VerenaWulf Visuals

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Out of the Shadows

I like the play with shadows and light, the black and white contrast. The high contrast on the photographs almost make them look painted. Details disappear, and the figures merge into the background. The empty space really draws the focus on the main figure. The only colour in the otherwise monochrome image is the red writing of the title - clearly an allusion to blood/violence, complementing the gun the protagonist holds. I think I may have found my poster inspiration!

Image available at movieposters2.com

[verenawulf-visuals]

Illusionist

I have been looking at different ways to create portraits lately, and I am hypnotized by the optical illusions that can be created. Not sure if I have the Photohop skills yet to create something like this, but it would be great for a movie poster....

Image available on Pinterest

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Portrait Collage

Came across this collage while I was actually looking for movie posters. It’s a great alternative idea for portraits - you can see the profile and the front at the same time! Your imagination fills in the gaps, it’s almost like you’re trying to figure out the person in front of you...

Image available on pinterest

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Visual Meditation

Wannerstedt - amazing motion graphics artist! His creations are mesmerizing. You could watch it for hours, it’s calming!

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Starting to look into finding inspirations for movie posters. I like how they took an iconic scene from the movie and isolated it onto a unicoloured background - the yellow clearly matches the title and gives a positive feel.

[verenawulf-visuals]

Immersing

Very cool how Rab Thanasorn (instagram @rabthanasorn) includes the typography in his images. His pictures are amazing enough as they are (great street photography!!), but including the place names gives them an extra edge.

[verenawulf-visuals]

Documenting Close to Home

Sometimes it is nice not only to look at photographs documenting places and stories from far away places, but to direct the view to things in front of your own doorsteps. Joseph-Philippe Bevillard (also @jpbevillard_colour) has been documenting the Irish Traveller Community for the past few years, and his images are stunning. It feels like through his photographs you get an insight into people’s lives, you can see their characters, and you can almost hear, feel, and smell the surroundings. 

Bevillard. Charlotte, Tipperary, 2019

Bevillard. Connors Men, Dublin, 2020

[verenawulf-visuals]

Staging the Scene Edward Hopper Style

I cannot help but be reminded of Edward Hopper’s paintings when looking at Jan Pypers’ photography. The images are staged, and the lighting is set to perfection.

Image available at janpypers.com

[verenawulf-visuals]

Activism Through Photography

Sometimes only telling people to please produce less waste, to stop destroying the planet and to respect indigenous people does not work. It seems like our brains cannot fathom concepts we have never witnessed with our own eyes.

Cristina Mittermeier is a Mexican photographer who has dedicated her life to conservation photography. She documents the beauty of our oceans and remote places the majority of people do not have access to. She is one of the founders of SeaLegacy, an organisation dedicated to protect the oceans and marine life.

I am convinced of the concept of “Seeing is believing.” We need visual support to understand a message - because we cannot imagine something we have never seen before. And photography is a powerful means to achieve that.

Cristina Mittermeier, Under Stormy Skies. Available at mitty.art

Cristina Mittermeier, Shark Love. Available at mitty.art

Her amazing work can also be found on Instagram @mitty.

[verenawulf-visuals]

Steve McCurry - Master of Documentary

The photographs of Steve McCurry are special. Everybody is familiar with his famous portrait of the Afghan Girl (1984), but the work of the National Geographic photographer did not finish after this famous shot.

Shaolin Monks Training, Zhengzhou, China, 2004. Image available at huxleyparlour.com

His images capture the world for us who cannot go to all those places ourselves. 

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Loop Animation

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A post shared by Masanobu Hiraoka (@masanobuhiraoka)

Masanobu Hiroaka, animation artist. His short animations are mesmerizing! It’s a constant flow, with one thing transforming into another, then developing into something else entirely yet.

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Dance to Communicate

Visual communication goes beyond things we create for print, video or the web. We communicate through our gestures, facial expressions and movements - which is why communication can be very difficult sometimes when using only text, because we cannot see the other person. 

One deliberate way to communicate through our movements/gestures/expressions is dance. And Mizuki Shinagawa is (for me) one of the greatest aerialists.

Anger, force, insanity, vulnerability - through movement and light. I absolutely love it.

Image available at mizuki-shinagawa.com

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Black ink and paper, that’s all @rudoi uses for his drawings. While his tools are simple, his drawings are extremely creative, sometimes surrealist. Because his choice of materials is so minimalist, his skill and technique show even more. You can even see the reflection of the plastic bag!

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I really like the drawings of Kevin Finney (@blindfish1 on Instagram). I never used to be much of a comic fan, but in recent years my appreciation for drawings, sketches and graphic novels has grown immensely.

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Image available at Vancouversun.com

The way we interpret images and especially symbols highly depends on our background, our knowledge and the context.

While the swastika is a symbol of life and luck in Hinduism, it has clearly a very different connotation with regard to German and European history.

Walking around in India as a German and seeing the swastika symbol at every other corner needed a bit of getting used to, as you can imagine.

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I love how Manga and “cute” drawings are used to educate and teach about difficult topics.

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The first time I saw Wolfgang Tillmans’s photography was actually here in Dublin, in the IMMA.

He is famous for capturing night life and the club scene and shooting scenes of intimacy and vulnerability. He brings images to light that usually remain in the dark. 

Detail of Love (Hands in the Air), 1989. Available at phaidon.com

Though one could argue that technically many of his photographs are not great, they do, however, grant the viewer admission into a part of a life they would usually not have access to.

And some of his images capture you in a way you cannot turn away from, because they reveal such closeness and intimacy you get the impression you share the emotions with the subject in the image.

Wolfgang Tillmanns, Frank Ocean. Available at reddit.com