Justin Lowery, the best landscape photographer of the current times?

[pepeguitarra]

Recently, I was searching Youtube to find out more about the Intrepid 8x10 and run across a video made by Justin Lowery. This young man besides his wonderful voice (which could make him a radio personality), his modesty, and positive attitude captured my eye. His compositions are bit over the crowd, his work in color is unbelievable, but definitely, his work in black and white is the one that reminds me Ansel Adams, and other famous. Take a look at his work and let me know what you think of this work.
BTW, I did order the Intrepid 8x10 because of him.

I have been impressed with the work of this artist: https://www.flickr.com/people/justintosh/

Paradise in Monochrome by Justin Lowery, on Flickr

[Drew Wiley]

A lot of blatant copying of Fatali's images and overall style. Darn near outright plagiarism in specific instances. Fatali shot 8x10 and really knew how to print with meticulous detail. No question about that. But whether or not one likes that kind of overtly sugary genre is a personal choice. I find it rather predictable and touristy. Same corny marketing titles on images. In this case, the monochrome work comes across slightly better for me. Just sayin'... Hopefully, he'll break out of the copycat mold and do something truly personal over time.

[Laminarman]

I've seen his videos but I'm not one for over the top color and saturation with HDR skies, so some of the color stuff I can leave aside. Some of it is very nice. I don't know how you determine if someone is plagiarizing a familiar and often photographed landmark however. I like the BW stuff. And since I'm not able to post better photos I won't criticize, wish I had some of the talent he does.

[pepeguitarra]

I never hear of Fatali, until now. After watching his video, I realized he himself is a copier of Ansel Adams, even in the way he take the photos from a platform on top of his vehicle. The "sugary style" is probably dictated by the colorfulness of the Utah parks. That is where most of the new young photographers go now. It is easy for anyone who venture into the Canyons to find themselves with this type of photo, even the same tree with the same light. Some of them also cater the people who like to hang beautiful pictures on the wall. However, if you see his monochrome work, it does have the balance and unity that can only be found on a true artist, who understand the concept of tonal values composition.

[Drew Wiley]

I apologize if I seem to be raining on someone's parade. There are varying opinions of what might or not be acceptable in terms of copying and marketing other peoples specific views of nature; but in this case, it's almost impossible not to call out a foul ball. Otherwise, other than being done outdoors, Fatali's work has almost nothing in common with AA. For one thing, Fatali works almost exclusively in color, while AA was almost entirely a black and white practitioner. They visualize things completely differently. AA's work was mostly commercial; but his better known personal pieces were highly poetic. Fatali's are a more geared to outright postcardy pizzazz : over-the-top images which have become increasingly predictable, and at times, themselves copycat. A few of them are composite images involving several different unrelated transparencies - fake scenes, but done in the darkroom far more precisely than Photoshop fakes. Certain famous scenic subjects are naturally going to be photographed many many times over. But the mark of a great photographer is to instill his own unique signature or vision into that very thing. Take for example the Mittens in Monument Valley in Arizona. Hundreds of pictures have been published of those rocks, nearly all taken from exactly the same turnout on the road. But if you look at the version which Brett Weston did, nobody else on earth could have visualized or printed it the way he did - it's got his DNA all over it. Same goes for a point-blank image of El Capitan in Yosemite by Edweard Muybridge. That exact angle of shot is taken by thousands of tourists every year, plus plenty of pro nature photographers. Yet nobody in the last hundred years has been able to make a print of that monolith as supremely grand as the one Muybridge did way back in the blue-sensitive wet plate era. Perhaps by getting into LF photography more intensely and abstracting it somewhat in monochrome, this Justin fellow will find his wings and not be so dependent on postcardy stereotypes. The regional locale has less to do with things than one's own sense of visualization. But sometimes it does help to take my old advice - first, look up all those calendar, poster, and web pictures, and identify the scenic locations... then when you get there, go the OPPOSITE direction and find something new! ...I've spent quite a bit of time in Southwest canyons myself, so know the difference.

[Daniel Casper Lohenstein]

Hi,

I agree with Drew. IMHO almost everything has been photographed a hundred or tenthousend times.

But I think it can be quite difficult to invent "new" compositions or to find "new" views etc.

AA produced some paradigms, that show - as a general truth - how things like El Capitan, Yosemite, the Sierra Nevada etc should be seen. These paradigmata constitute the base for the American landscape photography as well as the starting point for postcard photography - please keep in mind that AA was involved in postcard photography, and postcards and posters helped to propagandize his works.

So, it is generally spoken very difficult to emancipate oneself from AA and his contemporaries.

As I said elsewhere, there is a photographer who this kind of fine art landscape photography, provided with a great critic on human influence on landscape itself: Robert Adams.

Perhaps we could compare it to musical standards: producing fine art photographs of a classical sujet like a National Park in the tradition of AA is like interpreting a piano concert as a pianist, not as composer, but as an artist who gives a concert, e.g. Sergei Rachmaninoffs "Piano Concerto No. 1 in F♯ minor".

Compared with the works of Robert Adams, this piano concerto could include some jet fighter noises, or somebody turns the radio on, caterpillars working in the background etc.

