Renowned commercial photographer Andy Glass (b. 1970) is a landscape perfectionist who plays with the limits of the unreal. He is also an expert in 3D.
Where does your photography come from?
I found that photography was the perfect medium for me to capture what I felt in certain environments, predominantly landscape. I enjoy the process of photography, the planning, the anticipation, the framing and the physical experience of being alone in nature with the purpose of collecting compositions.
When is your decisive moment for taking photographs ?
The decisive moment for me is simply when there is a harmony between subject matter, quality of light and composition – I think when all the elements come together, the image works.
What inspired you work/your series ?
I think photographers are inspired by whole range of experiences – political, visual and personal. It is interesting that given the same location, a group of photographers will always apply their experiences and creative resources differently. I felt that the strongest influences on my work were photographers who really grabbed my interest early in my photographic life – the real masters of the craft like Irving Penn, Paul Strand and of course Cartier-Bresson. I would have to say that a love of nature and landscape is really my inspiration – for me there is no grander subject, nor one that has so many facets and nuances.
The commercial you would like to do ?
I really enjoy working out complicated puzzles in advertising – it is often said that simple messages are the most effective, but often the way to achieve simplicity in an image is anything but straightforward. I work a lot on multi-part comps and images that involve integration of a CGI object into a natural environment, and I love working out what is needed to make this happen and appear natural. Advertising differs very much from the insular nature of how I approach personal work. Invariably in advertising you are working as part of a group of fellow creative people and how you function as a collective, with everybody adding value to the process is what really excites me about advertising photography.
What are the current photographic trends for you ?
I think photography has become so spread out and fragmented as a discipline that there are so many trends appearing all at the same time – we are all photographers now with iPhones, Instagram and free pixels and the ability to upload simultaneously. Everything is tried and pushed to the limits and then lost in the heap. The trends that I notice are mainly the way in which landscape photography has become more involved with suggesting political and environmental behavior.
The world experience has changed drastically. Its representation has evolved. Has digital become inevitable in the photographic creative process ?
Personally I waited as long as I felt there was a discrepancy between the quality of film and digital, before switching. I have honestly found that shooting digitally has added to the creative process, but allowing me to react faster and less rigidly to situations, however I strongly believe that you must employ the same rigour and technical discipline in the picture taking process as you would have done when shooting sheets of film.
Interview by Séverine Morel
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