What is it about photography and digital art that you love?
With photography I love how it is almost a way of viewing the world. When I'm working and really into what I'm doing I kind of get lost in the ideas and really start to connect with the moment, moving around a place and waiting for the position and the moment which capture how a place feels. When I know I'm on form is when I most feel connected to the landscape, and it's a good feeling. I think with digital art the thing I love is the power to take reality and remix it. Using elements of the real world to build something from my imagination, when I was a kid I used to love the movies and imagining stories, so it's a buzz to now have a job which involves me taking these imaginings and making them real(or real'ish)
Where do you usually find your inspiration?
From a few places, I like to feed in from as many art forms as possible, I love going to city galleries and seeing the old romantic oil painted landscape. I like the cinema, and I think I try to capture the spectacle of Hollywood movies in my work. I also read quite a lot about the subjects in my work, hopefully this feeds into the ideas in the pictures.
Do you experiment on using other mediums or techniques?
I try to experiment with other types of image making, I do quite a lot of motion video work, always trying to keep the same kind of feel as my stills work here's a good example
I also occasionally make oil paintings based on my pictures, here's one http://www.andrewbrooksphotography.com/image.php?ID=172 I think working in these other mediums give me a different take on the photography and post production work, just working with paint colors and images in a timeline means I can play the same kind of games as I do in my pictures but in a way that I am not so familiar with.
Achievement your most proud of?
I think getting to a position where I can support myself whilst working on almost 100% creative and interesting briefs, and also having time to put weeks into my personal work. It's been a few years coming but it's good to have this kind of freedom and it feels like it really gives me time to develop my style of photography.
Do you have any creative rituals to help you come up with a concept?
I come up with most of my ideas when I'm not thinking to directly about them, I listen to audiobooks as I work, this seems to take up a chunk of my attention, leaving what's left to work away at the pictures, sometime not really aware of where I'm heading with them. Also for some strange reason I usually get new ideas or refine ideas when I'm in the shower. From photography to digital art, how do you manage to blend so many different scenes together to create one consistent whole? My background is photography, from there I learnt about digital art. I think this means I have a strong understanding of exposure and how to go about capturing elements that have enough detail be transformed, altered and played with yet still have the quality to drop into the large composites.
Is there a particular experience that influences how you approach your craft? What was it?
I think working in a professional photographic studio for 8 years was very important to my craft, the work was not exactly where I wanted to end up, being photography for catalogs and simple advertising, but I did learn how to create finished and polished images for clients day after day. Also the company I worked for invested in really good digital camera setup early on, so this gave me a great opportunity to work with good quality cameras and photoshop for 8 hours a day, which is the best way of learning and getting a natural feel for digital image making.
Atlantis, Ifach and Observatory are very serene yet stunning sceneries. What were your inspiration for these?
I think these grew out of the strange landscapes I visited, Ifach, was the first, and was from a place called Calpe in Spain(See link below) which has a town and a large rock out to sea, I shot the rock from down in the town, then climbed the rock with my dad and shot the town from high up, I then joined the two images, flipping the rock so it sits under the town, so it is kind of one place, but reconstructed. The others grew in similar ways, and I am always on the look out for new landscapes to continue the series of images.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Ndo&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=ifach+calpe&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&biw=1280&bih=622&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi
Ifach
Observatory
Atlantis
Are you working on any new series now?
At the moment I am putting the finishing touches on two long term project, one is creating a series of landscape images to illustrate classical concerts for the BBC philharmonic, the other it another secret cities project, looking at the hidden spaces in the Dutch town of Zoetermeer, here's some previous secret city project images from Manchester and Edinburgh.
Any message for our readers?
I think it's an exciting time for digital image making, with quite affordable computer and camera equipment it's now really possible to create very high end images, and also you can be very experimental with how the images are made. So much of my work has grown out of simple experiments and ideas, its just about taking the time to explore the possibilities.
Manchester-based Andrew Brooks is a photographer, digital artist and film-maker who brings different sceneries together to create a stunning art. He is known for "jigsawing multiple shots" to create his own world. This interview will let you take a peek into the inner workings of this talented artist.
