Olympus Visionary Gary Crallé

Travel photographer Gary Crallé has visited over 60 countries and has a unique global awareness of geographic, socioeconomic and political conditions. His photographic career was nurtured on small newspapers, grew into portrait, commercial, public relations and corporate work, and then finally into stock photography based largely on travel. Crallé enjoys taking personal license with reality, looking for highly graphic images with the eyes of either a photojournalist or a painter with camera—sometimes both. Behind much of his imagery is an idea—a concept, often with a universal chord—much larger than the image itself, but illustrated by it.

Crallé’s work has been published in Time, National Geographic, Vogue and Travel + Leisure magazines, and his stock photography is represented by The Image Bank.

Visionary Perspective

Crallé says that he likes “to concentrate on what is good for the body and soul [culture & gastronomy, health & leisure] and what enables us to appreciate our environment [the visual arts, urban & wilderness travel, self-discovery/adventure].” Crallé not only tells stories with his photos, but also with words. He proactively gathers story material from around the world for use in his own articles, most recently along the Great Wall of China.

Up Next: Crallé is currently working on a long-term project called American Ways, in which he aims to document American icons with a fresh, contemporary twist.

In His Own Words

“I shot this image with an Olympus E-330 camera and a Zuiko 14-54mm f/2.8 to 3.5 lens fully extended to 54mm. This made it equivalent to the traditional 35mm film-format ‘portrait lens,’ with proportions that give a pleasing perspective for a medium close-up portrait (and in a sense, this was a portrait). I closed down to f/16 to get everything from the tip of Lincoln’s foot to the back of the maquette in focus. At ISO 100, my exposure was one second without any compensation in order to record full shadow detail from the studio’s north light. I’ve found that digital capture gathers more detail than film in available light situations, and a tripod lets me take full advantage of this.

“What strikes me about the image is its monochrome simplicity. The tonal range is from off-white to dark gray–a testimony to Honest Abe’s simplicity. Most pictures of the Washington, D.C., memorial tend to be straightforward shots, but here, at the source of creation, I wanted to show something more.”

Olympus Visionaries

The Olympus Visionary program celebrates the work of some of the most talented still photographers of the day. Olympus works with 25 artists that shoot a range of subject matter, including travel and documentary, fashion, food, people and places, nature and landscapes, street, commercial and fine art.