Photo Thoughts
As a person that is known to shoot a photo or two, I often find myself pondering about photography and more specifically my personal perspective of the images that I not only produce, but aim to create.
I feel analysing your own work is one of the simplest ways to develop as an artist, which is one of the reasons I have a website and print my images. Displaying the work in such a way is like curating your own exhibition space that you continue to visit, analyse and critique. You simply can not lie to yourself or ignore any imperfections within an image. The more times I visit an image the more things I see, it is rarely technical errors (especially since it has made it to a printing stage) but things that could be improved aesthetically. I guess you could say it creates your own photographic style,’ but I believe we should not limit ourselves to a ‘style’, but rather be developing our art continuously.
So why am I rambling these thoughts? Well, because I can write blogs on this site, but also I have been thinking about my landscape images, I now believe that for me, a successful photograph (from a completely personal viewpoint) is an image that visually works as an abstract art piece, meaning if you take away all context of place and time, simplifying the image back to just composition and contrasts (colour and texture) the image would still convey the desired feelings and emotions.
Currently I look for images that could be defined as calming, and while the use of blue and green hues are regarded as calming and natural, I try to go beyond that. I find an image calming when every component seems to have its place within the composition, the image is aesthetically balanced, Colours are harmonious with one another. Every component of the image is there for a reason (including colour), this may seem like a near impossible task when you have little control over the subject matter and its surrounding environment (landscape photography), but this just shows the importance of being selective about the photographs to shoot, the conditions to shoot in and simplifying the frame, whether by light, texture, colour, contrast, tighter crops or getting closer. This is not only relevant to composing the frame, but processing, printing and displaying the image too, as these stages have a huge affect on how the final image is perceived.
Don’t get me wrong, I do love those large vistas filled with a vibrant sunrise or sunset, the way they light up clouds and the hard vibrant light but I find the resulting images are often too complex and not aligning with the above thoughts, they feel more like snapshots rather than pieces of art that I would be willing to display in a portfolio. Subjects such as these can absolutely be captured in a way that does follow my ideas, even as a wide shot, but it requires careful consideration.
This is what I love about photography and the arts, we have our own concepts and ideas. I draw my inspiration from so many artists whose bodies of work are unique in their own way. Sure in the photography field there’s many images taken to duplicate the work of those that came before us, but as artists our creativity is our own and I believe we need to take full advantage of that by shooting our individual ways to please ourselves.
What's the ideas and concepts that you follow in your creative field?
