Tag: long exposure

  • A Process

    A Process

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, orange, pink, vibrant, waves, swooshes, pattern
    Sand Spindrift Ridges, 2014 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    People are often curious how I make my images. Several years ago I was showing prints from my Metro Motions series when someone came up to me and asked how I made my paintings. To which I replied they aren’t paintings, they’re photographs. They looked stricken as if I’d slapped them and without another word turned and left. In some respects these images could metaphorically be considered paintings but from a technical perspective because I’m using a camera to create them, I classify them as photographs. Tomato tomato, potato, potato. Is this distinction important? I don’t think so.

    I began a project of images of the city while driving at dusk. I found the best images came at the end of rainstorms when everything is glassy smooth and reflective with water. Because it was almost night I was shooting with long exposure times – sometimes several seconds and because I was driving and hand holding my camera every light in the image made squiggly lines. This method gave me my source images for Metro Motion.

    At the time I had worked out a visual simulation using Photoshop, that was in some respects similar to cross-processing positive film in negative film chemistry. Cross-processing inverts the film colours in a beautiful and somewhat unpredictable manner. I liked the method I had devised in Photoshop and used it to convert the source night driving images from dark banal light streaks into bright, colourful images full of motion and detail.

    Some time later I began thinking about how I could simplify the visual environment of the city into it’s component shapes and colour. It struck me that I could do exactly that by shooting out of focus – this work became the Coloured City project. I very specifically wanted to photograph in daylight as an antithesis to the night work I had done with Metro Motion.

    I had just purchased a 3 megapixel point and shoot camera with manual control including manual focus, so I used that as my test camera – because it gave immediate feedback – to iteratively experiment and discover the optimal settings and subject matter for the project. It was such a seductive way to shoot that I just kept going and over the course of several days captured all the source images I needed.

    Again I was driving, but this time the images were normal duration exposures so there was no or very little visible motion captured in the images. But because I was moving/driving this increased the frequency of possible subject matter to the point my camera was too slow to keep up – it was after all a point and shoot with shutter lag.

    Most recently for the Light Signatures project, I had a vision of lateral coloured streaks running diagonally across the frame, very specifically capturing the induced motion of my passage through the coloured objects of the city. I used a fusion of methodologies from Metro Motion and Coloured City.

    This time I rode my bicycle instead of driving which slowed the pace of change around me, giving me greater opportunity to capture what I was visualizing. I experimented using a digital SLR camera finding ways to reduce it’s light sensitivity so I could have long exposures in daylight and over the course of several months of daily shooting, worked out camera movement patterns, light conditions and subject material. I finished both the Coloured City and Light Signatures source images using Photoshop to paint layer masks so I could massage the intensity and colour of individual visual elements within each image until the balance matched my original vision.

    What’s next? Who knows, I’m still considering possibilities.

  • It Started With Beauty

    It Started With Beauty

    Light Signatures series, day, colour photograph, art, abstract, abstract expressionism, creative, city street, urban, downtown, cityscape, speed, blur, movement, motion, fuchsia, orange, muted, waves, patterns
    Green Pink Orange Red Wisps, 2012 – Light Signatures :: (click to see more)

    When I first began talking about the images I was making, I used to say I was searching for beauty with my work. But as time passed, as I gave it more thought, as I matured (chuckle), I came to realize that although beauty was an element it certainly wasn’t the driving force behind my images.

    I can’t say for sure what I was doing before I began working on the Metro Motion series except to say that I saw things that resonated within me and so I would photograph them and attempt to portray my inner vision. But with the Metro Motion work, I made a conscious effort to find a new way of seeing the city – one I could be happy with – and with this I began to think differently about what I was doing. I experimented with different techniques I liked, including long exposures, camera movement and pinhole photography. Around this time I saw some amazing pinhole work by Michael Wesely – Open Shutter at the MOMA in New York that validated my interest in finding a different way to portray the city.

    Everything I’ve done since has, in my mind at least, followed some kind of evolution from that original idea of seeing the city differently. As to why the city – I realize now that I photograph as part of my daily life and so I photograph where I live and travel. Up until Metro Motion I had been slightly nomadic and driving a lot and so I was able to photograph landscapes in the countryside.

    Between 1988-93 or so I lived and worked in Hamilton and Windsor but drove a lot around southern Ontario and traveled elsewhere. I would photograph mostly while I was driving and traveling but also began to explore the industrial landscape of Hamilton, Windsor and Detroit too.

    It wasn’t until 1994 when I moved to Toronto and stopped traveling and driving so much that I was fully confronted with a need to find an interesting and fulfilling way to photograph city life – since that was pretty much all the photographic material I had at my disposal. Up to that point I had predominantly shot landscapes in black and white and tried the same when photographing the city and industrial areas but I was dissatisfied with this – it wasn’t interesting enough. This was also around when I converted from a black and white darkroom to colour transparency film, scanning my film, digital image processing and ultimately digital printing. It was an exciting period of learning and discovery – exploring new production and image processing possibilities.

    I still don’t have a clear handle on what I’m doing but I do know that music is an essential part. I always work with my favourite music playing and for the Coloured City series, while I was shooting also. I find the right music facilitates a flow state while I work – a kind of mental disconnect from my surroundings or perhaps a hyper-connect with the image I’m working on – whichever, it allows me to enter into the image. I don’t know how to describe this clearly without sounding hokey but suffice it to say, the flow state enables me to identify and amplify elements within the image – to build the image up in a succession of layers using painterly techniques, until I have something that feels complete.

    Interestingly, in writing this post I checked the Michael Wesely book I have about his Open Shutter project. In his book I found two images I didn’t remember that are clearly influential precursors for my Light Signatures series. One is from his New York Vertical series and the other is from the series American Landscape – both of which contain strong elements of what I’m exploring now.