Subscribers 4×4 Portfolios

Matthew Bender

Matthew has been a commercial photographer for almost ten years. With an interest in both natural and man-altered landscapes, his concentration has shifted to fine art work. He has had work included in both gallery and museum exhibitions.

matthewbenderphoto.com

Roger Voller

Landscape photographer enthusiast based in Hampshire, England. I enjoy exploring my local areas and taking pictures for the love of it. There is always something around the corner.

rogervoller.com

Scott Rae

My name is Scott Rae, and I'm finally starting to take my landscape photographer more seriously. I'm born and bred in Peebles in the Scottish Borders and I'm now based in Honiton, Devon.

scott-rae.com

Yoav Friedlander

I grew up in the valleys of the Judean Desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. I am native to Israel but uprooted from my past. After High School I’ve joined the Israeli army for a mandatory service of 3 years.

yoavfriedlander.com

Our 4x4 feature is a set of four mini portfolios from our subscribers, each consisting of four images related in some way. If you would like to submit your own 4x4 portfolio please visit this page for submission information. Please click the images to view them full size.

Matthew Bender

With my maternal grandmother's family having emigrated from Scotland in the 1800's, the country, it's history, and it's people have always had a strong familiar pull for me. Upon traveling to Scotland in the winter of 2015, in an attempt to thoroughly experience the people, culture, and land, I chose to remain in one place, on the Isle of Lewis and Harris in the remote Hebridean Islands. I remained on the island for three weeks, in the country for four.

The Hebrides are an ancient, lonely, quiet place. With history stretching back through Celt, Norse, and Neolithic peoples, pre-historic structures dot the landscape. There are few trees to break up the stretches of moorland. Mountains and hills and bogs and peat stretch for miles. Sustained wind speeds routinely top 40+ mph. When confronted by the disquieting scale and silence of this landscape, this dramatic land defies even the most basic of human attempts to control perspective, and gain control.

Nightfall only serves to amplify this sense of robust immutability - as if the land is, while not necessarily fighting, merely disinterested in accommodating man. Through this project, entitled 'Na h-Eileanan' ('The Isles' in Scottish Gaelic), I have used the darkness and the technique of light-painting to distill this ancient land down to it's most basic of topographical elements, while also calling to mind the long, mysterious, and sometimes even unknowable history of the islands themselves.

Roger Voller

Making a stand

This group of pictures was taken on my first trip to Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire with the camera. The National Trust have kindly allowed visitors full access being fence-free, to get close and personal providing intimate views and 360 deg compositional opportunities at every step. This opportunity inevitable grew into this collection covering different angles around the stones. There is no 'best side'.

Interesting cloudscapes moved fast across this Neolithic land during the exposures and reminded me these grounded stones have seen many days pass when they were erected some 4500 years ago. Presented in black and white to fulfil the stones physical characteristics that come into their own.

Scott Rae

And I didn't even leave the house

Sometimes nature just makes it easy for you, and instead of having to go searching for the light, it comes to your door! All 4 images (and quite a few others!) were taken from the same door in my house in Honiton over the 6 year period I've lived here.

Being west facing and overlooking the Otter valley and rolling East Devon countryside, sunsets can be truly spectacular and the views never fail to make me smile! I try not to let it make me too lazy.

Yoav Friedlander

A Form of View

My work presents the chaotic perception of an "Americanized Israeli"; composed of mediated American culture, desert landscapes, and war, which is an integral part of my life.

I mix scale models with straight photographs, both of Israel and the US, and I form a conjunction between two different cultures and sets of geographical locations. I am relying on pre-existing images when photographing, as I am aware that I cannot reverse the influence of those images on my vision.

The miniatures are recreations of places I don't have physical access to: memories, and images of places and spaces that I saw through photographs. I make them with the intent that they will echo the realism of the original and bare the illusion of the photograph.

All of my landscapes are shot from the same standpoint, the margins of the road. They are only as far as I can see. While in Israel I'm adapted to see the landscape from the viewpoint of a car, always ready for quick escape, in the U.S. I'm bound to the same position only due to the privatisation of the land. The images I make form the illusion I'm roaming the land and fully accessing it.

At times we find ourselves considering what is real to be different from how it should be according to its own image. It seems as if ever since the invention of the photograph, reality has become augmented by its own image.

My Grandfather Kurt fled Austria immediately to Israel after the Kristallnacht, was a British Brigades soldier during WWII and later served in the Israeli Army. I grew up in the valleys of the Judean Desert between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. I am native to Israel but uprooted from my past.