An ex-military photographer, Aaron Ansarov retired from the Navy in 2007, transforming his skills to create commercial work for magazines and focus on his own practice. Fascinated with marine life since his days growing up in Central Florida, his series “Zooids,” focuses on detailed images of Portuguese Man o’ War. Ansarov photographs the creatures on a homemade light table while alive, then immediately releases them back into the wild where they were found.
Once shot and the Man o’ War are returned, each image receives minimal manipulation, as Ansarov makes only slight adjustments to the photograph’s exposure, contrast, and vibrancy to highlight the vivid details of each venomous siphonophore. The completed works are otherworldly, appearing like alien illustrations rather than portraits, with deep blues, purples, and pinks unfurling in every direction.
As if that wasn’t impressive enought, Ansarov does some amazing work with humans, too, which you can see after the jump, because naked people. NSFW.
Via Colossal Art. There’s a whole lot to see and wonder over at Ansarov Studios. The Behind the Scenes page for the Man o’ War is here.
Yes, naked people. But totally not erotisized. The short video on the site you linked was interesting. I was not sure from the picture above whether that was real people or mannequins. I would rate the nudity here similarly to Greek or Roman sculptures of nudes: a celebration of the human body.
Yes, it’s a celebration of the body human, but still, I wouldn’t want anyone to get into hot water at work because I chose to be indiscreet. I would say that a number of the Human Spectrum series are erotic, deeply so. Nothing wrong with that. Ansarov is pretty clear in his statement:
I’m more focused on his willingness to play with Portuguese Man o’ Wars. Yikes. That brave, well, I don’t think I’m quite there.
A work of art in its own right, is the man-o’-war. It’s shape and colours lend themselves well to photography, and I’m impressed with the close-ups.
The naked people were nice, too.
I love the colors! So rich and saturated!!
That man-o-war is, indeed, Shiny.
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I have, in my mind, a vision of a Christmas tree—the top ornament is a ctenophore with the “running lights” going (like some of these, here, and the ornaments hanging from the boughs are jellyfish in a variety of colors. LEDs would be involved.
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Putzing around with a Portuguese Man-O-War strikes me to be about as hazardous as working in a virology lab. Don’t slip up.
BY the way -- not that I am criticizing the photographer who shot that at all … It’s pretty easy to do that kind of stuff. You go to e-plastics and order a 4’x4′ sheet of white lucite, and an LED light softbox, then set the lucite on a pair of sawhorses with the softbox underneath, pointing up. Then you put your camera on a boom clamp (or just lean over the man ‘o war!) and fire straight down. Modern digital cameras are so good, you really don’t need to worry about exposure at all. Pretty much anything semi-translucent can look amazing in that set-up.
Now I want to go shoot some prosciutto art.