©NASA/JPL-Caltech/Michael Benson/Kinetikon Pictures

By digging through the online image archives of various space probe missions, photographer and filmmaker, Michael Benson, has compiled his third collection of planetary landscape photography. The images–many of them close-ups of the surfaces of moons, asteroids and Mars–offer an awe-inspiring look at the desolate places that were once only imagined by science fiction writers and filmmakers. Benson photographs the black-and-white images through various filters to render the scenes in color, then he layers the images with a complicated compositing process. Going through the RAW images, he says, “is like being along for the ride. There’s a lot of panning for gold in the archives, which I really enjoy. And if you’re lucky you get something really unusual. You just sort of know it when you see it.” Shown above is a Cassini space probe image from January 18, 2005, showing the moon Mimas in transit across the northern hemisphere of Saturn. The images are among a collection published in Planetfall (Abrams) last October, and will be on view at the Hasted Kraeutler gallery in New York City today through March 9.  To learn more about Benson’s work, read the Q+A with him from the November 2012 issue of PDN. (more…)

© Nick Brandt. Courtesy Hasted Kraeutler.

“What I am interested in is showing the animals simply in the state of being. In the state of being before they are ‘no longer are.’ Before, in the wild at least, they cease to exist. This world is under terrible threat, all of it caused by us. To me, every creature, human or nonhuman, has an equal right to live, and this feeling, this belief that every animal and I are equal, affects me every time I frame an animal in my camera. The photos are my elegy to these beautiful creatures, to this wrenchingly beautiful world that is steadily, tragically, vanishing before our eyes.” – Nick Brandt

Brandt does not use telephoto lenses because he believes that being close to the animals makes a huge difference in his ability to reveal their personality. He writes: “You wouldn’t take a portrait of a human being from a hundred feet away and expect to capture their spirit; you’d move in close.” After this photograph was taken in 2007, this elephant was murdered by poachers. Nick Brandt began the Big Life Foundation in 2010 to better equip rangers who enforce anti-poaching laws in Amboseli National Park. Nick Brandt is represented by Hasted Kraeutler gallery in New York City.

All Photos © Nathan Harger/Hasted Kraeutler. Untitled (Factory Wall 13), Elizabeth, NJ, 2009.

Photographer Nathan Harger’s  stark images of architectural and urban infrastructure are on view at Hasted Kraeutler in New York until January 29, 2011. He says these days, taking photos of subjects like these can be tricky.  “In the past eight months I’ve been stopped by 8 security guards, 5 law officers and detained once by Homeland Security,” Harger says.

He’s learned to be prepared. “The best thing you can do is carry around some form of identification and any publication you were in. If you don’t have that, bring a portfolio with examples of your work. Also have your own business cards and the business cards of the gallery that represents you, photo agent or your employer so they can call to verify who you are.”

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