Reaction Paper #5 by Kristine Sellner

Dean Tatooles is a photographer who captures time & place with beautiful panoramic shots. I just love the depth of his photos and his ability to give us the size of his massive images.
His photos of the pyramids radiate the glowing brights of the yellows and the natural lighting of the dessert, trees and rocks display a puzzle of foreground and structure in the background. The iceberg shows motion of the flowing frozen water leading us with white highlights to the frozen gleaming reflective liquids below, broken with contrasting icecaps and ripples. In ageless image millions of years stand still, bringing us back or maybe forward in time.
It is obvious his talents and skills have allowed him to travel and capture worldly beauty in still moments and to preserve them for us to enjoy. This travel has brought him worldwide. To gaining recognition from iExplore to CNN the press is wild about his works. I would love to have a career which would allow me to see places in the world others do not as well as those famous areas which are a challenge to portray in a completely new way. I think this challenge is like a gamble for that perfect shot. It may lead one to fame or famine. One of the biggest advantages is the people you meet, the networking and skills you learn from those great photographers who came before us. They also give feeling of warmth for instance with the focal point of warm colors. I feel the cold of the deepest, brightest blues and icy whites. This magical intense photography brings us to a place unlike one we have never seen or experienced.
I found it interesting the amount of skill, time and equipment involved in getting that perfect shot. He tries many perspectives from well-know vantage points. He also tries to capture things people pass by daily but never really see. He shoots his images at certain times of the day to control the lighting and also to add detail such as trees, reflections and shadows.
He suggest to take the automatic settings of the camera and to learn how to take photos with “shutter priority” that will capture still moments such as animals in their tracks or waterfalls. He still uses film. He uses manual cameras to gain clarity and control using his technical skills and eye for detail.
He prefers to take photos without people or man-made images. His photos transport us to another place in time. He refers to his technique as extraterrestrial.
I loved his images because you are able to find yourself in a magical place. The panoramic shots really bring you into the image as if you could see it from all sides. The wide variety of color, high contrast and enormous size stretch the visual imagination. I love these images they are fascinating and mystical. Photography has become a way of life as well as developing skills to a skill level of mastery. I think after looking at his work I need to take more shots of distance and enourmous size.  I also need to work on timing to get the right lighting to show more detail.


http://blog.iexplore.com/2008/10/qa-with-professional-travel-photographer-dean-tatooles.html