bvais Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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I promise this is the last time I use this title, I just wanted to have some continuity with the previous thread
As per usual, please check out my BLOG if you want to see how I got from 'before' to 'after'.
I thought I'd jot down a few words about how I approach what I do.
There’s this old adage that painters add, while photographers remove. Painters start with an empty canvas and they add their artistic vision to it, whereas photographers start with a full scene in front of them and they have to decide what elements to omit based on their artistic vision.
Well… almost.
What I end up once the shutter is triggered is just another canvas. A canvas that allows me to now add my interpretation of the scene, to modify the scene based on what I saw with my mind’s eye.
This means that even though the scene may be a blazing sunset after a storm etc. I’ll still consider it simply a canvas. Having mother-nature deliver a good opportunity doesn’t mean my work is done for me. There is way more than meets the eye to a good photo, one that engages the viewers and keeps them within the frame. Nothing can be left to chance, and all elements must work together. There are also shadow to light plays, cool to warm, high contrast to low contrast transitions etc. These seldom exist in the ‘wild’, and when they do they need to be brought out. Same for compositional aspects: lines don’t always go where you want them, reflections aren’t always clear, items in the frame are made too small or too large by the lens, the moon isn’t always where you need it. Will that stop me from trying to achieve what I saw? No.
This doesn’t mean I won’t strive to capture the best canvas possible. Notice I didn’t say ‘photo’. I’ll still try to be out there when the light is at its best. I’ll still try to find compelling compositions. But when they are not there I will not let this discourage myself, if the scene in my mind demands my attention. Not everything I shoot will see the light of day. I came back from Antarctica with over 8000 photos. I worked on 100. Do you know how many made it to print and on my website? 8.
At the end of the day, for me it boils down to this… artists create. They don’t document, they create.
Just to be clear, I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything. The people that don't want to do this kind of processing will most likely say "and that's precisely why I refuse to do this", the people that have been doing this for ages will say "well, doh, obviously", and the ones in between will feel drawn by one camp or the other.
I'd like to ask for one thing though, and that's to be civil. Obviously people feel very strongly about what they do, but there are multiple ways of getting a point across. If you feel you gotta gotta gotta set someone "straight" there's always 'private message', or if that doesn't make you feel good, by all means, a duel would be quite entertaining. If you choose tripods as weapons I'd go with RRS, they're solid :-D
Update uploaded 800px versions for both before/after
After
Before
Edited on May 11, 2015 at 02:21 PM · View previous versions
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