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Creating a personal and unique interpretation of the world around us is an intriguing and endlessly fascinating puzzle to untangle. It is this challenge which drives my creativity and I seek to use abstraction as my voice. No longer satisfied with the infinite reproducibility of the digital print, I embrace a multitude of tactile analogue techniques in making each of my final works unique. I hope, one day, to make work that really pleases me. In the meantime, I love the whole creative process.
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Thanks for participating in this session. When you’re creating an image, do you have a preconceived idea of how the result should look? Do you let the image take the lead and follow where it goes? A mix of the two?
Great question Don. This type of work, I find is different to the making of representational images (which I used to make - I spent many years as a professional landscape photographer making ‘classic’ landscape work).
When making classic landscape images I would visualise the final print at the time of the shoot in the field. However, as an expressionist photographer, I have experienced a major shift in the way I work. I identify subjects in the field I think might yield interesting results - but have little or no idea at that point how the techniques might render the image. As I start to build the multiple exposures in-camera I respond to how each layer works and this dictates what I do with the next layer. It is also true that I am not aiming to get a close-to-finished image in-camera. I see the camera part now as collecting the digital raw materials for the next stage of my creative process, back on the computer.
This creative process continues for me in Lightroom and Photoshop as I take the raw files and explore where they might lead me - but I have no idea how the final image will look - it gradually emerges during the processing as I am led by each choice I make and the effect it has on the image.
This shift in working took some mental adjustment for me - but now I relish the creative freedom I have and the serendipity of the results. I also love the fact that the final images are not repeatable - by me or anyone else. They are more like paintings than photographs.
“They are more like paintings than photographs”
I have an opposite creative path–i started as an abstract painter…then digital artist…now landscape photographer, so i’ll ask the obvious (some might call stupid) question: Why photography as opposed to painting?
an intersting thought Stan. I am a painter too (although I have turned to this in more recent years - and both disciplines inform each other).
I enjoy what digital photography and software enables me to create - I enjoy the process of making the work (and I now embellish my prints with paint, charcoal, pencil, gold leaf etc in an effort to make each print unique).
So I tend to see it simply as a different creative process with it’s own advantages and disadvantages rather than something to do instead of painting - I enjoy both.
Hi Doug,
Your work is beautiful! I especially like the colors and contrast of the one shown here of the blue ice-like curves against the bold red vertical lines.
My question is about your comment above about printing. If I understand you correctly, you aren’t all that interested in printing your Canon mirrorless digital images from a computer to a printer, is that correct? Instead, you work in a dark room and use an enlarger with chemicals and print your digital images there? Could you expand on your comment about analogue techniques? Thanks!
Actually, I do (generally) make my prints digitally. But then I embellish them with paint, charcoal, gold leaf etc.
My reason is I found myself feeling disheartened by the fact that once a digital image has been made, it is possible to make virtually limitless identical prints. It just felt somewhat soulless to me.
So my aim is to return more to each print being a unique artefact - one of one. More like a painting in that respect- even if I were to make three limited edition prints from one file (I don’t, anymore- I make just one) each would still be unique in its own way.
I still love digital prints (and have a collection of favourites that I have bought from photographers I admire), it’s just for me, I like the idea of uniqueness in this mass production world.
I don’t really have a question, but more of a comment. I tend toward realism not just in my photography, but in what I appreciate in art. That said, after viewing your website, I find myself really drawn toward your work, even though I don’t think I would ever create something like this. Your art really is evocative and I love that you include some poetry in the galleries. I hadn’t read The Layers by Stanley Kunitz before. What a moving piece! Thank you for being here today and for sharing how you see the world around you. My own world has just been enlarged and I am grateful!
Hi Paul. I really appreciate your kind and generous comments about my work. Thank you.
It’s true, abstraction is not for everyone (and both seeing and making the work comes with a whole host of challenges- puzzles which I enjoy untangling).
As someone who comes from a background in professional representational landscape photography, I just found myself losing my joy in making work which was fundamentally so similar to everyone else’s. Seeking bigger sunrises, mistier woodlands, more dramatic locations in an effort to differentiate myself but to no avail.
Discovering the cameras ability to make more painterly, expressionistic images - initially using ICM and later with multiple exposures- I found a way I felt I could express how locations felt to me rather than how they looked. I could try and convey an emotional response, making images about something rather than simply ‘of’ something. The fact these images were unique and couldn’t be replicated by anyone else appealed to me also.
So I gradually left behind my representational work and filled my life with this expressive output. But, we are all different and I always feel, we should each make images that bring us joy and fulfil us first and foremost. It matters not what style we work in as long as our art and craft brings us fulfilment.
I do not have much to add because the questions so far have been excellent. Do you find more creative abstracts in nature or in cities. I look for them in both places even though I probably enjoy looking for them in the woods more.
I also really like your idea of making a print an original piece of art with adding charcoal or paint. I will explore this idea with my wife also works with paints.
While I used to make my images as a landscape photographer in the wild places (and that is still where I love to be) I find my current work easier to make in towns, villages and cities.
This is where I find the colours, shapes and textures which feed into my images.
Hi Jim. I’m very interested in the texture, translucence and colour of my print substrates - and how these things affect both the print itself and any later embellishments.
So for that reason I experiment with many types of paper including those not specifically designed for printing - to see what effects I can achieve.
