Nick Brandt's photography work takes your breath away and just makes you stare, silent. He left his successful career in music video directing and commercial side to capture the wonders of wildlife of East Africa. How he became introduced to this area he later fell in love with? Nick Brandt directed Michael Jackson's music video for Earth Song, after which, fittingly, he wanted to express himself by photography and make his effort for conservation and threatened wildlife in Africa. He now has his own non-profit organization for conservation work called Big Life Foundation, which focuses on wildlife in the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya and Tanzania.

I wanted to share you one of the "new wave" photographers, who has his unique style of photography, but who also is eager to break some old school rules in the photography business. Free sharing, the active use of internet and social media, educating other photo enthusiasts and HDR (high dynamic range) photography are some of the things this man is well know for. He is Trey Ratcliff and I would recommend to look into his work, not just the great HDR images he creates, but also his versatile blog StuckInCustoms.com in general and the tutorials and videos he has put out for everyone of us to enjoy. Trey also offers a Free HDR Tutorial on his blog, so if you're interested in learning more about HDR shooting, this might be something you definitely want to have a look at.

Here's how Trey describes his work and himself: "I am known generally for the unique way in which I capture and process the world around me. I have my own “take” on HDR Photography, and you can see my free HDR Tutorial right here. I grew up blind in one eye and this might have changed the way I view the world. I don’t know. It’s hard to be objective about the way one’s brain was wired. My background is in computer science and math, so I bring an algorithm-like process to capturing the scene in such a way that it evokes memories in a palpable manner. Whatever that means."

This is a short behind-the-scenes video about one of his HDR landscape images from Iceland, just to give you an idea:

This is a bit longer video where Trey Ratcliff visits Google's Mountain View headquarters for an Photographers/Authors@Google talk: