off point to create something new.

Watch the video here:

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A Year of YouTube: Did I Get Rich? Did I Learn Anything?

Callisto Peak, Resurrection Bay, Alaska

What can Youtube offer creators? What has a year of Youtube taught me? Is it still worth it to have a Youtube channel even if you have less than 1K subs? 

Are you thinking about starting a YouTube photography channel? It can be a fun and worthwhile experience despite the amount of work and lack of financial reward that most channels experience in their first year. I learned a great deal about videography, how to set up great shots, capture crisp sound and tell a compelling story. I still have a long way to go and haven't gained as much traction as I hoped, but the process has been a lot of fun. Ultimately, if you are having fun, then creating a new YouTube channel is worth it.

In this episode of Alaska Brian I look back at a year of posting videos almost weekly on Youtube and think about what I learned from using the platform and what I plan to do going forward.

Here is the short film I made to celebrate a year of YouTube and ponder a bit of what I've learned and whether or not it was worth all the work.

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Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
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Flight of the Arctic Tern (Video)

Soaring, sailing across the cloudless blue. Knifing through orographic vapor like a jet fighter. This little bird crosses the world from ice cap to ice cap every year. It is perhaps the world’s greatest traveler. It spends most of it’s time living out at sea, drifting on shattered splinters of glacial ice, or simply bobbing on the frigid surface with no land in sight. It spends northern summers in the artic only to leave and fly all the way to the Antarctic when the seasons shift. It’s a journey of 12,000 miles. In fact, each year this graceful, speedy bird will fly more than 40,000 miles. For a bird that lives 30 years, this means it will fly the distance of the Earth to the moon and back three times over. No other animal, not even the monarch butterfly or humpback whale engages in such a journey. 

This is the artic tern…

Knowing all this, it’s a privilege to have these little wanderers pitstop in a brackish pond just down the hill from my house every spring to nest and rear their young.

The slender body of the arctic tern moves through the air with its distinct chest-pumping wingbeat. It hovers in the ocean breeze until it spots a small fish or crustacean, then it plunges into the water to grab its prey. The arctic tern nests on barren islands and coastal tundra where it defends its eggs and babies with vigor, diving down and shrieking at perceived predators. It’s young live under the wings of father and mother for three to four weeks before first flight. Father and mother watch over and teach them for another month or two before they too embark on their vagabond life in the sky. These small, rather innocuous birds, are incredible.

In this video I bring my family down to a brackish pond to a tern nesting site to take do some birding, take bird photography, and while there I might as well turn my camera towards the mountains and ocean for some landscape photography, timelapse photography, long exposure photography and more. 

Enjoy!

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The Hardest River I've Ever Packrafted (Video)

Welcome back to another adventure story from the Land of the Midnight Sun! 

As a whitewater kayaker of almost 30 years, I was skeptical the first time I saw an Alpacka packraft. They looked flimsy, light, easy-to-flip. What could you really paddle in a duck boat like that? But when I slid my legs into one and pushed off into the water, my expectations were blown away. 

Not only do these little boats make paddling the off-the-roads rivers and creeks in Alaska possible, they do so with remarkable ability. But just how far could I push these tiny rubber boats? Class III? Class IV? Class V?

This is the story of the hardest river I’ve paddled in a packraft.

In southcentral Alaska lies a range of jagged mountains. These gnarled peaks stab into the sky like a serrated cutlass. Though the highest of these peaks touches only 8,849 feet, no one doubts that these mountains, draped in glaciers and shrouded in mystery, are among Alaska’s most scenic and most treasured. These are the Talkeetna mountains.

