Joseph Holmes: Natural Light AS Photography

Holmes has been photographing wild landscapes, generally in colour for thirty-eight years. He is a native of California and holds a degree in the conservation of Natural Resources from UC Berkeley. Joseph Holmes is a self-described omnologist (he studies everything). He uses nature for his photography and his work looks really well set out because he is using every day natural items with natural sunlight which gives a nice effect to his work depending on the sort of time of day and what sort of season it is, e.g. Summer, Winter, Midnight, Daytime. The work that is being shown on his website, is of all modern day just during different seasons and of different items so it’s not all historical. This work may have been made recently or a few years ago but it is definitely in the 21^st centaury.

The size of the picture depends on what he is taking a photograph of because some of his photographs are really close up to the subject but some of the photographs are really far out and distanced so there isn’t a set distance/ size for his photographs because there are different aspects to what he is taking a photo of.  There is a sense of space in the photographs and when looking at the photos, you think you are actually looking at the spaces in front of you so you are feeling that you are seeing it for yourself instead of being the viewer from outside the picture.  The colours used in the photographs are ones of brightness as the weather used is rather bright because it depends on the season but Holmes has also made Winter look bright because of the lighting that either he has used or using the natural light that has been provided by the weather itself.

Some of his work are portraits and some of them are landscapes because it once more depends on the subject that he is taking a photograph of because some of the things that he has taken photographs of were close-ups of certain natural objects and some were of full landscapes.

I feel that Joseph Holmes’ work is amazing to look at because his work inspires me to go out and use natural lighting to capture certain lighting because natural lighting may be difficult to find when using an SLR camera, but when found, the lighting gives a certain effects and can different meanings to different aspects of the photograph itself.

Joseph Holmes