Bio
Los Angeles photographer Patrick Bolton was born in Somerset, England. He started making and projecting slides under the bedclothes when he was ten.After graduating from the University of Wolverhampton, England, with a degree in Fine Art, Patrick taught video and photography workshops in England, Ireland and Scotland for several years, before relocating to California.
Patrick's photography can be found in several personal collections worldwide, and has recently won two awards: the first from Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, the second the 2009 International Photography Awards Fine Art Landscape.
Having been a landscape photographer for over 20 years, be claims the activity of long exposure photography at night, under vast skies, in unknown places, invokes elements of meditation; "After getting set up, a lot of time is spent simply waiting, counting the seconds, noticing slight changes," Bolton says.
Statement
I seek out and shoot extraordinary mixtures of light. I gravitate toward blends of fluorescentnand tungsten with little or no manipulation beyond color balance retouching.Photographing in available light at night, I scout scenes that elicit stillness born through insomnia and use long exposure in an attempt to increase receptivity of the sublime through the banal.
The practice of landscape photography for me is Romantic tradition in the sense of big nature/little human. The mechanics of image-capture renders atmospheres more dreamlike than real, their look nostalgic and unearthly.
My themes include structures dealing with water, from transportation to preservation. These public works appear emblematic of civilization at the climax of imperial success and are often in a process of decay or reclamation by nature.