Within the Talkeetna Mountains lives one of Alaska’s most popular playgrounds, Hatcher Pass. Hatcher Pass is a wonderland. Immensely popular for backcountry skiing, hiking, climbing, and photography, Hatcher Pass is natural beauty at the highest level but far more accessible than other Alaska ranges such as the Wrangells or the Brooks or even Alaska’s crown jewel, the Alaska Range, home of Denali. As you drive the winding road that carries you into the Talkeetna Range, it is hard not to notice the tumbling stream chugging along beside you. And as a kayaker and packrafter, it’s impossible not to imagine tasting yourself in its frisky rapids.

And so finally we meet the main character in this story: the Little Susitna.

Although the Little Susitna could be thought of as a peer or even competitor to Sixmile, as both are roadside runs of similar length and difficulty, their character couldn’t be more different. While the rapids of Sixmile tend to come in short, pool-drop constrictions and ledges, the Little Su is a never-ending maze of gumdrop glacial boulders and technical rapids that test your technique, endurance and skill. The takeout beer never felt as hard earned for me as it did at the end of the Little Su. In just five miles we’d navigated countless boulder gardens, scouted a dozen rapids, and survived at least six near flips.

But enough talk, let’s plunge into the action.

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Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
For information about how to contact us, visit this link

Photography in Colorado's Roaring Fork Valley (Video)

In this episode my Spring tour of the Southwest continues. I visit Glenwood Springs and Carbondale, Colorado. Without a car or my full photography setup, I do my best to capture some landscape photography and street photography in Glenwood Springs and Carbondale, Colorado. I check out the Colorado River, Roaring Fork River, downtown Glenwood Springs, Doc Holliday Tavern, and the historic Hotel Colorado. Ultimately I captured some macro, street, landscape, Pep Ventosa-style multiexposure, and timelapse images that I was modestly happy with.

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Landscape Photography in Southwestern New Mexico

In  this episode of Alaska Brian, I visit Silver City, New Mexico in New Mexico's southwestern corner. I visit some local trails to take pictures of old juniper and cottonwood snags, check out the Dragonfly Trail to see some petroglyphs, attempt some timelapses of a desert thunderstorm, and capture some beautiful sunset light. We also visit the famous and beautiful "catwalk" of Whitewater Canyon along Whitewater Creek near Glenwood, New Mexico. Not really a "honeypot" or iconic location, this is landscape photography in the beautiful but humble New Mexico desert.

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Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
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Goodbye Sunrises & My Worst Drone Crash Yet (Video)

Experience the breathtaking beauty of Alaska's Resurrection Bay like never before in this captivating sunrise adventure! Join me on an exhilarating journey to Lowell Point Beach near Seward, Alaska where I embark on a quest to capture the mesmerizing hues of dawn through landscape photography.

Armed with my trusty Nikon D810 camera, I delve into the art of long exposure photography, skillfully crafting stunning images that immortalize the ethereal dance of light and shadow. But the excitement doesn't end there – I take to the skies with my DJI Mini 2 drone, soaring above the rugged coastline to capture aerial perspectives that will leave you spellbound.

However, as the golden rays of the sun paint the horizon, fate takes an unexpected turn. Watch as I navigate the challenges of flying my drone amidst the awe-inspiring scenery, only to crash my dang drone into the trees and get stuck. Several rocks later and I managed to knock it back down to the beach with no more than a broken rotor blade and a bruised ego.

In a land where the sun never sets, this sunrise holds a poignant significance. With Alaska's reputation as the 'Land of the Midnight Sun,' the fleeting beauty of dawn takes on a deeper meaning, a poignant reminder of the impending loss, as sunrises and sunsets disappear for the season.

Join me on this unforgettable expedition as I bid farewell to the sunrises of Alaska, each moment a testament to the raw power and timeless allure of nature's canvas. Don't miss out on this epic adventure – subscribe now and embark on a visual journey like no other!

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Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
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Chasing Dawn: My Epic Winter Sunrise Adventure in Seward, Alaska

Today, I'm thrilled to share with you an incredible journey I embarked on in Seward, Alaska, nestled along the majestic Kenai Peninsula. As a landscape photographer and vlogger, I live for moments that take my breath away, and let me tell you, this sunrise experience was nothing short of magical.