Justin Lowerys photographs don't show cigarette stubs, cans, shredded plastic bags, the effects of acid rain on environment, signs that the water isn't potable, parking lots, garbage cans etc.

I don't know the workflow, whether it contains digital processing or not. But it seems to be skilled craftsmanship. There is a lot of skilled pianists in the world - nobody would accuse them not to be composers.

He commets his photographs - camera, film, lens, aperture, exposure, date, time, some text, just like AA in his books. This doesn't add anything to the quality of his prints but it is some kind of stylization of the photographic author as a serious craftsman. This is also a paradigma created by AA ...

Concerning Muygridges El Capitan: this is what AA said: you have to use orthochromatic emulsions or a blue filter to accentuate the atmospherical perspective. Justin Lowery seems to use a yellow filter with a panchromatic emulsion when doing bw.

Do you know Steve O'Nions? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7F...anZFRBg/videos and https://www.flickr.com/photos/silver-scape/albums

I can imagine that taking photgraphs in a misty, cold, wet Great Britain, on the doorstep, could be a little bit more exigent and demanding than hiking in a dry and sunny National Park in Western US.

[Tin Can]

Music is used as model for imagery, maybe not the best comparison.

One of the most famous composers made a concert without music. Concert Hall silence. In photography that may be a totally black or totally white print without detail. Or no film and no print, just a description of nothing. A silent shriek perhaps.

As others have pointed out, originality is difficult.

Even digital is a dilemma as it is primarily Base 2, on or off. 1 or 0 which is not what it is. It's a state of existence and the state of non existence. Godo not Godo

Then we are expected to study AND remember all photographs ever taken, which became impossible for a human almost 200 years ago. https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitio...rstphotograph/

Some here never post an image of anything, only describing their masterpiece usually without subject or location. Masterfull!

Some musicians do not like to listen to others music as it influences them, especially before a performance...

Jazz was transformational as it is all improvisation. Similarly Punk Rock really took off when bands formed that did not know how to play a note. Bang a drum. Eurika! Originality became!

As a young man I never knew this, as an old man, I now realize how rules KILL ART.

Go forth. 'do your own thing', as we said in the 60's. And soon forgot..........

I had to go to Art School in middle age to realize, the whole point of art education is to take the poor soul to the edge and hope they eventually throw all 'experts' out of their studio.

Photography as a sport can be trained into you, but it seldom is a good idea.

NOT ART

[pepeguitarra]

Music is used as model for imagery, maybe not the best comparison.

One of the most famous composers made a concert without music. Concert Hall silence. In photography that may be a totally black or totally white print without detail. Or no film and no print, just a description of nothing. A silent shriek perhaps.

As others have pointed out, originality is difficult.

Even digital is a dilemma as it is primarily Base 2, on or off. 1 or 0 which is not what it is. It's a state of existence and the state of non existence. Godo not Godo

Then we are expected to study AND remember all photographs ever taken, which became impossible for a human almost 200 years ago. https://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitio...rstphotograph/

Some here never post an image of anything, only describing their masterpiece usually without subject or location. Masterfull!

Some musicians do not like to listen to others music as it influences them, especially before a performance...

Jazz was transformational as it is all improvisation. Similarly Punk Rock really took off when bands formed that did not know how to play a note. Bang a drum. Eurika! Originality became!

As a young man I never knew this, as an old man, I now realize how rules KILL ART.

Go forth. 'do your own thing', as we said in the 60's. And soon forgot..........

I had to go to Art School in middle age to realize, the whole point of art education is to take the poor soul to the edge and hope they eventually throw all 'experts' out of their studio.

Photography as a sport can be trained into you, but it seldom is a good idea.

NOT ART

While attending Architecture school, our design professor always asked us to interpret any design on the piano. Yes, we had a piano in the classroom.
You need not to know music or how to play the piano to do that. Once we played our design, he asked: Did you like what you heard? If the answer was NO, then you have to change it around until it sounded good. So, there is a correlation between music, art, and design. Composing requires a design. Now days, you can design after you have taken the photo in Photoshop. I like to do the design at the field. Speaking of rules, Picasso said once: To break the rules, you have to know the rules. Did you know he was a classic painter since age 12? Only few years later, at the age of 17 she invented the Cubism.

[Willie]

Sexton, Muench, Haas, Jackson and so many others through the decades.

There is no "Best". No #1 in this endeavor.

There are very good photographers whose vision and the craft that allows them, after long study and effort, to express it in print.

If you want #1, stick with sports. Even that is transitory and ever changing.

[Tin Can]

I wrote my rant specifically for dissent

While attending Architecture school, our design professor always asked us to interpret any design on the piano. Yes, we had a piano in the classroom.
You need not to know music or how to play the piano to do that. Once we played our design, he asked: Did you like what you heard? If the answer was NO, then you have to change it around until it sounded good. So, there is a correlation between music, art, and design. Composing requires a design. Now days, you can design after you have taken the photo in Photoshop. I like to do the design at the field. Speaking of rules, Picasso said once: To break the rules, you have to know the rules. Did you know he was a classic painter since age 12? Only few years later, at the age of 17 she invented the Cubism.