Artworks by Tom Hanslien

Colour and adventure awaits - explore with me.
 
I will fill your home or workspace with a splash of colour as you travel and explore through my photographs. It's my aim to liven up your home or work-place with my images captured around the world, evoking the urge to go and explore other countries and cultures for yourself. I hope my photographs will ignite a spark of curiosity to explore beyond their current situation and location whether by travelling, researching or both. I want to inspire people to immerse themselves in other cultures and build an understanding of others customs and habits.
 
I enjoy a big love for travelling - and sharing stories of my impressions of places and cultures trough my colourful images, which not only takes me around the world with many great new images as a result, but as a London-based freelance photographer it's also a continuing source of inspiration which influences and feeds my passion for photography.
 
With a background that started with drawing and illustration, which in turn lead to graphic design I believe the foundation of the way I compose my captures is very much affected by this. I often look for very graphic compositions with strong or straight lines, large areas of impacting colour, negative space and pushing the boundaries of traditional rules of composition.
 There is also a different approach to the way I like capturing my images when it comes to more travel reportage images. Still looking to isolate my subject, either by using shallow focus, leading lines, concentration of light, picking out splashes of colour, and other techniques. Most images are very much as a spectator, fly on the wall if you like - I generally don't like posed images. I feel I get a truer picture when I don't interfere, but also I'm not hiding in the distance with a tele-lens - I like to be close to my subjects in plain sight.
 
I think my passion for photography was triggered very early when my parents got themselves a new compact camera to take family snaps. I remember one Easter fighting my brother for the use of it and running into the barn of the farm where we were staying for the holidays and taking photos of the sheep. I doubt very much they came out very well, but I distinctly remember the excitement of taking the photos. It also tickled my curiosity when I was given the old mechanical range-finder camera that had stopped working so I could play around with taking it apart, examining all the various parts that made it up.