I participated in a club outing this past weekend. The light was terrible, middle of the day and hazy due to the smoke from out west. I went more to be social than to get any earth shattering photos. This is my favourite from the day. I did like the location and will return at another time to explore further.
Freedom in Art
I used to think of myself as a landscape photographer. As such, you would hold yourself to a standard of capturing a scene in front of you and using only fairly minimal post production. Getting it right in the camera was a mantra you lived by. You would never entertain the idea of swapping out a sky for instance, you worked with the conditions you were presented with. If you showed up to a location and the weather was not what you had envisioned, you would often leave and come back another time if possible.
A photographer I follow named Mark Littlejohn once described himself by saying, “I’m not a faithful servant of the truth”. He actually was speaking of his tendency to split tone his images and often deviated from the true colour palette in the process. What is actually holding us to “reality”? I began thinking years ago that when we go to places where iconic shots exist, we grab them just like we used to and very little of what we do is truly original. When I”m traveling and I find myself near one of those iconic places, you know I still shoot it like we all do but afterward it kind of leaves my feeling unfulfilled.
Lately, I have been working on freeing myself of some of those rules and allowing myself more freedom to mess with some stuff in the name of art. I no longer shy away from the editing that I used to. I might change skies now or use texture overlays to create a more original piece. If you think about it, Fine Art itself falls within this world. It is work that exists solely for it’s aesthetics and is often heavily edited to what you see. Total freedom and creativity at it’s finest. That’s what I am working toward now.
My New Camera
Well, I’ve been using my Lumix micro four thirds camera for a few months now, the experience has been for the most part positive. That said, I have had a couple of things that haven’t been perfect either. The Constant Exposure setting doesn’t work well. When you turn it on, it then lags extremely badly on the screen and when you try to set exposure in low light it acts glitchy and jumps around. You cannot shoot night work with it on for instance. The other thing that isn’t ideal is that if you want to turn on the histogram while you shoot it isn’t responsive enough to use for reference.
I never shot in live view on my DSLRs so I never had these functions available to me anyway so I’m not loosing sleep over it anyway. The overall experience is good so that’s the point, right?
Make Art For You First
The bottom line is, if you don’t connect with your work because you’re trying to satisfy some other formula, you are doing it wrong. I’ve finally gotten away from that way of thinking. I used to worry a lot about what others would think.That way of thinking is completely destructive to creativity. I no longer try to satisfy anyone but me.
Judges in a competition always want to see detail in shadows for instance. They lose their minds if they can’t see it, they can’t handle mystery in an image. I have heard comments to this issue a lot over the years. I heard it just recently regarding an image I am placing in an exhibition. I like shadows, I learned when shooting live music that shadows have to be shadows sometimes, and I like it.
Decide On Your Subject And Feature It.
When presented with a large area of intense interest, I tend to try and show too much and therefore lose the subject I’m trying to feature in the first place. Peyto Lake and for that matter, many places in the Canadian Rockies are truly breathtaking! At first I was taking a pano and trying to include way too much. Grand vistas are actually very hard for that reason. When I finally had a chance to think about it, I decided that the main subject was, after all, the lake.
