Richard Martin

Based in Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Out of Chicago Instructor
Photo Life magazine contributor, Workshop leader.
Richard Martin is a long-time contributor to Photo Life magazine and pursues photography as a medium of visual expression. He is best known for his unique vision with a personal style characterized by a strong sense of composition, colour, and the use of light. His work combines an architectural love of geometry, pattern and texture with a painter's sensitivity to the creative art of executing aesthetic. Richard inspires participants with his photography and visual design workshops, tours, and seminars around the world.
"My photography is a celebration of the visual world. It originates straight from the heart, honest and direct. Inspired by colour, texture and light, I make photographs to express feelings surrounding my experiences, searching for visual equivalents to those feelings."
VISION
Moving beyond literal representation, I view line and shape in a highly graphic manner, with a fascination for the dramatic effects of light and shadow on form. One of the unique properties of photography that excites me is its spontaneity, its ability to capture a transient moment. A moment of discovery becomes a moment of rediscovery when the subject is viewed through the lens. In this way photography becomes a simultaneous act of intuition, feeling and recording.
The quality of light plays an important role in my image making, with its capacity to transform the commonplace into the poetic and render the real as mystical and surreal. My approach to photography is simple. I value the unexpected and remain open to new ideas and exploring new directions. The process of making photographs and afterwards translating the image to print, has always been an act of transformation from the literal to the imagined, and from the seen to the felt.