Chris Burkard - http://www.chrisburkard.com/
Chris Burkard is an American based Adventure and Lifestyle photographer specialising in surfing. He has travelled all four corners of the globe and has found himself in some of the most remote locations on the planet documenting sports, such as surfing, kayaking, trekking and climbing. I believe Burkard links well to this movement project due to the way he captures sports within landscape photography, most of his work consists of outstanding landscapes containing an athlete doing their thing. I also take inspiration from the dramatics of every landscape Burkards captures, their is also hardly any post processing conducted by himself as he likes to leave his images untouched and as natural as possible, which I admire greatly.
Workflow
This is an image produced by Burkard capturing a professional swimmer enjoying himself by taking a leap into the crystal clear lakes in British Columbia. The element I like most about this image is if you eliminated the swimmer out of the image, you would be left with a completely outstanding landscape image however by including this athlete Burkard has added an explosive main area of focus who is seemingly jumping into the landscape in the background, which leads the eyes into the image very efficiently.
This image of a white water kayaker is one of my favourite within Burkard's workflow, due to the way this particular area of the landscape is overlooking the kayaker, almost creating a sense of communication and respect between both the athlete and surrounding landscape, this is partly due to the aerial angle at which the image was captured however the cliffs are seemingly caving in the kayaker, which expresses how powerful the landscape is. The angle which Burkard has captured this image shows the path of the river, which creates a sense of movement and journey within the frame, this is also helped by the fact the athlete is positioned in the lower third of the frame meaning their is a whole lot of distance show in the middle and upper third of the frame for the athlete to travel through.
This image produced by Burkard is the most effective image that relates the strongest to my movement project.
This image produced by Burkard is the most effective image that relates the strongest to my movement project.
This image is one of Burkard's most powerful images, due to the surreality of the event. A surfer in the freezing cold water of the Norwegian Sea in Iceland, where surfers would normally never be seen or imagined in this type of location, it kind of breaks the stereotype of surfing in hot climates in Hawaii or Australia. This image is also very gloomy due to the lack of light and dominant cold colours, this forces the histogram to the left, towards the blacks meaning their is a lot of contrast in this image even before post production. The colours and isolation aspects of this image create a very mysterious atmosphere within the frame, which a theme of unknown journey which coincides well with my movement project.