Danish-born Christel Bangsgaard is an award-winning photographer and digital artist specializing in beauty photography. Her colorful and visually striking imagery has been featured in high-end publications worldwide. Christel mainly works between New York and Copenhagen, but is available for projects anywhere in the world. Her biggest passion besides photography is traveling. So far she has visited thirty-four different countries, and is always looking forward to adding more to the list.
- I love working behind the camera, shooting, and seeing my ideas come to life. But this is only the first part of the process. I do most of my own retouching, and it is here that I really get to play around and finalize my ideas. I work a bit like an art painter I guess. Only I don’t use physical paintbrushes, I use virtual paintbrushes in Photoshop, and my ¨blank canvas¨ is my raw photo.
- I experiment a lot with my work, and am always trying to come up with new concepts, ideas and expressions. For good and bad, I am a true perfectionist. I think you have to be somewhat of a perfectionist to work in beauty photography, because it requires close attention to details. But I can be rather extreme with it. When I work on a personal project, I will work on it, close it down, and come back to it the next day, over and over again. I will look at it with new eyes next morning, change things, add to it, build on it and so on. I put my heart into every single photo I work on, and unless I have a tight deadline to keep, it can be an ongoing project for a while. I’m always striving to create something different and new.
-I gain my inspiration from the outside world in all and everything, and from my inside world as well. Sometimes I wake up in the morning with an idea, as was it handed to me in a dream. I love dreaming…. It is so interesting and mysterious. When you are in your dream world there are no limits and no boundaries, anything is possible. When I work on my photos it is almost like being in that dream world, without boundaries. It is a fantasy world with lots of colors in it, and I create aesthetic illusions.
- Besides my passion for photography, my other addiction, if you will, is traveling. The best money I ever spent went on traveling. And it stays with you forever. I love going on adventures exploring the world, experiencing new cultures and meeting new people. I think traveling opens your mind and makes you more humble and understanding. Although I was born with Danish blood in my veins, I feel a connection to most countries I visit, and sometimes I feel more at home in a foreign country than my own. In fact I would rather call myself a ¨world citizen¨ than restrict it to a tiny country. Looking back at my life so far, the times that stand out the most are all my travels. I have a crisp clear memory of all my adventures visiting other countries, where as the times I stayed in one place for longer periods of time have a tendency to be more blurry.
