Fresh colour eye
A guy i don’t yet know named Douglas Ludwig held a show, brashly titled “DYNAMISM” — Revolutionary Photographs of Tofino, last Sunday at the Spotted Bear Bistro. I didn’t make the show — found out about it too late — but the flyer looked pretty professional so i checked out the website, douglasludwigphotography.com.
It’s a slick (maybe too slick) Flash site, and the photos don’t really display on-screen large enough to get a real sense of them. But wow, what photos! Uncommon locations (like the underbellies of local piers), unusual perspectives, fisheye views, and a unique, painterly approach to composition and colour really set this work apart. The man has an eye and he’s not afraid to use it.
Even that narrow, hackneyed genre, the surfing scene, is rendered arrestingly graphic by Douglas’s washed-out, other-worldly water with its eerie, monotone translucence. There must be some Photoshop fiddling in there to get those effects — surely they can’t all come from filters and developing techniques.
Many more photos on the site, too — weddings and the like. I guess photographers have to make a living too. But it’s great to see a fresh take on the rather tired Tofino photography scene. Apparently some photos are still hanging in the Spotted Bear. I’d get me down thar, matey, if i were you. And i hope to see more of Douglas’s stuff hanging around town, and in PRAS’s ArtSplash! show next spring.
