Fotoblog Gumbo

We just completed the Fall bridal fair in St. George. It was kind of quiet at the fair, so I was able to talk with a lot of people. We had this image of Malorie displayed in our booth, and nearly everyone who came by stopped, walked up real close, scratched their head and then asked if it was real. Weird. Yes, of course it is real -- the background is a cliff on the beach in Encinitas. But is that how it looked? Sort of. It is my interpretation of how it looked.

Years ago I attended an art installation in San Francisco where photographic prints from a group called f/64 (including Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham and others) were displayed. Let me beg you to ALWAYS make an effort to see artwork in person instead of relying on books and the internet, but that is another post. Anyway, there was a short film documenting Ansel Adams and how he worked. I was struck by the amount of artistic interpretation that went into every photograph: beyond composition, decisions were made before the exposure about contrast, shadow tones, highlights; a negative film was chosen based on these decisions, as well as the development method that would provide the desired results; and then more decisions were made when making the print, including paper choices and then dodging/burning. Every photograph that Adams made was an interpretation, very personal and deliberate, of the scene before his lens. It was not strictly reality. Adams was a technical master and an artistic genius, qualities that I aspire to but have a long, long way to go.

Another image that people wanted to talk about is LINKED HERE. Yes, those clouds were there, and that beautiful light. I made decisions about exposure when I created the photograph that I knew would enhance the clouds and light on the background scene, then added some light, and later polished the image in the digital darkroom. Nothing fancy -- a little luck and knowing how to take advantage of it.