My favourite photographers: Yann Arthus-Bertrand · Jul 4, 09:54 PM by Simon Mackie
Most famous for his collections of aerial photography, Earth From Above, Yann Arthus-Bertrand was one of the photographers who first opened my eyes to the art, and potential, of photography. I first saw a collection of his work exhibited in Birmingham in the UK – massive prints several feet wide, exhibited all together out on the street.
What struck me was not just the quality of the images (the color and composition of them is stunning) and the different persepctive (aerial photography is nearly always exciting to look at because of the change in perspective I think), but the fact that all of the images were making a statement about the fragilility of the world that we live in.
Take, for example, this image:
Not only is it an amazing image, well composed with lovely coloring, it’s terribly beautiful – because it’s an image of a uranium mine in Kakadu National Park in Australia. A lot of Yann’s images are powerful and moving—if you haven’t seen them, I recommend checking them out, ideally on full-size prints, as it’s really hard to appreciate them on a small scale. You can find many more images on Yann’s web site
For his aerial work, Yann uses Canon camears and lenses, and prefer using the 17-35mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8 and 200mm f/1.8, although uses lense sranging from 14 to 400mm for his wrok. Due to the vibrations caused by the helicopter blades, high shutter speeds are necessary—1/250 and above, and images are shot on Fujichrome Velvia film.
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