{"id":3611,"date":"2013-05-30T06:39:12","date_gmt":"2013-05-30T05:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phototechnique.com\/?p=3611"},"modified":"2022-09-07T17:01:44","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T16:01:44","slug":"frans-lanting-profile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/other.kelsey.host\/amateurphotographer\/technique\/wildlife_photography\/frans-lanting-profile\/","title":{"rendered":"Frans Lanting Profile"},"content":{"rendered":"

We meet world-renowned nature photographer Frans Lanting.<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Frans-Lanting-Sunset\"\n

\"Frans-Lanting\"Frans Lanting’s lavishly illustrated, large-format book, Life: A Journey Through Time, was almost a decade in the making and tells the story of life on Earth from its earliest beginnings, utilising stunning images of eye-catching creatures and geological formations found in the present.<\/p>\n

The origins of the Rotterdam-born nature photographer\u2019s latest project lie in the fact that he shoots many assignments digitally for magazines, including National Geographic, that place him in the fortunate position of traversing the globe, camera in hand.<\/p>\n

\u2018I wanted to put together a book that shows a bigger and broader perspective on nature,\u2019 he recalls. \u2018I wanted to go back in time and explore the roots of biodiversity. It\u2019s an interesting challenge because photography is associated with capturing the present \u2013 we\u2019re always chasing moments. Yet for this project I wanted to show the past.\u2019<\/p>\n

With all the images in the book previously unpublished, through research and talking to scientists Frans Lanting found that there were still opportunities to picture what had happened during our planet\u2019s formation all those millions of years ago. \u2018If you look hard enough,\u2019 he reveals, \u2018the signs are still everywhere.\u2019Throughout the \u2018Life\u2026\u2019 shoot, Lanting thought of himself not so much as an archaeologist, but more like a time traveller. \u2018I\u2019m used to going around the world travelling through space on assignments, but on this occasion I was travelling through time,\u2019 he adds, enigmatically, of the years spent piecing the project together.<\/p>\n

The results exist not only as a book, but also as a one-hour multimedia experience with music by Philip Glass. The latter has been \u201cperformed\u201d in California, where Frans Lanting is currently based, and in Holland, while there is also a dedicated website.<\/p>\n\"008316-01\"\n

Frans Lanting, a Nikon DSLR convert, feels it\u2019s important that today\u2019s photographer takes advantage of the numerous new ways of sharing imagery now available. \u2018You can\u2019t practise photography the same way as people did decades ago before there were other mediums of expression,\u2019 he says. \u2018With something this epic, it cried out to be translated into other forms. You reach more people that way.\u2019<\/p>\n

Narrowing down which digital images to include in the \u2018Life\u2026\u2019 book was a big puzzle for Lanting: \u2018If your aim is to show the history of life on Earth, everything in front of you is fair game, but I had to choose,\u2019 he nods. \u2018It\u2019s not an encyclopaedia, but there\u2019s a storyline, which is as important as the images themselves \u2013 it begins with the Big Bang and ends in the present. I wanted to present a view of nature that shows what we, as humans, have evolved out of.\u2019<\/p>\n

Frans Lanting – Digital In Nature<\/h4>\n

Although Frans Lanting began his epic project shooting on film, he switched to digital capture 18 months before the body of work was finished.<\/p>\n

\u2018I invite anyone to flip through the book and tell me which images were produced digitally and which were produced after the fact,\u2019 he challenges, impressed with the results.<\/p>\n

His motive for the switch was a practical one, having previously labour-intensively scanned work for books and gallery prints. Additionally, he didn\u2019t feel that the standard of digital capture was high enough until Nikon\u2019s D1 and D2x began to change things.<\/p>\n

The photographer also now utilises a D200 for weekend trips \u2013 and there are images in \u2018Life\u2026\u2019 shot on that camera and the earlier D100, including the startling opening image \u2013 when he doesn\u2019t want to lug around a bigger camera system.<\/p>\n

In terms of Lanting’s choice of lenses, Lanting describes himself as being \u2018like a plumber; I take from my toolkit whatever I need.\u2019<\/p>\n

This means Nikkor zooms, mainly, with the occasional use of a macro lens, because he likes to travel as compactly as possible. A 12-24mm, a 28-70mm, 70-200mm and a 200-400mm with a pair of extenders cover all bases. \u2018The quality of zooms is so good these days, I don\u2019t feel it\u2019s a hindrance not to use fixed-focal-length lenses,\u2019 he enthuses.<\/p>\n\"Frans-Lanting-Waterfall\"\n

\u2018There are so many advantages to digital,\u2019 he continues, becoming more animated as the jetlag subsides. \u2018I can go back to producing images on film any time I want \u2013 I still have some in the fridge and a Hasselblad camera for panoramic imagery \u2013 but assignments are all done digitally these days. I can capture, process, review and edit images in the field, and that\u2019s an enormous advantage when you\u2019re working in remote areas or doing technically or conceptually complicated things.\u2019<\/p>\n

Lanting\u2019s shots are offloaded from Flash memory to a laptop, on which he performs an initial edit. They\u2019re also transferred onto two separate hard drives in the field, as a triple backup. \u2018The laptop is really so that I can review the images, because the screen quality is much better than any of the handheld storage devices,\u2019 he adds. \u2018Although the latter are becoming more sophisticated and may, ultimately, eliminate the need to carry laptops in the field. I think Epson\u2019s the frontrunner at present.\u2019<\/p>\n

As for post-processing, the nature enthusiast sounds a note of caution. \u2018Although you can spend your whole life analysing and tweaking images in Photoshop, my interest is still on the subject in front of me, not on the pixels. If you shoot in Raw mode like I do, you do have to work with the images \u2013 the original capture yields a pretty flat image \u2013 but I wouldn\u2019t call that altering or manipulating; digital processing\u2019s no different than what would have been done in the darkroom, but our methods are now much more precise.\u2019<\/p>\n\"Frans\n

So has digital dramatically altered Lanting\u2019s way of working now? \u2018Yes it has,\u2019 he nods emphatically. \u2018It stimulates experimentation, because I can try all kinds of wild things and instantly see whether it\u2019s leading up to anything or is a dead end. Digital doesn\u2019t cost anything, but with film you think twice before you burn through a couple of rolls.\u2019<\/p>\n

The photographer admits that the technology is now allowing him to grab images he previously wouldn\u2019t have thought possible to capture. The leading image in the \u2018Life\u2026\u2019 book is a good example.<\/p>\n

\u2018I wanted to visualise the Big Bang and obviously I could not do a literal image \u2013 if you\u2019re a scientist with a telescope you can see echoes of it, but I\u2019m a photographer, so wanted to capture its essence. I managed to bring it alive in an image that has as its source a small piece of petrified wood. Only by trial and error was I able to get that image \u2013 it would have been much harder with analogue capture. With the digital tools available to us, photography\u2019s never looked as good as it does now.\u2019<\/p>\n

Frans Lanting\u2019s Kit<\/h4>\n\"Frans-Lanting-Kit\"\n

Conservation-minded Frans Lanting\u2019s camera bag would make most enthusiasts turn green \u2013 with envy that is. Attempt to follow in the master\u2019s footsteps by stocking up with the following:<\/p>\n