Photographer #108: Eric Ogden

Eric Ogden, USA, 1971, is best known for his music and celebrity portraiture. Kevin Bacon, Penelope Cruz, Green Day and Kanye West amongst others have all appeared in front of his camera. He is currently working on a new book with portraiture and landscape photography of his hometown. Earlier the book American Character: A Photographic Journey was released. The following images come from his portfolio's Celebrities, Portraits + Stories and Music.

Website: www.ericogden.com

Photographer #107: Sarah Sudhoff

Sarah Sudhoff, USA, 1977, is currently working on a series called At the Hour of our Death and 2217. 2217 features four individuals with Neurofibromatosis. It causes tumors to grow throughout the body and she hopes to raise awareness and compassion when the viewer studies the nearly life size images. In her series Repository, which she also self-published as a book in 2009, she took photographs of herself and the surroundings of hospitals, morgues, medical museums and her doctor's offices. Sarah started this project after her surgery for cervical cancer. In the series At the Hour of our Death, she takes pictures of textiles that show the signs of someone passing away. The following images come from At the Hour of  our Death, Hysteria and Repository.

Website: www.sarahsudhoff.com

Photographer #106: Dominic Rouse

Dominic Rouse, Great-Britain, 1959, is a photographer who has to take several steps before he has his final prints. Dominic shoots his images on colour transparancy material, which then get scanned into the computer with a drum scanner in order to manipulate and add several components in a programm called Imaginator. When finished the file is then exposed to black and white negative material (basically scanning in reverse) using a film recorder. With this final negative his detailed, mysterious and story-telling images are made into prints.

Webste: www.dominicrouse.com

Photographer #105: Simon Norfolk

Simon Norfolk, Great-Britain, 1963, focuses on war and all the consequences that come from it. Instead of showing us the horrors in bloody manors, he chooses to make stunning photographs that look at the aftermaths, the belongings people have lost and the technology behind the wars. In his series Archaeological Teasures from the Tigris Valley he performed excavations at battlefield sites and photographed the objects found in an improvised studio on site. The following images come from the series Afghanistan: Chronotopia, Archaeological Treasures from the Tigris Valley and The LHC: The Spirit of Enquiry.

Website: www.simonnorfolk.com

Photographer #104: Bernd Preiml

Bernd Preiml, Austria, 1973, makes photographs that look like dark and sinister fairy tales. His images contain both magic and mystery, they are haunting like a beautiful nightmare. He uses this in his own projects aswell as in fashion and editorial shoots. His style roots from growing up in the mountanous region outside of Vienna where folk tales were told about ancient creatures who inhabit the forests. Next to photography Preiml is also working with video. See a video by Bernd below. The following photographs come from "...it even has a Giant in it!", Sisters and Below.

Website: www.berndpreiml.net

Photographer #103: Viviane Sassen

Dutch photographer Viviane Sassen, 1972, released her monograph Flamboya in 2009. The book combines photographs taken in various African countries. It is a mix of spontaneous and staged photography. She is taken by the appearance or behaviour of the people she encounters. Often one sees a play of shadow and light, where heads might be completely in the dark. In other images she uses objects to cover parts of her subjects body. She uses this style aswell in her fashion and commercial work. She has worked for clients such as Diesel and Miu Miu. The following images come from the series Ultra Violet, Flamboya and Realm.

Website: www.vivianesassen.com

Photographer #102: Michael Najjar

German photographer Michael Najjar, 1966, focuses in his photography on the notion of our society being "driven and controlled by computers and information technology." He made many impressive series throughout his career. In his most recent series, High Altitude, he went to 7000 meters altitude in the Andes to photograph mountains, only to combine them with the statistics of the Nasdaq or the Dow Jones and thus visualizing the development of the leading global stock market. The series Bionic Angel deals with the technological control of human evolution. Netropolis is about the development of cities in the future. These images are a combination of twelve hybrid photographies, one videowork and one image sculpture. Following images come from the three series described above.

Website: www.michaelnajjar.com

Photographer #101: Gal Harpaz

Gal Harpaz, Israel, 1971, is a photographer that uses polaroids to make his long and stretched images. Gal calls these images Polaramas which are several polaroids put together to make one image. Besides using this technique when travelling around the world, he also uses it on probably his most precious subject; his son Theo. His son is not only in many of his Polaramas, but also in a series called Theo-Roids where he documents the life of Theo. In his series Wood, he makes stories with polaroids, mounted on wood and laquered. The following images come from Polaramas: Los Angeles, Travel and Theo and from Wood.

