Finding the feeling behind the image

I walked under blue skies and through a skiff of snow today. The trail up S Mountain didn’t offer anything to my camera that was structurally interesting. A few lazy shots of lichen or a frost pattern, but nothing which grabbed at me. Later, examining images taken over the holiday, I found little inspiring, yet could not escape the feeling that the landscape, the brisk air, leaves drying and partially covered by snow, and the brilliant Colorado sky had filled me with pleasure that should find some expression. I began experimenting with an image of tree stump

among a few leaves. The roots had character. There were suggestions of color. As I turned the image, applying different filters, then reblending the layers, I saw what had been hidden. It was the colors … the colors of fall slowly disappearing as winter became ascendant.

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Composition after the camera work

What influences the shape of a photographic composition? From behind the lens of most cameras, your view of the world falls typically within a rectangular form, either vertical or horizontal. Cameras may artificially allow you to adjust the field of view so as to more easily visualize a square or panoramic canvas, but in any event, the camera itself influences how you visually perceive the world. In the end, it will often dictate the two-dimensional shape of your final work. If you consider how you actually see, it is obvious that there no straight lines whatsoever at the edge of your vision. We are wonderfully adept at defocusing and perceiving a cone of light, emphasizing the horizontal, in an arc of about 120 degrees. And we instantly focus on detail, drawing our perceptual attention like a telephoto lens to movement, color and forms that have alerted us. Are there other influences which give shape to...

In the age of digital arts, everyone has access to imagery, tools, editors. We can all express ourselves and thereby enter the vast domain of "anonymous accomplishment". In the age of Covid-19, communicating and sharing these accomplishments feels more important. The local artists' group has ceased meeting, the old codgers who talk politics are at home sanding a new coffee table, photographers are looking for someone to come outside and strike a memorable pose along the river - and no one comes, the quilter needs an audience as well as cold weather, ... so much has moved online as we try to talk to one another. And here I am, too. I am a Smith. My surname, with which I have grown comfortable, pretty much assures you will never find this blog. But if you are by chance reading this, we are all smiths. A smith is a craftsman; a capable person whose observations of the world and transformations of ideas into hardened reality reveal skil...

Cover Art

I'm writing a new science fiction book - a sequel to "Uncivil", and while it is months away from completion I am working on possible cover art. It helps me to visualize some aspects of the landscape which the book encompasses while providing a distraction from the labor of sentences, dialogue and the unbending demands of individual words. Over the years, working in Photoshop feels physical: lifting landscapes, challenging the flow of clouds and birds. And while everything I do now is increasingly sedentary, image work flexes my muscles and is aerobic in comparison to the interior warfare of words. Wildfire 2002, Durango Bisti Wilderness Area, NM These are a few of basic images in play for a new cover. Cover art has to pay homage to the demands of title placement and author's name. It is not always, but in my case, usually portrait style or vertical to fit a 6" wide by 9" high format. It will wrap to provide a rear cover that is connected to the ...

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