Its the last day of the year and I’d like to bless you all with some eye candy. Flickr user Ragstatic is one of my favorite contacts. He shoots with the mighty full-frame Nikon D700, and almost exclusively in super wide angles. Rags shoots mostly landscapes primarily in India and Southeast Asia. He is a master of composition, and manages to process High Dynamic Range very tastefully, often from a single exposure. But forget all the nerdy stuff, this guy produces some of the most awe-inspiring images I’ve ever seen. The colors are always bright and vibrant, but never feel overly saturated. Rags firmly understands how to make his camera and post-processing software see what the human eye sees and beyond. This is the caliber of images that grace the pages of high profile publications.
And why are we westerners drawn to these images? For the same reason easterners are enchanted by pictures of our big cities. New York has grown bland and dull to me over the year because I’ve been here my whole life, but to a kid in India, a shot of Times Square is like a window to another world. But I would say the effect if even more considerable for us looking into Ragstatic’s world. It’s just a numbers game if you think about it. Some of the lands that Rags visits don’t even have electricity, let alone people lugging around 5-pound dSLRs. Pictures of remote destinations are harder to come by, and seldom seen. The grass on his side of the fence is not only greener, but infinitely more abundant.
I urge you to visit Rags’ Photostream and get lost in a dream world for a few minutes. You’ll be glad you did.
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