Photographer: Paul Nicklen
Personal Background
Paul Nicklen was born in 1668 in Tisdale, Canada. He went to the University of Victoria. His professions are photographer, filmmaker, author, and marine biologist and he has been working for 20 years. His goal is to document wildlife and the troubles it’s facing right now. He has worked with National Geographic for many years and a photographer and he also writes articles. He’s also done Ted Talks where he talks about climate change and the impact it’s having on the world. He has won over 30 awards in his lifetime some being the BBC Wildlife Photographer of the Year and the Natural Resources Defence Council BioGems Visionary Award. Recently he has co-founded a non-profit organization called SeaLegacy to raise awareness for ocean conservation.
Style
Paul Nicklen is very good at capturing emotions in his art. He does an excellent job at having a set focal point or using leading lines to create a pleasing feel to the work. There is a lot of balance in his work that makes it unique but also pleasant. He also takes a lot of black and white photos to really emphasize the white now and dark accents. A lot of his pictures that have color have super bright and vibrant color.
philosophy
Paul Nicklen has a very important philosophy behind his work. He wants to bring awareness to the problems with climate change and how its affecting the earth. He’s also showing what animals are being affected due to the change in climate around the world. He’s written articles in National Geographic all about climate change and his experience with photography. Paul had also teamed up with scientists, conservationists and explorers to create awareness to conservation and climate change. He’s done many good things to help support his stance on climate change.
Influences in my work
In the photos I took, I would say that I was very influenced by Paul. My photos aren’t exactly like his because I don’t live in the arctic but I like them and I did the best I could. He takes almost all his photos in some sort of snowy weather and the timing was perfect because we had just gotten buckets of snow a couple days prior. I made sure to get the blue sky in one of the photos because I noticed that a lot of his photos have this beautiful vibrant blue sky that I also wanted to capture. Same with the angles, I tried hard to get similar angles without also causing awful shadows (specifically with the dog photo) and I’m very proud of how it turned out.
Sources
Compare and Contrast
All of the photos that I tried to recreate were extremely good so I knew there was no way I would be able to d it perfectly but I tried my best. The photo of my dog is my favorite out of them all. I put some snow on his head so he had more white on him so maybe he could match the huskies a little bit better, I also put a harness on hm to also help. The footprints was a complete accident. I didn't know he had a photo of paw prints I just had taken that photo because it looked cool. The next day I saw his photo of footprints and I thought it was perfect and better than the photo I was gonna turn in. The last one looks bad but I liked how easy and creative I got to come up with how to do it.