Charlie Waite is a popular British landscape photographer who previously worked in British theatre and television as an actor for the first 10 yrs of his professional life which started at the age of 16 when he dropped out of school. He loves to talk and teach about photography in his lectures and created Light and Land Studios. The reason he switched to being a photographer is because he would always see beautiful scenery in France and the U.K. during his commutes to work. He also met a publisher who could publish his photos if he were to start taking them. His father also had an interest in photography so it was almost as if the universe was telling him to make the switch so he did. Today he’s visited around 40 countries and been across all continents taking photos of the landscape.
Charlie Waite has a very spiritual and calming style in his photos. He tends to use similar colors and repetitive, but organized, patterns to make the objects with different colors pop out to give a sense of “grandeur” to those objects. For example in one of his photos, “Valensole II, France”, he used rows of purple flowers and a single tree in the middle of the back part of the image to make that tree look as if it’s ruling over the purple flowers. He also uses different types of lights to give off different feelings and will wait hours or days to get the perfect lighting for his images. One time he even left his mother waiting inside of a car for 8 hours while he got the perfect shot! His photos are mostly how you would imagine landscape photography to be typically.
One of the main ideas behind his work is that photography is a production. It’s something that you have to work at and spend some time taking, more than just snapping a picture quickly then publishing it. He also says that all photos have some kind of a story, which probably adds to his first idea behind his work. As a result he makes very theatrical and dramatic photos that evoke plenty of emotions in their viewers. Although he has no political ideas in his work he loves how the photos he take connect him to the landscape and humble him and believes that it can do that for others through his work.
Personally Charlie Waite has influenced me to start taking more landscape photos and to improve the quality of them. For example I use color matching a lot more now to make the main object stand out and try to evoke feelings of calmness more often. I also have learned to use the light to create very dramatic and theatrical photos, and to be more patient with my photos and plan them out instead of rushing them. I have also started to practice at taking landscape and object photos instead of trying to be a jack of all trades like I was before. Some of my photos are even starting to look a bit similar to his nowadays, at least in my landscapes and still lifes.
Charlie Waite has a very spiritual and calming style in his photos. He tends to use similar colors and repetitive, but organized, patterns to make the objects with different colors pop out to give a sense of “grandeur” to those objects. For example in one of his photos, “Valensole II, France”, he used rows of purple flowers and a single tree in the middle of the back part of the image to make that tree look as if it’s ruling over the purple flowers. He also uses different types of lights to give off different feelings and will wait hours or days to get the perfect lighting for his images. One time he even left his mother waiting inside of a car for 8 hours while he got the perfect shot! His photos are mostly how you would imagine landscape photography to be typically.
One of the main ideas behind his work is that photography is a production. It’s something that you have to work at and spend some time taking, more than just snapping a picture quickly then publishing it. He also says that all photos have some kind of a story, which probably adds to his first idea behind his work. As a result he makes very theatrical and dramatic photos that evoke plenty of emotions in their viewers. Although he has no political ideas in his work he loves how the photos he take connect him to the landscape and humble him and believes that it can do that for others through his work.
Personally Charlie Waite has influenced me to start taking more landscape photos and to improve the quality of them. For example I use color matching a lot more now to make the main object stand out and try to evoke feelings of calmness more often. I also have learned to use the light to create very dramatic and theatrical photos, and to be more patient with my photos and plan them out instead of rushing them. I have also started to practice at taking landscape and object photos instead of trying to be a jack of all trades like I was before. Some of my photos are even starting to look a bit similar to his nowadays, at least in my landscapes and still lifes.
In these 3 photos I attempted to remake photos taken by Charlie Waite. The most successful being Buonconvento, Italy in my opinion, although I didn't have the same house, window, or even the same curtain as in the image so I used what I had to create a look alike image that turned out well. Even though the wall was more blue than orange unlike the original because of the color of the paint on it. In my remake of leaf I didn't have the same leaf but yet I managed to find a decent sized leaf that had fallen off a tree and put it on a black background, the background may have been different because you can see light at the top of the image unlike the original. In my Cappadocia, Turkey remake I tried to remake the image of a tree in front of a mountain. Of course I didn't have access to a mountain so I used the background of evergreen trees and bushes to allow the tree without leaves to look imposing but still small compared to it's surroundings like in Cappadocia.
In Buonconvento I had to do a lot of improvising since I didn't have any of the materials that were in the original image except for the basic concepts. For example the red splash of color, Charles Waite used that splash of color to focus in on that object as he had seen back when he worked in theater and TV. In leaf I didn't have the same 22 inch leaf of course but I still had the background so I used an 8 inch maple leaf and different viewpoints to find one that made the illusion of the maple leaf being large. As Waite was doing I was attempting to capture the gradual death of a beautiful part of a tree. Trees are nothing without their leaves because of how they produce food for it and how they look so dead without them I wanted to showcase that. Again as in all the images unsurprisingly I didn't have the same things as the original but rather the original ideas. I attempted to show how small yet grand the tree in the middle is compared to it's surrounding evergreen trees as I see in the original of Cappadocia with the tree in front of the much larger mountain.
Sources: charliewaite.com/about, blog.art.com/artwiki/charlie-waite/, dpreview.com/interviews/4836397222/charlie-waite-landscape-photography-interview
In Buonconvento I had to do a lot of improvising since I didn't have any of the materials that were in the original image except for the basic concepts. For example the red splash of color, Charles Waite used that splash of color to focus in on that object as he had seen back when he worked in theater and TV. In leaf I didn't have the same 22 inch leaf of course but I still had the background so I used an 8 inch maple leaf and different viewpoints to find one that made the illusion of the maple leaf being large. As Waite was doing I was attempting to capture the gradual death of a beautiful part of a tree. Trees are nothing without their leaves because of how they produce food for it and how they look so dead without them I wanted to showcase that. Again as in all the images unsurprisingly I didn't have the same things as the original but rather the original ideas. I attempted to show how small yet grand the tree in the middle is compared to it's surrounding evergreen trees as I see in the original of Cappadocia with the tree in front of the much larger mountain.
Sources: charliewaite.com/about, blog.art.com/artwiki/charlie-waite/, dpreview.com/interviews/4836397222/charlie-waite-landscape-photography-interview