UnScene Artists
Brendan Steele
Winner - UnScene Las Vegas 2008
Born and raised in San Diego, CA. Brendan Steele has always been interested and actively involved with anything related to art and expression. He discovered photography while spending vacations traveling on photo shoots with his uncle. From the moment he realized what could be done through the lens of a camera to the capture of an image on film, Brendan had fallen in love with photography. Photography immediately became his passion. But, as all budding artists know, you still have to pay the rent, so Brendan pursued cooking and spent the next ten years working at some of San Diego’s finest restaurants as a sous chef. Relying upon books and real life experience to learn from over the years, photography continues to encourage Brendan to teach himself as much as he can learn. Currently living in Las Vegas.
About the Work
The images in the Pleasant Ville series were shot in color and converted to B/W to portray a sense of old Vegas. I wanted to show Las Vegas in a timeless window, a window you might look through and remember Bugsy Siegel, Howard Hughes, Benny Binion, Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. I tried to give the shots the look as if they were taken with an old view camera, expressing high contrast and film grain in the final prints.
The color series is based upon HDR (high dynamic range) images and follows the principals of basic photography but bounds past the constraints of film and digitals limited range of capturing extreme exposures in the same scene. I hope to give the viewer a sense of fantasy and direct their curiosity eagerly within the scenes hidden treasures.
