Making Art

I've always been of the school of thought that art is that which we use for expression of the self. The imagination is not constrained by the rules that hamstring the sciences and one can use almost any medium imaginable to express that imagination. And that expression can be on any level from the obvious to the completely abstract. In essence, art is what we make it.

Effectively expressing one's self obviates the need to master a given medium. Da Vinci could not have painted the Mona Lisa without first knowing how to effectively combine the canvas, paint, and brush to achieve the effect he wanted. Mastering the medium is all about achieving the desired effect.

Part of art instruction, aside from learning the myriad of media available, is challenging the student to find new ways to express the self. It's one thing to simply put forth the objective, but it's a different thing entirely to put forth the self in a way that challenges the artist and stirs something in the viewer. Once the artist is able to tap the imagination in terms of expression, the sky is pretty much the limit.

Consider this picture:


This sculpture is part of the Menil Collection in Houston, TX. I set to shoot this to make it look as if the branches were springing forth from the obelisk. I thought with the contrast from the backlight I would achieve that effect. A quick glance shows that I achieved that effect in the actual object, but closer inspection shows the distinction between the branches and the broken obelisk body. I submitted the printed photo for critique.

The teacher praised me for coming close to achieving what I wanted, but then told me that aside from achieving my stated effect, I really did little more than document art produced by somebody else. I was a little deflated because I was proud of the picture, but I knew he was right in his assessment. In essence I had mastered the medium as far as what I wanted to do, but I had not challenged myself into representing the subject in a different manner.

Fast forward about 4 months and I find myself trying to find something to do with my camera. I was doing up some barbecue of the slow smoked kind and decided to take some shots in my backyard. I thought my back fence would be a good subject for expressing decay since, even though it is still standing, is nearing the end of its useful life. Here is the shot I thought best represented the decay I was seeing:


After stewing over this one (and publishing it on Primordial Light) I started to think that there was something missing. I still can't quite put my finger on it, but there is something missing. I see decay, but then what? The sunlight coming through really didn't add anything to the picture.

I had spent much of my time over the past 3 months concentrating on concert photography and had not really done anything else. I thought back to what my Photography professor had said about the obelisk picture and realized while I was creating art, I was not challenging myself or the viewer.

I decided to offer up the challenge to myself and here are the new and improved obelisk and fence photos:




The same images taken in new directions with very different results. One person I spoke with gave me 2 different reactions after looking at the photos.

Now I challenge you to let me know what you think after seeing these pictures. In the words of my buddy Mark - "Don't be afraid to comment on the photos".

Digital Toolbox

One of the amazing things about digital is the vast array of tools that are available to the photographer for processing the shot. Indeed, the amount of hardware and software packages available is astounding. You can get a Chromira processor for a price that runs well into 5 digits, a scanner dedicated to film (thus creating digital pictures from film), full featured software such as Adobe Photoshop, or even small programs like Apple iPhoto. All these things help someone take the picture from the camera and do amazing things with the picture.

Most of my photos would not be possible without the tools in my digital toolbox. All my film photographs are scanned directly from the negatives rather than prints. I use an image editor to clean the dust from the scan (sometimes dust is inevitable and DigitalICE takes too long). Then I use Aperture to correct and exposure issues, etc. with the image. Some say this is cheating, but most things that can be done in Aperture can be done in the darkroom as well. I try as much as possible to take the picture correctly the first time, but there are times when the output can be improved upon. Even the great Ansel Adams used darkroom tricks to improve his prints. I'm sure that if he had lived to see what can be done with a computer, there would be digital tools in his arsenal.

Now that I have a little more time, I am starting to explore some more the digital tools out there. I use Aperture for much of my processing work. Up until now there weren't that many plug-ins available for Aperture. Since the release of 2.0, however, the plug-ins have started to trickle in. This evening I downloaded trial versions for 2 of the plug-ins available and decided to see what I could do. Here is an image that I played with earlier:



This is the original picture exported directly from the RAW file. For those not from Texas, this is the Texas Bluebonnet, a flower native to Texas that draws out the photographers from every hiding place in the state each spring. When I took this photo, I accidentally left my camera in ISO1600, which gave me a lot of noise. Also, the colors seemed a little washed out to me. Since my focus was on the flower and not the field around it, I cropped the picture and fired up AKVIS Noise Buster and got this result:



This is now a more noise-free photo. I left the out-of-focus flower in the picture to keep the original subject from being too centered and to let the viewer know that this was taken in a field of bluebonnets and not in a garden or a flower pot. I discovered AKVIS a while ago and have used it much since it's purchase. In fact, most of my concert photos go through AKVIS. The colors were still a little washed to me, so I imported the new noise-free image to Aperture to tweak the colors and ended up with this result:



To me now the blue in the flowers really pops out against the green of the grass. The only trouble is now the flower in the background stands out a little more. I suppose I could have cropped the photo closer to the subject, but I just didn't want a totally frame-filling subject. This picture is what would eventually end up in my flickr photostream. Some people seem to like it.

So I was reading through some groups and found that there were plug-ins available for Aperture. So I went and downloaded DFT Ozone and Tiffen Dfx. DFT Ozone allows for selective color changes while Tiffen Dfx is a filter plug-in. I took this image to see what I could do with it in both the plug-ins and this is my result:



Now I have a centered portrait of a Texas Redbonnet (doesn't exist for those non-Texans out there). DFT Ozone was used to change the color of the petals while I used Tiffen Dfx to add the vignetting. The final edit was the crop in Aperture to tighten the image. There is still a trace of the other flower, which still gives the impression that the picture was taken in a field. I wish I had saved a copy of the image between plug-ins, but before that I hadn't even planned this blog entry.

I know that I'm not even scratching the surface when it comes to digital tools available. I found an Aperture plug-in earlier that will allow one to isolate the area of the image to be edited. That one will be downloaded a little later. I know that many will say that Photoshop offers some of these things as standard, but there are drawbacks to Photoshop (cost, learning curve, etc.) that drive users to seek other solutions.

As always, comments are welcome and encouraged.

The Results are in...

For those who read this (all 3 of you hehe) that may have been wondering what grade I received in my Photography II course, wonder no more... I received a B. The teacher didn't go over anything when he looked at our portfolios... he simply went through them, snapped photos of a couple of pieces, closed it up, and went on to the next person. I'm not sure what the basis was for the final grade. I know that I did miss one critique, so there may be an issue of productivity. At any rate, perhaps I'll ask him sometime down the line.

There aren't any pictures tonight. We had a get together at my house earlier today and I'm kinda tired from the cleanup. Have a good night everyone.