My Favorite Photographer

My current favorite photographer is Ryan Russell. Ryan is from Birmingham, Alabama and has been taking pictures since he was young. I've followed Ryan's work for a few years now, and his style never seems to get old for me. He shoots digital because much of his work is used for magazines and online sources, but I've seen some of his 35mm work and it's fantastic also. He works in both color and black&white, but his photographs have a very distinctive style. His color work is typically either highly saturated or uses lighting to create a dramatic effect (I've included samples of each) and sometimes has almost a "lomo" affect (i.e. dark around the edges, high saturation, and slightly distorted). His black and white work is fairly straightforward, and much of it is portrait shots. In his b&w work, he often uses heavy shadows and bold constrast, which almost reminds me of Dragan sometimes. Anyway, he's my favorite! Here are a few samples of his recent work (all courtesy of www.ryanrussell.net):



Here is a sample of his color work- this shot he worked with the saturation of the sky, and also has shadows around the outside of the frame. (It looks like it was shot through the UV-blocker of a windshield?)



This is another color shot- like I mentioned, he loves using lighting to create dramatic colors; he loves flourescent lighting.



And here's a black and white shot- not a portrait, but it definitely illustrates his love of contrast.