WHAT ARE PAINTERLY PHOTOGRAPHS?
Art Print: The Glass is half full
My drawings in high school weren’t much different from the ones from Kindergarten. Having never had a fine art education, I can’t draw, let alone paint. Yet, I adore paintings. God gave me the love for something I couldn’t create. That’s hardly fair.
What I can do, is photograph. I always had cameras at home. Photography was always a passion, a hobby that turned into a profession. What do I love about Photography? The ability to freeze a moment in time, to keep a memory, a sensation alive. That’s why homes and now phones are filled with pictures. We want to remember, relive the inspiring views of a beautiful vacation, treasure forever the smiles of our kids, the beauty of our partners. What do I love about Painting? It breaks the boundaries between reality and our perception of life.
In 2012 I decided that I would paint… with my camera. In order to do that I had to discard all the rules of conventional Photography. The leitmotiv of the optical art is: be tack sharp and subject focused. The refrain for the good photographer is: Expose correctly, Focus on your subject, Stand Still. To paint I taught myself how to forget these rules.
I use long exposures that don’t freeze the moment but create ripples in the image. While shooting I make sure to move my camera. Always. I walk forward or sideways with the shutter open, I shake the grip or rotate it to create patterns and echoes in the image. I zoom in or out while capturing the frame. I search for that area out of focus where shapes start to emerge but colors are still soft, buttery, liquid. There’s nothing still in my Photography when I’m painting with my camera.
In post production, my computer becomes my workshop. I work to enhance and personalize the foundation, what the file (or the old film negative) is giving me. I try to forget what was in front of the lens at the moment I released the shutter.
I have textures to nurture and colors to grow.
Art Print: Toll-Free-Dome
Suddenly the unexpected emerges from the image. Lines and hues I had not noticed. We are in the realm of painting now. It’s only real what I want to see. No more photographic reproduction of reality, only fantasy and creativity applied to the visual frame.
I use a vast array of filters to obtain my final product. I don’t use them in a specific order. I like to get lost in the process. If I had a recipe I would get bored and stop creating altogether.
My final quality check has two main requirements. No sloppy textures. All shapes must have character, they must be a honest signature at the end of my creative process. All colors must have personality. Texture and Color are the skin and blood of my pieces. I want them healthy and vigorous.
Painterly Photographs are Paintings created with the camera as a brush and digital software as the palette.