IMPART RAW NATURAL COLOUR AND FORM WITHIN YOUR ENVIRONMENT………..MY INSPIRATION…
…NATURES DESIGN…
Everything you see in Brett’s work is as seen through his camera lens…..Brett searches for a delicious cocktail of organic form and colour – curious details easily overlooked in a casual distant glance and within a context of distracting information – Brett takes those “distractions” away by isolating his subject with depth-of-field and thus bringing into sharp focus a natural forms imposing and unique attributes….
…. he then waits for the best natural light to showcase his subject – no artificial light is ever used and Brett often spends hours on end waiting for a combination of natural out-of-his-control factors to align before he captures that single magical moment…he has his camera, the natural world and his ever searching eye, and this is all he needs – so what you see is his subject, always alive and rooted to the turf, within it’s natural context.
“…getting extremely close to flora forms doesn’t complicate things but simplifies them…..it shows you the beauty and pure minimalist simplicity of natures design which is at the inspirational core of all things that we ourselves design, make and use……and it is those simple natural blue-prints – a silhouette of a simple curling petal, a strong sure muscular stem, a star-burst flower crest, or a perfect tear-drop pod – that I wish to bring into full focus and celebrate…..here are the building blocks, the genetic design blue-print of life’s inspiration and it literally begins on a diminutive organic grass-roots level…”
…ISOLATION NOT INFORMATION…
…Brett allows this shallow depth-of-field to wash or soften out detail which creates a seamless lucid drift into space – almost painterly – again helping to draw attention to to a detail or details, but also changing the spacial perception of the scene…..photographers manipulate this depth-of-field space all the time but Brett instead of feeling he must capture everything within his frame in sharp focus, allows a more natural depth of field to reside similar to the human eye when in close proximity to a subject where the point of focus is sharp and surrounds are not…
“…place your finger close to your eye and focus on it – do you see the background detail in sharp focus?…
…the results are fascinating as he looks “through” this space to find beautiful arrangements and visual allusions while trying to keep the integrity of the subject matter intact…..in essence he is looking through layers of spacial content on a single narrow horizontal plane in space as opposed to a more general spacial context…..and all this through a simple conventional DSLR camera…
…..for me it’s about “isolation” not information…..to inform or offer the viewer more in polarizing a detail, a composition, spacial gravity, weight and counter-weight, balance and proportion……where space becomes just as – if not more – important than the form itself and for that space to allow the viewer a respite to look and contemplate without the visual pressure of “detail noise” …
…..I look to hone in on detail not details…..to showcase a natural depth-of-field where not everything is sharp or artificially sharpened whereby every visual nuance has to pop and be thrust in your face, distracting, consuming and drowning everything else in an info and sensory overkill…
…..I wish to let a more natural close-up depth-of-field prevail and “obscure” creating mystery and intrigue……I want to pull you into a simple detail – say, a basic plant pod – and let you enjoy and bask in it’s simple purity of beauty, colour, form and purity of design, and to suggest how it might mimic other things…to suggest other things…to inspire other things…..to inspire your imagination!”
…INSPIRE YOUR IMAGINATION…
Brett’s imagination is stimulated every time he is behind the camera is this flora world, and his desire to bring this to the table in a body of work that is not only visually beautiful but also hopefully enlightening, emotionally stimulating and thought provoking is relentless…
“…the descriptions I impart these images are not mean’t to always be literal but can often be allegorical – an example being “Lights Arrival” where the surreal curious form in the photo is my visual allegory for a solar body of intense muscular rays of light, as “light” itself is obviously not something easily given a defined “form” to….
…those references help to poke at and inspire ones fertile imagination – maybe to transport you somewhere I have been or where you are naturally pulled or wish to go…I feel this is the true function of a photograph – not to simply show you something but to take you somewhere – to inspire curiosity, to hold one in a suspension of disbelief, to make one question a perceived reality – thus their reality – and to let the mind or imagination take one to another reality…”