Dec 2012 Flatirons Club: Lessons Learned

Born on the Mediterranean, 2012

Last night was our annual Flatirons Photography Club end-of-the-year holiday party and photography competition. Great fun! We went through all manner of images in the various categories. (My image above earned 3rd place in the Abstract-Print category.) Our three excellent and experienced judges (Michael Lightner, David Bahr, and Glenn Randall) certainly earned their pay…well, I don’t think they got paid much except maybe for gas money…but they certainly earned our thanks!

It is always interesting to see the wide ranging styles and ideas from the many different member photographers who presented…black and white, color, sepia, highly manipulated, traditional landscapes, grunge cityscapes, High Dynamic Range (HDR), portraits, flora and fauna, composites, unusual special effects, moody and happy, profound and simple…it was all there.

To me, one comment during the evening by David Bahr stands out. Referring to the wonderful digital manipulation tools available today and the endless creative possibilities they open up (as he was seeing throughout the night’s competition), he said: “You have photography as art, then you have art that uses photography.”

It is the latter, more abstract, category–“art that uses photography”–that, to me, can really be much more thought-provoking than the more traditional-looking photograph (the postcard, say). I say this even though I tend to fall into the slightly more traditional camp.

In this more abstract type of work, photography is used almost incidentally, in pieces and parts, in fits and starts, to create…well, simply to create…but what? Is it a photograph? Not really. Is it a painting? Not that either. Is it “graphic art”? I suppose, but that is an incomplete term. The artist is realizing his or her vision using photography as simply another tool–whether the viewer identifies it as a photographic image is of little importance to the creator (unlike more traditional photographers–like me–who may be more concerned that their work actually look at least somewhat like a photograph).

To see what David meant by “art that uses photography” take a gander at this image, one of the night’s prize winners in the Abstract category. It is interesting stuff and provokes the imagination…even though I don’t think my work will ever necessarily follow this path.

With so many creative possibilities at one’s fingertips, it would be quite easy to get all wrapped around the easel about which creative path to take. This, I think, is where introspection and honesty comes in. You have to follow what you feel inside, rather than do something just because you find it fun to click on the different Photoshop filter effects, or because you see and want to copy what someone else has done. This is the hard part. When the work of a particular photographer is instantly recognizable it usually means that that artist is being honest with their instincts and their feelings–and it shows in their art. That is what the critics mean when they flaunt the phrase “a cohesive body of work.”

So, in sum, a fun evening…and yet another great point to ponder.