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.