Picture this: it's the heart of winter, and I find myself standing on a serene beach near Seward, surrounded by snow-capped mountains and the gentle lapping of waves. Armed with my camera gear and an insatiable sense of wonder, I eagerly await the first light of dawn to paint the sky in hues of pink and gold.

Setting up my equipment amidst the tranquil beauty of nature, I begin capturing the unfolding spectacle with a series of mesmerizing time-lapse shots. Each frame captures the subtle shift of colors as the sun makes its grand entrance, casting a warm glow over the icy landscape.

But the real showstopper of the morning comes in the form of a majestic eagle, soaring gracefully overhead against the backdrop of the vibrant sky. It's a moment of pure serenity and awe as I watch this magnificent creature navigate the crisp morning air with effortless grace.

As the sun rises higher, illuminating the snow-kissed beach in a soft, golden light, I can't help but feel a profound sense of gratitude for moments like these – moments that remind us of the raw beauty and resilience of our natural world.

Now, I invite you to join me on this unforgettable journey by watching the video below. Trust me, it's an experience you won't want to miss!

So there you have it – a glimpse into one of the best winter sunrises captured near Seward, Alaska. Stay tuned for more adventures, and until next time, keep chasing the dawn. Happy exploring!

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How to Chase the Northern Lights (Video)

What is a good KP value to see the aurora? What is the interplanetary magnetic field and how does it affect the northern lights? What is the IMF BZ and what does it mean for the aurora? What is the DSCOVR satellite and how can I use its data? Why do I keep going out on nights with a high KP forecast and not seeing any northern lights? 

In this video, I attempt to give some answers to these questions and more. Also included is information about the Halloween 2003 KP-9 solar storm and the strongest known solar storm of all time, the Carrington Event, as well as some pretty cool photos of the aurora.

The northern lights can be a tricky and sometimes frustrating trophy to chase. Many times, in my early Alaska years, I waited around freezing my fingers off staring at a dark, desolate sky with nothing to show for it. After too many of these bitter disappointments, I was determined to learn as much as I could about the science behind the northern lights, so that I would never go out on fruitless late night chases again. Today I’m going to talk about a few of the basic numbers that can help you go out on efficient Solar storm chases. Don’t waste your time staring at empty skies, know exactly when and where the northern lights are going to dance.

Watch my video guide to understanding the numbers of the aurora borealis here:
 

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Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
For information about how to contact us, visit this link

Packrafting a Mysterious Alaska Canyon (Video)

Armed only with a vague description from an out-of-print Alaska whitewater guidebook, we decide to launch our packrafts into a mysterious and committing canyon. We found when started our way down the wild rapids that navigating Primrose Creek in our Alpacka packrafts was both more difficult and dangerous but also more exciting than we imagined.

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Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
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My New Youtube Channel

It is with great excitement, and a lot of anxiety, that I announce the launch of my new photography/vlog/humor Youtube channel, Alaska Brian. Many Alaskans are world-class adventurers, daring boat captains, self-sufficient homesteaders and hunters... I am none of those. Instead, I am a mediocre photographer, coward adventurer and all-around sleepyhead who is in bed by 9:30 pm more often than not. But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy being mediocre and embrace being a goofball at the same time.

My channel will not get too deep into photography how-to's and gear reviews; there are already so many great channels that do that better than I ever could. Instead, I want to share my strange but beautiful corner of the world and give insight to what it's like to be to be a landscape photographer, outdoors enthusiast and family guy above 60 degrees latitude. I've embedded my most recent episode below. If you enjoy, please consider liking, subscribing, and commenting. They are easy to do and help me out a lot!

You can help me out a ton by subscribing to my channel. Just click the icon below!

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Copyright notice: This website and all its contents are the intellectual property of Brian Wright Photography. None of the content can be used or reproduced without expressed written approval.
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