Gigi Williams – Artist’s Statement
I can’t imagine a world without photography - capturing a unique moment in time that will never be repeated.
My photos are the result of meticulous planning and often involve costly and difficult-to-get-to locations; physical endurance of hostile environments; gale force winds; freezing ice; desert storms and searing heat that require technical mastery of both capture and post-production processes.
Even after all this work there is an element of magic required when Heaven and Earth; the moon and the stars, all align and I am able to capture that unique moment.
Cartier-Bresson described this as ‘the decisive moment’. My images reflect those decisive moments in the natural world. My role is to decide when that moment is.
Sometimes even after all that planning I have had to walk away with nothing because the magic just doesn’t happen but other times Mother Nature smiles on me and the most magnificent scene reveals itself.
I’m never sure exactly what I will come home with. And this is what excites me so much about landscape photography. I love the rare moments when there is magic and it’s these magic moments and the unpredictability of the whole experience that I find the most inspiring.
It is my pleasure to share these places and unique moments with you.
Robin Williams – Artist’s Statement
The artist and the scientist in me are always in restless juxtaposition. It is my Ying and Yang. Photography is a remarkable blend of art and science and in photography I found my natural habitat.
As a medical photographer I was required to be objective and to make not just faithful reproductions, but ones which were consistent and accurate to the extent that measurements could be taken from them. And yet amidst this pure science I found beauty – images that were both tools of investigation and also an expression of pure natural beauty. At their most harmonious the artist and scientist in me allow me to capture a faithful image that also engages the viewer in the sheer beauty of the natural world. I am obsessive about details; moving camera position, changing focal length and yes, sometimes moving the subject matter until I have concentrated the image’s essence without distraction.
The camera is still woefully inadequate at recording the human experience of the world: the ability of the eye-brain combination to encompass a huge range of brightness, to accommodate radically different coloured light, and to scan around a scene to gain a complete understanding of spatial relationships whilst at the same time ‘zooming’ in to see a minute detail all exceed the current technology. I utilize a range of techniques, including in-camera processes such as polarization and graduated filters, shift and tilt lenses, and in-computer techniques such as high dynamic range, exposure blending, and focus stacking, to produce images that are as near to the human experience as the current technology will allow. When compared with human vision it is still an imperfect representation.
The greatest reward is when a viewer connects with an image emotionally: when they say they wish they had been there to experience what they see and feel when they view my photographs. The peace, the excitement, the solitude, the awe inspiring visual feast that is the natural world.