Website: www.galharpaz.com

Photographer #100: Tim Simmons

Tim Simmons, Great-Britain, 1955, is a photographer producing large-scale landscape images. He works on a large format camera with artificial lighting, which gives the images a surreal, other worldly quality. His work has been exhibited and published extensively in recent years. The body of work he has developed over the last ten years is the result of a personal exploration of landscape in the context of the profound mystery of our existence. The following images come from the series Quarry, Snow and Arizona.

Website: www.timsimmons.co.uk

Photographer #099: Heimo Schmidt

Austrian photographer Heimo Schmidt, 1967, currently lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA. He has worked for a large number of clients throughout his career and has appeared in numerous publications. In his series Iceland Schmidt has made a visuel reinterpretation of Icelandic culture's ancient mythology and epic Norse tales also known as "Sagas." The following images come from his Portraits portfolio and the series Iceland and 17 Reasons.

Website: www.heimophotography.com

Swifts in an Attic

2000 pairs of Pallid Swifts breed each year in Gibraltar. They are the great masters of the air, only coming down to breed. These birds spend their lives in the air where they catch airborne insects - they live off aerial plankton.

They arrive at the end of February and leave in October, some staying into November. So they're not away for long and they don't go too far either. Most winter in the Sahel region, south of the Sahara. Breeding usually starts as soon as it gets warm and varies from year to year. First clutches average three eggs and second clutches two eggs. Once the first brood fledges many pairs return to the nest for the second brood of the year. This is unusual among swifts. Common Swifts, even in these latitudes, raise only a single brood.

All swifts have a problem when the time to moult arrives. Spending most of their time on the wing, they need to moult the flight feathers slowly. It takes a long time. Pallid Swifts starting a second clutch, in late July and August, cannot wait until they raise their young to moult. Once the young are fledged they have to migrate. They live on the limit. So they have to start wing moult while breeding. Notice the adult on the right (above) has started moulting the inner primaries (which look darker).

But before they can start a second time they have to encourage the first generation out of the nest holes. A juvenile Pallid Swift (above) peeps out wondering what the fuss (below) is all about!

Juveniles (above and below) are easily recognised by their scaly plumage, primaries and wing coverts having pale edges. Notice the large eyes, ideal for spotting insects in mid-air.

The task of feeding chicks requires special consideration when you spend your life in the air. Swifts collect insects in their wide mouths and bring back large food balls, glued by saliva, which may contain several hundred insects at a time. This technique reduces on travel time to and from the nest and also allows the adults to range widely away from the nest in search of food.

 They are the masters of the air, experts at catching small insects and hunting in packs, like wolves or orcas.

And their streamlined bodies, millions of years of evolution, are perfect for the job

Photographer #098: Jónatan Grétarsson

Jónatan Grétarsson, Iceland, 1979, is a portrait photographer. In 2002 he moved to New York to study at the International Center of Photography. Currently he is working on a long term project called Icelandic Artists in which he portrayed well-known contemporary artists from Iceland. The artists are from all areas of the arts and photographed in black and white with strong contrast. The following images come from Icelandic Artists, Faces and Theater.

Website: www.jonatangretarsson.com

Photographer #097: Nazif Topçuoğlu

Nazif Topçuoglu, 1953, is a Turkish photographer. He has a masters degree in photography and in architecture. He predominantly makes photographs of staged young women set in period backdrops and engaged in a variety of symbolic actions and roles. His consistency has lead his work to appear at major art fairs such as Paris Photo. The following images come from shoots he has done between 2008 and 2010 and the last photographs below are from the series Curiosity & Experience 2004-2007.

Website: www.naziftopcuoglu.com

Photographer #096: Josef Hoflehner

Josef Hoflehner, Austria, 1955, is a landscape photographer. Josef shoots black and white images traveling all over the world from Dubai to China and from the USA to Iceland. He has a large number of books published throughout his career. In 2009 his book Jet Airliner came out. Bizarre photographs of airplanes flying over people and streets while landing at St. Maartens, Dutch West Indies. Also in 2009 a book called China was published. The following images are from the series Jet Airliner, China and California.

Website: www.josefhoflehner.com