He looks for the path less traveled

Photographer Robert Sullivan (and some friends).
Photo by Al Diaz

He's gone around the world for his amazing photography and is now presenting his work right here at home this weekend at the Mad Hatter Arts Festival. Meet photographer Robert Sullivan.

Although he enjoys and excels in many genres of photography, he is most known for his fine art landscapes and his unique dance images.

Robert shares his expertise by conducting local and destination workshops, instructing other photographers in several areas of photography including nature, landscape, and remote-triggered off camera flash photography. 

He has lived in the Miami area for almost 30 years and has been a Grove resident again for the last three years.  For his second time, he is living on his sailboat. He lost his first sailboat home during Hurricane Andrew.

His adventurous style of travel photography from around the world, usually involves him staying in remote hostels, or camping in his hammock-tent so as to enable him to be onsite during the best light to capture images of scenes that have not been photographed often, or to do so from unique perspectives that other photographers don’t see or won’t even attempt. 

Robert looks for “the path less traveled” to discover unique scenes that, sometimes, even the locals don’t know about.

Over the past eight years he has photographed thousands of dancers for numerous dance organizations. Robert creates elaborate composites that takes a lot of post production work.

He sometimes has what he calls “Artistic Days” in which the dancers are invited for something very over-the-top and special. "Artistic Days are shot on black backgrounds with elaborate and edgy lighting setups to showcase exciting themes such as glitter, flour, fog, colored powder, and recently: water!" he says.

Robert built a shallow pond inside a dance studio for his subjects to dance and splash in, allowing for incredible and unique dance portraiture.

"My photography business is currently evolving to another stage following a commission by the City of Miami to produce 15 large metal prints to be auctioned for charity to benefit Kroma Gallery," says Robert. Kroma is located at 3670 Grand Avenue here in Coconut Grove.

"I have named this commission and the charity auction, 'The Miami Photography Project.'  These prints of the Miami area will be delivered to Kroma Gallery on Wednesday and a silent, online auction will soon commence. It will end with a reception at the gallery in January or February," he says.

"Most of the works that I will be showing [this weekend] will be from the Miami Photography Project. Rivet Nation will also be showing, at their booth, one of my pieces that I produced while teaching a photography workshop at RAIL 2017 at the Gold Coast Railroad Museum," explained Robert.

The Miami Photography Project came about following Commissioner Ken Russell’s request for Robert to provide some of his photos for a charity auction.

Robert had been working on and refining his techniques for creating super-high resolution, multi-shot panoramas that accurately recorded detail in the darkest and brightest areas just as our eyes do and he thought that would be a perfect match for the auction, he wanted to do something special for that - he  says the landscapes are superior than anything that has ever been done before.

Robert says, "I have produced extremely detailed and technically superior images that can never be duplicated. While some of these images have been printed at eight feet wide for this project,that size is relatively small when compared to their potential."

You can see some of these images here at Robert's website.

Roberts Facebook page shows many of his landscapes here.

"Mangroves and Rainbows" by Robert Sullivan.