Jack Brauer is a landscape photographer with a passion for large scale nature scenery and photography. He’s originally from Ridgeway Colorado, and is a resident of Ouray, Colorado. This is near the San Juan Mountains. Brauer attended the University of Colorado and obtained his BFA in Printmaking. He has traveled across the world to cultivate his vast portfolio of photos, but the ones presented here are from the southern mountain ranges in California. 

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      Mountain ranges are predominantly the driving force for his passion in photography. He takes most of his photos in the wilderness. Back in his college days, he would go along backpacking trips with his friends and bring his camera with him to take photos. Nowadays, he is more calculated with the trails he pursues and the goals he wishes to achieve. Typically, to prepare for a shoot, he backpacks upon unexplored trails and remote areas. He first immerses himself within nature. Brauer chooses to take pictures of mountain ranges as a homage to the challenges faced upon his excursions that he takes within nature. The mountains are symbolic to those challenges. Brauer is also drawn to grand, landscapes, that are captivating both in scale and in the vibrancy of color. He feels strongly about taking photographs that are natural renditions of natural scenes. This means that he does not use any sort of photoshop, digital enhancing methods, etc. 

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Brauers photography style is to play around with the exposure, contrasts, colors, shadows, and highlights of the scenery. He also likes to highlight clarity and vibrancy. Brauer makes a deep effort preserves the “natural” aesthetic of his nature photography by leaving them unedited. A lot of his older work was captured using a Tachihara 4x5 large format film wooden field camera, with a focal length Schneider and Nikkor Lense attached to it. Currently, He has shifted to a Sony A7Rii 42mp digital camera with a Sony 24-1055mm zoom lens and Canon tilt/shift prime wide angle lenses.

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     These photos fit into the gallery because they are pictures taken of natural scenery of the Sierra Mountain ranges in the southern regions of California. Although Brauer has an array of photographs of different nature scenes, I chose to pick shoots that he took of mountain scenes. One common theme amongst his photos are that they are typically split into two parts. Brauer seems to enjoy making the texture and color palettes contrasts, between the mountains and their surroundings, very apparent. It's almost as if his photos are split in half. In some of his photos, the mountain ranges grainy texture and rich color variance will be highlighted. This would be juxtaposed to the surroundings, which are smooth in texture, and uniform in colorway. 

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