Blue Snow
I'm fascinated by how photography allows us a new insight into reality by giving us access to different visual fields; insights such as "distorted" perspectives (either compressed or elongated through using long or short focal lengths). Or colour without the in-built filtration applied by our minds. Or the compression of four dimensions into two. I intend to use this space to discuss some of these ideas and to talk more personally about the image making process. The blog is new but I've been making images for 20 years and more so I'll be posting both old and new images and writing a little about each; sometimes profound, sometimes irreverent.
This image was made on a recent visit to Scotland leading a photographic workshop. I think that it typifies some of the elements that I strive for in an image: simplicity, strong lines, contrasting colours. It also demonstrates how an image can be found almost anywhere. There was nothing special about this bank of snow other than the way the morning sun was just grazing the tops of the grass giving the colour contrast with the blue-sky lit shadowed snow.
Highlight this Comment Sandy Wilson F Stop10/02/2008, 15:33
David,
Although I have dipped into the field of landscape images my most recent work is in the field of abstract images. By abstract I mean making images of every day mundane subjects and creating images of them out of their normal context.
When I show these images to other photographer friends, the usual comment is well what is it. I then tell them that it is a small portion of a wall, a boat, a rock ect they normally cannot beleive it is that.
They also say you must have a good seeing eye and I reply No I have higher honed vision and peception than you.
As far as your image is concerned I am sure most of your workshop pupils would not have seen or contemplated making such an image.
Allow me to give you a couple of quotes by two great American photographers,
First, AAron Siskind.
We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect...but as photographers we must learn to relax our beliefs.
Second, Wynn Bullock.
My pictures are never pre-visualized or planned. I feel strongly that pictures must come from contact with things at the time and place of taking. At such times, i rely on intuitive, perceptual responces to guide me, using reason only after the final printis made to accept or reject the results of my work.
The key to making images is Vision, Peception and Intuition, maybe you do not agee. To truly see we must open our eyes and our hearts.
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