Burtynsky research

Most of Burtynsky's exhibited photography (pre 2007) was taken with a large format field camera on large 4x5-inch sheet film and developed into high-resolution, large-dimension prints (of various sizes and editions ranging from 18 x 22 inches to 60 x 80 inches. He often positions himself at high-vantage points over the landscape using elevated platforms, the natural topography, and more currently helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft. Burtynsky describes the act of taking a photograph in terms of "The Contemplated Moment", evoking and in contrast to, "The Decisive Moment" of Henri Cartier-Bresson. In 2007 he began using a high-resolution digital camera. urtynsky's most famous photographs are sweeping views of landscapes altered by industry: mine tailings, quarries, scrap piles. The grand, awe-inspiring beauty of his images is often in tension with the compromised environments they depict. He has made several excursions to China to photograph that country's industrial emergence, and construction of one of the world's largest engineering projects, the Three Gorges Dam.

His early influences include Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Eadweard Muybridge, and Carleton Watkins, whose prints he saw at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the early 1980s. Another group whose body of work shares similar themes and photographic approaches to Burtynsky's work are the photographers who were involved in the exhibition New Topographics.*

*Source Wikipedia. 

What i like most about Burtynsky’s work is that he portrays consumption in his work and that is what i am most interested in, the uses of pattern and line is pleasing to the eye. The places he photographs are normally run down but the photo have true meaning behind them and that what i really like. The pallet of colour is mostly the same with browns and orange tones throughout. The shapes and patterns are interesting and give a story to the viewer.