All posts filed under: Community

Spotlight On: Jean Cazals

The Art of Food Photography Foodie Craze In the last decade, food photography has accrued a cult-like following, thanks in part to digital platforms such as Instagram. The meals once recounted on personal blogs (think Nora Ephron’s film, Julia and Julie) have now been replaced with imagery of one’s breakfast, frothy cappuccinos in southern Italy, or the perfect slice of pizza in some dilapidated Brooklyn borough. You get the picture. No stranger to this is Jean Cazals, a French food and lifestyle photographer based in London. For the past 35 years, Cazals has photographed food after 10 years of shooting portraiture, witnessing all its trends and guises, or what he refers to as the “fashion of food.” “I originally wanted to be a heart surgeon,” said Cazals from his Notting Hill home base of London, “But I did not have the grades, and my parents urged me to explore something else, which then led me to photography.” The visceral element of Cazals’ ambitions to be a doctor permeates much of his work. His unconventional approach …

Spotlight On: Bryan Minear

For this week’s Spotlight On feature, we spoke to veteran brand ambassador Bryan Minear about how his work as a fine art and landscape photographer has evolved, the perks of fatherhood, and his views on the marriage between technology and art. He’s a dad and husband first – two fundamental qualities to understanding how Minear thinks about the state of play and the media landscape today. It also seems to act as a sort of compass for where Minear’s energy goes in the creative world; these days, perhaps best encapsulated within 280 characters on that other social platform photographers have been rediscovering in the wake of Instagram’s pivot to video. More on that to come. But it’s there–maybe rebelliously–where the mid-thirties Minear starts to sound in a way that betrays his age but sets him apart from his peers. He shares his work, sure, but also his mind. And on Twitter, people tend to read more and give more gravitas to words than a caption on Instagram. Fittingly, Minear has recently used Twitter as the …

Spotlight On: Kristina Varaksina

For Russian-born photographer Kristina Varaksina, upending the traditional perceptions of female beauty continues to underscore her work as a conceptual photographer. Based in London, the Capture One Ambassador also doubles as an educator and commercial photographer. The Capture One team sat down with Varaksina to hear about her journey and why she thinks photography is the most powerful medium today. The Beginning “As a child, I liked drawing,” said Kristina Varaksina from her studio in London. “I liked all kinds of art and went to a children’s art school in Russia. I also loved painting and anything creative, really. So naturally, I began to think how I could make this my profession.” Like so many young artists, Varaksina’s parents encouraged her to explore the creative industry’s more practical and financially lucrative side. “My parents thought you need to have something a bit more solid,” she said, laughing. “They said that I should become a designer or an architect or something like that.” So, it was no surprise that later, Varaksina found herself in architecture school, …

Spotlight On: Jan Wischermann

The Art of Retouching Jan Wischermann may be new to the Capture One Brand Ambassador program, but he is no stranger to the multi-faceted every evolving world of images. Since the ripe age of 17 years old, the Düsseldorf-based creative has always had a fascination for images, particularly image manipulation. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that he is a full-time retoucher, but his journey to retouching for Elle and Harper’s Bazaar took some time. We spoke to him about his experience from graphic designer to art director and now retoucher. The Beginning It all began with two teenage boys playing an NHL-themed video game and deciding to create their own personalized jersey. “I was 17 and already keen on manipulating images,” said Wischermann, “Since we could not have our own style of shirt, we decided that we had to find the graphic files, and once we found them, we downloaded them and manipulated the images to create our own.” Wischermann’s passion for image manipulation was born. “I was utterly fascinated by the fact …