Till Erdmenger – Businessfotos | Blog

While surfing the Luminous Landscape´s homepage I stumbled across a post on the „Ten Movies Every Photographer Should See“. As I was upon to look for a relaxing evening in front of my TV, that sounded interesting. I have to admit I was a bit ashamed, but I never saw or even heard of the movies pointed out in that list. What I understood is the choice was based on artistic, cinematographic photography used in the films. Interestingly, I also found a long discussion on Flickr regarding the Luminous´ list. Though I found some movies within there I once saw and would agree to have been filmed in a nice style, I got the feeling that the Flickr-discussion was more on favourites but on „photography-related“ movies.

I´d like to add a few movies which are more entertaining and even closer to the photography topic. Roger Spottiswoode´s 1983 „Under Fire“ is my favourite. Nick Nolte plays a photojournalist covering the civil war in Nicaragua in 1979. Whenever my motivation fades to keep shooting photos I watch this film 😉

Obviously there are a lot more great movies with photographers as the protagonist. A very well known is „Blow-up„, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni in 1966. IMDb sums up: „A London fashion photographer frolics with young models, then meets the mysterious Vanessa Redgrave. He takes a photo in a park. Back in his darkroom as he enlarges it, he sees a suggestion of something in the photo he never noticed while taking it. Has a crime occurred?“

Another „classic“ is the 1954 Hitchcock „Rear Window“ with James Steward spying into his neighbour´s windows with his tele-lens.

There is a strange movie I´d like to mention with Robin Williams as a psycho working at a photo-lab („One Hour Photo„) and something named „Legacy„, a film featuring Mr. Baywatch Hasselhoff (again, IMDb points it out: „She’s Cute, He’s Bad, and it falls short… but the scenery rocks!“). Better forget about those…

A Documentary I found really impressive is „War Photographer“ about James Nachtwey. The Director of this film managed to mount a small video-cam onto Nachtwey´s camera so the viewer kind of looks „through the eyes“ of the photographer. You really should try to watch this one!

If you know more interesting, funny or entertaining movies like this, please leave a comment! Eventually I´ll also write a post on books published and written by photographers so if you know any, please share that knowledge with me. Thanks.